Fine one I am, as a resolution-keeper. (And I'm back on the cheese and butter too. DoH)
But as most of you know, my Father-in-Law died in May, and preceding months were even more bound up with appointments and hospitals.
Since this is blog not diary, and aims to give a flavour of HOW life is for a British person in France, I shan't go into detail. But what made the whole thing harder was not, as you might expect, language problems, leading to misunderstandings, the fear of errors, but a cultural difference which we have only realised after talking to French people since May.

Doctors in France will tell you only what they think you should? want to? hear. We assumed that as in Britain, that if you ask a question it will be honestly answered. Then one can proceed, have the conversations one needs to have, make the arrangements necessary. I have no idea whether it is a lasting paternalistic attitude, or whether it's a sort of Japanese thing of fearing that causing distress is rude, but we were as good as lied to on several occasions, which of course, caused us far more distress both before and since his death.
Discovering from an Insurance agent and a Bricolage employee (odd who we have conversations with!) that this is the French way has been a relief and release.

Through it all, we have had the most fantastic weather! A beautiful Spring from mid-March, although a worrying drought through June, then, just as all the holidaymakers came in July, blessed downpours! Saved our runner beans but I felt so sorry for campers.

And now, phew, following a storm, the temperature has dropped infinitesimally below 20ºC, our Max/Min thermometer now has a 25º difference from the 47ºC it showed one day (mind you it was in full sun and Paul says that doesn't count,) and the 20ºC it is now. At night it was 35º but for the first time in over a week, sleeping is possible again. No more 2.00 am viewings of The Wire or the Beiderbecke Trilogy, although we are still kept up til midnight, irresistibly transfixed for the second time by Forbrydelsen, even though we know whodunit!
Fortunately it has only been that week that was so unbearably hot and humid, with hornets putting our fig trees out of bounds and the house filling with drosophila. (Which always make us think of Mary F and her strange previous employment; sexing fruit flies. < waves to Mary > ) The little critters are drawn into the dark cool of the shut house by a big dish full of melons and pears from the garden.
The previous wealth of peaches and nectarines and blackberries are filling the freezer, fattened by July rains, but Tuesday's storm will have had the local vignerons quaking; their harvest, the vendage, is so close, earlier than usual because of the months of fine weather. The last thing they and their crop need is rain. Sappy, swollen grapes, split and breeding botrytis overnight, will not make good wine. (Only the local Monbazaillac grape is harvested late, often after the first frosts, shrunken and slightly mouldy.) A neighbour - anyone within a 3km radius is un voisin - Jackie Chater, is crossing her fingers, legs and toes at Domaine Chater, and so are we; we love their wines and admire their efforts which are successfully transforming a Vin du Pays vineyard into a world-class organic medal-winner.

That end-of-summer feel.
Still quiet - school has not started yet so no school bus rumbles past the bottom of the drive at 8.05.
Still August, so many artisans are still at Arcachon or Argeles, their busy buzzy white vans parked in their yards.
The last Soumensac picnic market is on Sunday.
In the garden, an empty swing sways to and fro in the breeze stirring the chestnut tree. Straw beach mats flap from the loungers higgledy-piggledy on the lawn, next to a little tipped-over red chair. The large ring left on the lawn by the paddling pool is greening over, and we are left with the ghosts of visitors' lively presences. Footprints dent rapidly across the lawn, calls ring through the house, giggles wreath through the trees and bring back all the other people who have arrived and departed from here. A red squirrel pounces across the grass, another blue morning flower opens.

Oh dear, Charles tells me there have been only 2 sightings of the Round Robin this year, so the pressure is on to make it 3 before the year is out.

I do confess to a certain lassitude and ennui this year and can only apologise.
Being sent for those health checks in June was a real jolt, a reminder that I was not, after all, immortal, that the natural order of things that we have expected all year, could, conceivably, be challenged. But we're OK at the moment, and father-in-law is still here, despite everything the doctors said in January. Neither the heart failure nor the aggressive medication have taken their toll on his existence, despite several bad falls when his heart stops, and his insistence on continuing to enjoy the odd glass of wine.
But we cannot leave the house for more than half a day, and the strain of waiting for the inevitable tells. It is particularly hard for Paul, who goes in first each morning.

