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.
Saturday, 22 November 2008
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
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Oh gosh. I'm here just because I'm appalled that I've not updated you for so long. And I'm here since we spent this morning mixing concrete and although I have tons to do I need a break. And although the sun went, blessedly, behind a cloud this morning so we laboured in coolth, we were a bit morning after the night before.
Last night was my Line-Dance group's 4th July picnic. We arrived late, as per, (yesterday was stone picking and earth-moving where the roofer's Caterpillar had left grooves in the grass, it was in the shade so we did it in preference to laying concrete, then we needed showers, we couldn't have got there any sooner...). We staggered in with the Lakeland picnic bag and a Lidl carrier bag full of burgers, coleslaw, fruit salad and beer. Why does one hugely over-cater for picnics and barbeques? Somehow, in between 'Doctor, Doctor', 'Red Hot Rock 'n' Roller' and 'Beer for my Horses' I managed to eat some of it and drink a bottle of wine.
Not wise.
P, given the simple task of taking a few pics, was either outside at the picnic tables in the cool evening air, supping ale, or inside, with his back firmly to the action, (my best exposition of 'Chill Factor') and the camera switched off, nattering to Chris Wild about restaurants. Oh well.
The week has been busy with end-of-term French lessons preceded by French lunches, seriously interfering with our preparations for the Wedding, or, more importantly, the Visitation afterwards of the wedded pair, enfant, other in-laws, before which I have a flurry of cooking and cleaning tasks to complete. I am now working to a time-table for a 16- day countdown. But with a clear week ahead, I now think we'll make it. After all, I've had my outfit ready for 2 months.
Speak soon...
Last night was my Line-Dance group's 4th July picnic. We arrived late, as per, (yesterday was stone picking and earth-moving where the roofer's Caterpillar had left grooves in the grass, it was in the shade so we did it in preference to laying concrete, then we needed showers, we couldn't have got there any sooner...). We staggered in with the Lakeland picnic bag and a Lidl carrier bag full of burgers, coleslaw, fruit salad and beer. Why does one hugely over-cater for picnics and barbeques? Somehow, in between 'Doctor, Doctor', 'Red Hot Rock 'n' Roller' and 'Beer for my Horses' I managed to eat some of it and drink a bottle of wine.
Not wise.
P, given the simple task of taking a few pics, was either outside at the picnic tables in the cool evening air, supping ale, or inside, with his back firmly to the action, (my best exposition of 'Chill Factor') and the camera switched off, nattering to Chris Wild about restaurants. Oh well.
The week has been busy with end-of-term French lessons preceded by French lunches, seriously interfering with our preparations for the Wedding, or, more importantly, the Visitation afterwards of the wedded pair, enfant, other in-laws, before which I have a flurry of cooking and cleaning tasks to complete. I am now working to a time-table for a 16- day countdown. But with a clear week ahead, I now think we'll make it.
Speak soon...
Monday, 28 April 2008
Jardinage and Lunatics
Today is St Valérie's day and the moon is in its last quarter, details highly significant to the French gardener, who is guided by the Calendar when deciding which job to do.
On April 23rd, large signs appeared in hardware stores and Horticulturalists, (unaccompanied, sadly, by the Union Flag,):-
'St George's, C'est le moment de planter!'
No matter that it had, until last week, rained solidly for 6 weeks after a fine and spring-like February. No matter that the soil is cold and so waterlogged that it mustn't be trodden on. Overnight, out of the shop went the wood-burners, log-baskets, bird-feeders, chestnut-roasters and wood-pile tarpaulins, in have come barbeques, sun-loungers, parasols and racks upon racks of bedding plants, herbs, vegetable plants, tubs full of olive trees, rose bushes and oleanders.
We are saved from the immediate injunction to plant, by the phase of the moon, however. While the moon is waning, one should mow, prune, strim and dig. The weak gravitational pull of the moon means the water table is lower, sap, despite the Spring, slower to rise. (I have to say, it has taken a pretty strong mug of Ethiopian Roast to get my sap rising today.) So we have more than a week to allow the garden to warm up in the newly-appeared sun, until the moon once more draws up the water table to allow plants to be bedded out, seeds to be sown and for cutting any growing thing to become, suddenly, taboo.
