Weather has returned from freezing to this year's default setting - rain.
Thassorl.
.
.
.
I should just say that those of you who have not been here for a while should scroll down two or three posts, for news update in correct order. In the New Year I shall play around with the site, try to put the blog in 'from earliest post' order & re-locate pictures.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Saturday, 22 November 2008
Many of you will know how a sudden death, albeit not unexpected, can affect you. I was a little surprised to find how shocked, aghast, full of awe, I was. How I would wake in the night with a gasp. How I realised that things might change rather, now, in ways I could imagine but also in some I might not foresee. Several times a day, I needed to stop what I was doing to take a few deep breaths.
Gradually, a sort of peace crept in. On an early October day, I walked up a lane from Pardaillan through scented air, searching for the right spot for a particular photo. The white, flat, gable of the little church, surrounded by the autumn colours of the prune orchards was what I was after. But despite the blue sky, golden orange leaves, white tower, from which its bell was ringing, the picture wasn't right. It was better the day before. The day before when I hadn't had time to stop as I drove the back way from Sauvetat to Duras, and the sky had been prussian blue with an impending storm while the sun blazed from the south-east, behind me, onto the white gable jumping against the blue-black sky, firing the plum trees in layers of sunset colours.
But the light was different, the storm had blown away a lot of the leaves. I got some pictures, but they don't show the luminous colours I had seen.
But the sun was warm and I identified the scent in the air - warm, dessicated plums and aromatic dry leaves, hay and cut maize and fresh air. I waved to Christophe the carpenter who rocketed past in his van. The bells rang. Gathering swallows twittered excitedly on every fence and wire. I took a peaceful, deep breath.
Gradually, a sort of peace crept in. On an early October day, I walked up a lane from Pardaillan through scented air, searching for the right spot for a particular photo. The white, flat, gable of the little church, surrounded by the autumn colours of the prune orchards was what I was after. But despite the blue sky, golden orange leaves, white tower, from which its bell was ringing, the picture wasn't right. It was better the day before. The day before when I hadn't had time to stop as I drove the back way from Sauvetat to Duras, and the sky had been prussian blue with an impending storm while the sun blazed from the south-east, behind me, onto the white gable jumping against the blue-black sky, firing the plum trees in layers of sunset colours.
But the light was different, the storm had blown away a lot of the leaves. I got some pictures, but they don't show the luminous colours I had seen.
But the sun was warm and I identified the scent in the air - warm, dessicated plums and aromatic dry leaves, hay and cut maize and fresh air. I waved to Christophe the carpenter who rocketed past in his van. The bells rang. Gathering swallows twittered excitedly on every fence and wire. I took a peaceful, deep breath.
Sunday, 16 November 2008
Try again.
You'll have to have this mistakes and all, for while trying to edit a spelling mistake yesterday, I lost the lot. This time, it's publish and be damned!
So there we were with the long French summer party winding down and me making notes for this blog when life, or rather, in this case, death, threw up one of those surprises that turns all you expect to be doing upside down.
The whole early part of the summer seemed to be spent preparing for Owen and Kerry's wedding. At this end, we didn't have to do much, but I seemed to take for ever doing it. Calligraphy for the Menus and place-cards, champagne and wines to source and buy, a seemingly huge amount of cooking and cleaning for the post-wedding family visit and hunting for shoes on the 'net, progressed gradually. The rain that hammered down from March to July helped me get things done, but hindered our progress on the patio and pergola which was this year's biggest project and which was supposed to provide a lovely outdoor room for the Visit. At the beginning of July, gaps in the deluge enabled Paul to complete the huge task of digging back to the ancient wall we'd found, allowed us to get a pad of concrete down, and the gravel. The graceful metal pergola was in place, ready for the rampant wisteria to be trained over it, for a vine to be planted. Just the tiles we had bartered for to get down and it would be done. And a water trickle feature installed in one corner of the old stone wall would complete it. And plant pots of course. And steps. And...
After the wedding, visits, barbeques, chicken pox (Eva) nephew dropping in, friend's 60th, we were looking forward to the peace. There was an end-of-term atmosphere but still many late summer events to come. A friend and I sat at the open day at the Chater Domaine, eating bread and sausage and drinking their excellent Merlot at tables laid between rows of vines, and agreed that we needed to detach ourselves a little from the calls on our time. In the previous 18 days, she had been out for 14 of them. But before the longed-for hibernation season begins we agreed to make the last Marché du Producteurs at Soumensac on the last Sunday in August. There, everyone buys food and wine from the farmer's stalls and sits at white-clothed tables placed beneath shady lime trees overlooking the most fabulous view, which, when light conditions are right, reaches to the Pyrenees. Lots of us meet there, with our visitors, throughout the summer, it is such a delightful way to spend a lazy Sunday.
After Soumensac, everything slows. The summer events, meals and animations, music festivals and boules tournaments in Communes and hill-top villages stop. This despite September being an uplifting month. The weather can be lovely, cooler, sunnier, with crystalline light. Everyone is sleeping better. But since French social life in the ruralité is family-based, and the children are back at school, the artisans at work, (the farmers have never stopped,) the Comités de Fêtes stop planning summer events and turn their thoughts to the Craft Fairs and feasts that might persuade hibernating country folk to venture away from their woodburners. The Chasseurs and motocross fanatics will continue to drone and bang their way through the woods on winter weekends, stopping only for boozy lunches, but as the weather closes in, shutters are closed against the mist and people disappear.