So we have been so grateful to those who have been to see us this year, especially as family visits were fewer, due to Kerry's pregnancy and Emma's work, - her summer season at Beaulieu was successfully busy. Then there has been the relief of finally making some good friends here and enjoying the yea-ha dance classes and Randonneurs walks, on which talk always, but always turns to food. Such things have been so important for feeling less isolated, as early August was when our last visitors came.
I should then have written about the stunning autumn, (please note folks, September and October are the best months to visit unless you are intent on baking in temperatures of over 90 degrees or on dining at Soumensac, otherwise, May,) I could have written about the mostly excellent French Health Service, but was not sure if you'd really be interested nor if I wouldn't be mis-interpreted as saying 'it's all so-o-o much better here, as happened on another forum.
And I might have covered a couple of extraordinary French lessons at the start of the new term, where I encountered for the first time, the kind of British person I have been told have migrated here, whose conversation begins,
"How England has changed..." and who proceed to voice such stunningly awful generalisations and stereotypes that my jaw dropped, - it did do wonders for my fluency, but I don't think I made any new friends.

And now our plans for the coming months, because of our situation, all seem to be directed towards preparing this house for sale. And then what? It's not that we have become disenchanted with France. How can one be disenchanted with a place where you can eat outside all summer, drive for miles on good roads that are almost empty and walk wherever you please, see the Milky Way and sleep in perfect darkness and silence, hibernate with a woodburner, chestnuts and good local wine? Somewhere where the seasons still give rhythm to life, views can be endless, where your car can gain new dents every time you have parked at the Supermarket and where you can go out to post some cards for 3 January birthdays and go to the bank, (all shops and services have been open since Monday,) and come back with a bag full of oysters and a Galette du Roi for less that 10 euros? It's just that this year has been so without focus, except framed by medical appointments for Des, that we wonder where are goals are now, what we will plan for the New Year.

The best bit of the year came right at the end, when we were able to return to Britain for the birth of our second grandchild, Reuben John, who arrived the night after my birthday. So now I am hoping my birthday might be forgotten so I can remain sixtyumptyoo until I receive my telegram.

So, right, a resolution, I'll blog again soon, with a more amusing theme.
A very happy, peaceful and fulfilling New Year to you all, full of love for you and all your families.

Bob and Bordeaux.

Well, yesterday was just like being on holiday in France!

For a start, the sun was shining, (rather too much acksherley as it was over 30º), something it hasn't done much of through May and June while we collected all your rain.
Then we had a Whole Day to Do What We Liked, not had many of them lately either.
And, THen, we sat outside a café and had a beer, then we got on a tram and then we saw Bob Dylan's 'Never-Ending Tour'!

Buying the tickets in April was the first mini-adventure, as the fnac website that details all tours and concerts in France was having problems with its new booking system, so I had to get on the phone, especially as I feared I had already bought 2 tickets twice over on the misbehaving site, and they weren't cheap. There was the usual menu hierarchy to negotiate, press one for information about this... 2 for that... 3 for the other... 4 to query a booking, 5 to make a booking, (Hooray), then, oh botheration, 1 for one sort of booking, 2 for another, 6 to speak to a person who might give-a-damn...

I explain and ask to book, a question rattles back, I ask for consideration and slo-o-owness and am asked, with a barely suppressed sigh, if I'd like to speak 'wiz my colleague Alex who spik English'
Galling.
Especially as Alex and I start in French, and pretty well continue in it until I have got my tickets, so I managed, all it took was a bloke with a bit of patience, who actually wanted over 100€'s worth of my custom. Their safe arrival by registered post a few days was the sign of success.

When you book up for these things months in advance, one shows such a faith, faith in life goes on, in nothing changes, in things will turn out, in Che sera, sera- but I expect it sera what I expect it to be. But Tuesday 29th of June turned out to have my father-in-law in hospital yet again and me just out, after a routine operation- examination.
But a couple of days not doing too much for me, an earlier-than-usual visit to him with a supply of underpinnings essential to his comfort on release, (today) and the rest of the day was ours, all ours! Polly and Nige arrived mid-afternoon and we drove off to Bordeaux.

We have been fussing for a fortnight over this, who would have the dubious pleasure of driving into B and where was this Meriadeck Patinoire anyway and where would we park and should we take a picnic? We are such bumpkins these days, so used to Restaurants taking last orders at 1.00pm and shutting at 2.00pm and not opening again until 7.30, we forgot that in the city things were different and getting a little sustaining something with a glass of vino before 7.00pm would not have been hard!
Paul drove, straight to our favourite car park, ie the one that opened up under our wheels on our very first scary drive into Bordeaux over 6 years ago and that we have used ever since. (Safe, clean, cheap and just, - there,- as you drive along the stupendous waterfront, now a World Heritage site, under the beautiful Bourse building and forecourt. Imagine being able to park under Somerset House on the Embankment easily, for 8 hours, for a few quids.)