So for St Valérie, my French gardening Almanac exhorts me to fertilise the soil, split perennials, cut shoots from the base of the peach and apricot trees. I can't wait to get some of the lovely plants into pots and tubs, though. Surely the moon will let me do that? A little garden centre nearby that spreads its floor with whatever the wholesale market has had on offer is a Persian carpet at the moment. I want to get some verveine and heliochrysum in some hanging baskets, flaming geraniums and nepeta in two big terracotta pots.
My fingers itch to buy other interesting plants, but we are between gardens at present, my plant garden has been dug out to make a shady patio, pots will have to do. We have designs for a spring garden in front of the house, where the lines of a lovely planned garden can still be seen, despite year's of the former owner's neglect, and months of our builder's depredations.
P has been bringing some much-needed attention to the neglected conifers in the 'Parc', removing 30 foot lengths of bramble and cutting off thigh-thick trunks of ivy. We have yet to work out where 'my' garden is to be, and yet again I think how the one thing I miss of our last home is the garden, and dream of majoram and celendine hanging over a pond, oriental poppies reflected in another, a graceful, arching maple...
But this is such progress, no? I am no longer bewailing the state of our drains, charting the builder's travails with MainLaw's bluddy dog. We have got artisans on site; a Roofer and his mate, (she really is his mate, Laurent and Valérie are husband and wife. As they teeter over our tiles, I pray that they don't Fall Out. boom boom.) We realised that the time had come to admit the roof had to be done when the final guest bedroom, newly decorated, sprung a leak in its ceiling, so now a large green Manitou is parked on the drive. But we can contemplate a time not too far away when no heavy machinery will be trundling in and the drive can be 'done', a decent gate fitted, and we can sit in the garden and drink wine. People here do that sometimes, apparantly.
But this St Valérie, Valérie is not here, rain has kept her & Laurent away from our slippery toiture and us out of the garden. So here I am, blogging, updating my i-pod, topping up the phone and the Tom-Tom in anticipation of a quick trip home to pick up an ebay purchase. We look at the grey clouds scudding in from the Bay of Biscay, hoping for our neighbours' sake that the sun will be out again for le premier mai.
May 1st, carrier of 'bonheur', goodluck, when neighbours and friends give each other bunches of Lily of the Valley. I like to wilfully interpret 'the day for the bringing of good luck' as 'let the good times roll'. And if the sun re-appears, they will. Roll, I mean. Our neighbours, the Lespines, up at Montaillac, are opening their chai and winery to the public for the day. The real purpose is the launch of their daughter's business selling rare plants. Oh dear, my fingers will be itching again.
Eating and drinking will naturally be part of this, tables will be set before their stunning view of the bowl of vineyards that curve up to Bernac, 10 of us will be there - IF the weather improves.
If it does, I'll take some piccies and put them here. The moon is due to rise at 4.31 that morning. As it sets at seven minutes past four in the afternoon, we'll be rolling back, full of soup and duck, not TOO much of their tasty wine, carrying pots of rare plants and then we'll be waiting for 10th of May when the waxing moon will allow us to plant them.
(Ste Solange's day, in case you were wondering.)
On April 23rd, large signs appeared in hardware stores and Horticulturalists, (unaccompanied, sadly, by the Union Flag,):-
'St George's, C'est le moment de planter!'
No matter that it had, until last week, rained solidly for 6 weeks after a fine and spring-like February. No matter that the soil is cold and so waterlogged that it mustn't be trodden on. Overnight, out of the shop went the wood-burners, log-baskets, bird-feeders, chestnut-roasters and wood-pile tarpaulins, in have come barbeques, sun-loungers, parasols and racks upon racks of bedding plants, herbs, vegetable plants, tubs full of olive trees, rose bushes and oleanders.
We are saved from the immediate injunction to plant, by the phase of the moon, however. While the moon is waning, one should mow, prune, strim and dig. The weak gravitational pull of the moon means the water table is lower, sap, despite the Spring, slower to rise. (I have to say, it has taken a pretty strong mug of Ethiopian Roast to get my sap rising today.) So we have more than a week to allow the garden to warm up in the newly-appeared sun, until the moon once more draws up the water table to allow plants to be bedded out, seeds to be sown and for cutting any growing thing to become, suddenly, taboo.