So there we were, imperceptibly become accustomed to this rhythm of French country life, expecting nothing more than the slow-down, when Paul's mother took to her bed. Since she did this two or three times a year, always getting up afterwards back to normal and bored by my home-made soups, we didn't worry. But suddenly, we were, on the fourth day rushing to find an ambulance, following it to the hospital, sitting on hard chairs in a bleak waiting room, taking Paul's father home to his bed then taking the phone call to say she had died.
A character in a Julian Barnes novel says,
'Never be ill in a foreign language,' and coping with death in a foreign language is pretty challenging too. No arrangement was made without a misunderstanding, without something going wrong. Getting the family back barely 3 weeks after some of them had left, to comply with the French regulation of burial within 6 days of decease, was a nightmare. But there we all were, back together, and Des took comfort from the support.
Two months on, he is coping really well, enjoying learning to cook, planning to come and stay in the hotel when we go skiing with Jan, Bob, Sheila and Trevor, perhaps going away for Christmas.
But we seem to be in a sort of limbo now, wondering, 'what next? What plans should we make?'
You'll have to have this mistakes and all, for while trying to edit a spelling mistake yesterday, I lost the lot. This time, it's publish and be damned!
So there we were with the long French summer party winding down and me making notes for this blog when life, or rather, in this case, death, threw up one of those surprises that turns all you expect to be doing upside down.
The whole early part of the summer seemed to be spent preparing for Owen and Kerry's wedding. At this end, we didn't have to do much, but I seemed to take for ever doing it. Calligraphy for the Menus and place-cards, champagne and wines to source and buy, a seemingly huge amount of cooking and cleaning for the post-wedding family visit and hunting for shoes on the 'net, progressed gradually. The rain that hammered down from March to July helped me get things done, but hindered our progress on the patio and pergola which was this year's biggest project and which was supposed to provide a lovely outdoor room for the Visit. At the beginning of July, gaps in the deluge enabled Paul to complete the huge task of digging back to the ancient wall we'd found, allowed us to get a pad of concrete down, and the gravel. The graceful metal pergola was in place, ready for the rampant wisteria to be trained over it, for a vine to be planted. Just the tiles we had bartered for to get down and it would be done. And a water trickle feature installed in one corner of the old stone wall would complete it. And plant pots of course. And steps. And...
After the wedding, visits, barbeques, chicken pox (Eva) nephew dropping in, friend's 60th, we were looking forward to the peace. There was an end-of-term atmosphere but still many late summer events to come. A friend and I sat at the open day at the Chater Domaine, eating bread and sausage and drinking their excellent Merlot at tables laid between rows of vines, and agreed that we needed to detach ourselves a little from the calls on our time. In the previous 18 days, she had been out for 14 of them. But before the longed-for hibernation season begins we agreed to make the last Marché du Producteurs at Soumensac on the last Sunday in August. There, everyone buys food and wine from the farmer's stalls and sits at white-clothed tables placed beneath shady lime trees overlooking the most fabulous view, which, when light conditions are right, reaches to the Pyrenees. Lots of us meet there, with our visitors, throughout the summer, it is such a delightful way to spend a lazy Sunday.
After Soumensac, everything slows. The summer events, meals and animations, music festivals and boules tournaments in Communes and hill-top villages stop. This despite September being an uplifting month. The weather can be lovely, cooler, sunnier, with crystalline light. Everyone is sleeping better. But since French social life in the ruralité is family-based, and the children are back at school, the artisans at work, (the farmers have never stopped,) the Comités de Fêtes stop planning summer events and turn their thoughts to the Craft Fairs and feasts that might persuade hibernating country folk to venture away from their woodburners. The Chasseurs and motocross fanatics will continue to drone and bang their way through the woods on winter weekends, stopping only for boozy lunches, but as the weather closes in, shutters are closed against the mist and people disappear.
So there we were, imperceptibly become accustomed to this rhythm of French country life, expecting nothing more than the slow-down, when Paul's mother took to her bed. Since she did this two or three times a year, always getting up afterwards back to normal and bored by my home-made soups, we didn't worry. But suddenly, we were, on the fourth day rushing to find an ambulance, following it to the hospital, sitting on hard chairs in a bleak waiting room, taking Paul's father home to his bed then taking the phone call to say she had died.
A character in a Julian Barnes novel says,
'Never be ill in a foreign language,' and coping with death in a foreign language is pretty challenging too. No arrangement was made without a misunderstanding, without something going wrong. Getting the family back barely 3 weeks after some of them had left, to comply with the French regulation of burial within 6 days of decease, was a nightmare. But there we all were, back together, and Des took comfort from the support.
Two months on, he is coping really well, enjoying learning to cook, planning to come and stay in the hotel when we go skiing with Jan, Bob, Sheila and Trevor, perhaps going away for Christmas.
But we seem to be in a sort of limbo now, wondering, 'what next? What plans should we make?'
Saturday, 15 November 2008
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