A glass elevator lifted us in front of the Bourse, just outside a bar with umbrellas, so we headed for it, each muttering 'level -4, emplacement 031' in the hopes that between us we'd remember where the car was at midnight. A couple of mellowing beers and we were ready for our picnic so we crossed over two tramlines and the road, to the promenade beside the majestic Garonne. There were gardens, with seats, a huge stone clad platform with 6-inch jets of water making an installation on which people paddled happily and strolled through coolly with no elfin safety nonsense and no-one falling over, and lots of vari-coloured plastic cows with fancy titles which are another installation. We picnicked as post-work joggers beat time to their i-pods in the heat.

Right, time to get to Bob. Polly knew how to use the gleaming, purring trams that jingle their way like mini, and slower, bullet-trains around Bordeaux's cobbled streets and eighteenth century buildings. It's that 'buy a ticket outside, use it within a specified time and validate it when you get on', thing, like Italian trains, that I wasn't sure about. But it all worked and Paul and I are tram converts. We got off too soon but found Bob by following 2 people, then 22, then 222 and suddenly there were 2,000 of us waiting to go in.
Biggish place, the Bordeaux skating rink, not an intimate venue, but it held only, maybe, 12, 000? and unfortunately there was no ice, no air conditioning and a lot of hot people. But Bob didn't keep us waiting and there he was; for the third time in my life I've been in the same space as Dylan.
It was a bit 'spot that tune', - the acoustics were not top notch and of course he refuses to play the old stuff in the old way, but by catching the odd line of dialogue we knew we knew quite a lot of the set, Masters of War unrecognisable as heavy metal, Just like a Woman and Rolling Stone really rocked up and no trace of the schmoozy jazzy Cajun vibe (sorry,) of the latest album. Superb band, no flashy laser lights..
The place emptied in civilised fashion, we got on the first tram that arrived and were back on the waterfront at 11.30, strolling along with the crowds.

Here in the Ruralité lights-out is before midnight, the Milky Way glows over the fields and silence reigns. The happy crowds strolling through Bordeaux's warm midnight streets were almost a culture shock. No drunkenness, no swearing, no threat. The children and mothers paddling on the platform were replaced by singing eighteen-year-olds celebrating the end of their Baccalaureate. The café tables were full of smiling chattering couples and groups. I suppose we were older than most - Bordeaux is a big student city - but all generations were there, having a great time together. I would happily walk round this city after dark on my own.

So there we are, my holiday-in-a-day.
This next blog was going to be about the remarkable French Health Service, and why our intimate knowledge of it has led to there still being cardboard on our stairs, but Bordeaux was so much more fun. Meet you there sometime.

Why am I sitting at the keyboard when I should be out putting the Acanthus Mollis in the perennial bed, finish planting the last seeds, popping a few lettuce in where the butternut squashes will be?

Cos it is RAIning and blowing a GAle and beLOW 10 degrees See that is why.
Will someone remind me why we came to France?
Do I blame the volcano?
Or the interminable winter when the sun disappeared in early December and, apart from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when we weren't here, didn't re-appear until mid-March, around the same time that the North wind set in?
I am not moaning, really, as hibernating like the French can be pleasurable. Light the woodburner, make soup, listen to wall-to-wall Radio 4 - or 6Music when it's the Afternoon Play or the journos get too excited about the Election...
But it is a too-sudden return to enclosure just as all the Events started, the interesting and varied DIY entertainments that are crammed into the 4 fine-weather months.

We kicked off with the first Soirée of the year held by the Aquitaine French/English cultural social group. Bring and share food and wine and dance from 7.00 til 11.00pm. The dances are Line Dances, (my how the French love 'Danse Country', they dress up and everything,) but the music is jiveable, jiggable, twistable, so around the edges of ragged, hopping lines, peeps do their own thing, happily colliding as lines suddenly grapevine into them.

The next day, getting up and down the stairs, (still cardboarded, another story I may get to,) was a tad difficult, but off we went to the French Vignerons who are Easterly neighbours, for their open day.
1st of May, le premier Mai, Porte du Bonheur, when men give their ladies Lily of the Valley and the good weather switches on.
Well it sort of did, bright and breezy, cool after a summery week. We didn't join the dozens eating at long tables in the vines, but looked at all the craft stalls and bought the aforementioned acanthus, or Bear's Breeches, and a hawthorn called Paul's Scarlet, then back for a cuppa before setting off West for our English Vigneron neighbours at Domaine Chater, (google 'em,) for a Quiz Night.
Les Quizerables, as our team are known were miffed not to win as
a) we often do, and
b) the prize was a crate of the Chater's best wines.