So for St Valérie, my French gardening Almanac exhorts me to fertilise the soil, split perennials, cut shoots from the base of the peach and apricot trees. I can't wait to get some of the lovely plants into pots and tubs, though. Surely the moon will let me do that? A little garden centre nearby that spreads its floor with whatever the wholesale market has had on offer is a Persian carpet at the moment. I want to get some verveine and heliochrysum in some hanging baskets, flaming geraniums and nepeta in two big terracotta pots.
My fingers itch to buy other interesting plants, but we are between gardens at present, my plant garden has been dug out to make a shady patio, pots will have to do. We have designs for a spring garden in front of the house, where the lines of a lovely planned garden can still be seen, despite year's of the former owner's neglect, and months of our builder's depredations.
P has been bringing some much-needed attention to the neglected conifers in the 'Parc', removing 30 foot lengths of bramble and cutting off thigh-thick trunks of ivy. We have yet to work out where 'my' garden is to be, and yet again I think how the one thing I miss of our last home is the garden, and dream of majoram and celendine hanging over a pond, oriental poppies reflected in another, a graceful, arching maple...
But this is such progress, no? I am no longer bewailing the state of our drains, charting the builder's travails with MainLaw's bluddy dog. We have got artisans on site; a Roofer and his mate, (she really is his mate, Laurent and Valérie are husband and wife. As they teeter over our tiles, I pray that they don't Fall Out. boom boom.) We realised that the time had come to admit the roof had to be done when the final guest bedroom, newly decorated, sprung a leak in its ceiling, so now a large green Manitou is parked on the drive. But we can contemplate a time not too far away when no heavy machinery will be trundling in and the drive can be 'done', a decent gate fitted, and we can sit in the garden and drink wine. People here do that sometimes, apparantly.
But this St Valérie, Valérie is not here, rain has kept her & Laurent away from our slippery toiture and us out of the garden. So here I am, blogging, updating my i-pod, topping up the phone and the Tom-Tom in anticipation of a quick trip home to pick up an ebay purchase. We look at the grey clouds scudding in from the Bay of Biscay, hoping for our neighbours' sake that the sun will be out again for le premier mai.
May 1st, carrier of 'bonheur', goodluck, when neighbours and friends give each other bunches of Lily of the Valley. I like to wilfully interpret 'the day for the bringing of good luck' as 'let the good times roll'. And if the sun re-appears, they will. Roll, I mean. Our neighbours, the Lespines, up at Montaillac, are opening their chai and winery to the public for the day. The real purpose is the launch of their daughter's business selling rare plants. Oh dear, my fingers will be itching again.
Eating and drinking will naturally be part of this, tables will be set before their stunning view of the bowl of vineyards that curve up to Bernac, 10 of us will be there - IF the weather improves.
If it does, I'll take some piccies and put them here. The moon is due to rise at 4.31 that morning. As it sets at seven minutes past four in the afternoon, we'll be rolling back, full of soup and duck, not TOO much of their tasty wine, carrying pots of rare plants and then we'll be waiting for 10th of May when the waxing moon will allow us to plant them.
(Ste Solange's day, in case you were wondering.)
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Oh Gawd
Is it really October when I last Posted?!?
Since then I have been 6o, had a big do in UK, done Christmas, gone back home for Granddaughter's 1st birthday, been poorly, gone skiing with friends in Pyrenees, & now our daughter & son-in-law are here for her birthday. The sun is shining, snowdrops, violets & early narcissi are out & birds are collecting nesting material. We are about to go for the walk round the block, (see pics.)
Speak later, I'm bound to have time some day, if only I could wean myself from The Archers (BBC) Message Board.
Since then I have been 6o, had a big do in UK, done Christmas, gone back home for Granddaughter's 1st birthday, been poorly, gone skiing with friends in Pyrenees, & now our daughter & son-in-law are here for her birthday. The sun is shining, snowdrops, violets & early narcissi are out & birds are collecting nesting material. We are about to go for the walk round the block, (see pics.)
Speak later, I'm bound to have time some day, if only I could wean myself from The Archers (BBC) Message Board.
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