The following day, a Vide-Grenier, literally 'Empty Attic' in English, a Car Boot, at Soumensac, but rain chilled our enthusiasm for abandoned household effects and rusting farm tools and we set off for a drive, in the vague hope of finding a beer. but it being Sunday, Lot-et-Garonne was shut. It's the children that mystify us, how do the French keep their children shut up all day? Why are there no 12 year-olds riding around in decreasing circles on bikes? Where are the little ones playing on the garish plastic swings that litter gardens? How do les Ados get together for a whine, a whizz about on those annoying mopeds and a crafty smoke?.
The next Vide-G is next Sunday, at Agnac, after a Saturday Fete Day of walks, boules and cyclo-cross and a lot of eating and drinking; I hope it gets fine for them

Right, Eddie Mair is on and he is my signal to cook dinner, (6.00pm here,) so I'll post this - the cardboard on the stairs saga will have to wait.

House, Garden, Family, Oct 09 (32 photos), by ann tarrant

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A couple of years back, Uncle Arthur's house-hunting friends came looking in a rainy autumn week, like this one is turning out to be. They dismissed Aquitaine as grey, flat, featureless. They hated it, they said and wondered how anyone could live in such a 'desolate' place. It reminded me of how I felt once on a drive through the muddy fields of Picardy on a rainy day, and felt sorry for them, as the land had hidden itself until they had gone.
It is such a subtle landscape, huge and rolling, from the River Isle in the North to the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic to the Massif Centrale; its waves of hill and woodland need a teasing oblique light to show it off. The flat white heat of summer and the bleached out grey of winter rain often hides it from the brief visitor. It needs the nacreous light of spring when sunlight filters through the evaporating winter wet, or the Monbazaillac wine light of autumn to bring out the clear views across miles of rolling blue hills, fields and woods.

Once again we have had a stunning autumn. During a September heatwave, trees and vines faded and turned until a sudden surprise frost in early October tripped the change. Sumac, maples and poplars have blazed a trail across the countryside, chequered every so often by mottled rows of vines. The typical Lot et Garonne stone houses, longères, lie baked about the land like baguettes and in their gardens ornamental trees like liquiambers and kaki, (persimmons) entrance us. The sleepy green rivers have cleared to a black shine.

It is all so familiar now, after almost 6 years. Familiar, yet still difficult. Communication, for example.
Not so much the speaking with, although I shall never master the bavardage, I fear. But when I walk each week with the Randonneurs, I can at least follow the ripple of chatter that flitters from subject to subject and always comes back to food - how to cook a potimarron, one's favourite bit of a duck, which mushrooms are best to pick and fry. As Pierrette stoops to pick and eat a fallen medlar, Marie Claire injects one of her attempts to raise people's political consciousness. Last week her message was again environmental, the disappearance of bees, the use of pesticides on our food. Lips are pursed, heads shaken and it is not just Janine, an organic Vigneron, who murmurs concern and agreement.
Fast food is bemoaned, and obese grandchildren who sit in front of computers, (ahem), who text as grandpa is talking to them... I am asked if it is true that some British children eat school lunch in a PUB?!?
I try to explain about costs, the defunct school meals service, parents who have not learned how to cook... Yes, they sigh, it is going that way here too. People no longer know how cheese should taste, they buy the plastic-wrapped stuff in the Supermarché.. .

We pass some sloes and I explain how to make sloe gin. I am quizzed minutely, how much sugar? How long do you leave it? Why do you wait for a frost before you pick them? There is some scepticism as gin is not often drunk here. But they love their prunes in Armagnac, figs in cognac.
So the following week, as we meet at Monteton for a lovely walk around its ancient church on a hill top, through prune orchards, and since we park in an idyllic spot overlooking the Dropt valley, I produce a picnic. - Home-made-ginger-biscuits-thank-you-Delia, and a bottle of sloe gin from 2007. I am deluged with requests for both recipes, Rule Britannia.

Other communications are more fraught. The letters that arrive demanding access to inspect things. - fosse, meters, overhanging trees. Are they requests? Demands? Orders? Are we in trouble? Can I sort out the ne-que and aucuns and malgrés and donts (so many meanings, that 'dont') to decide? Is it in the imperative or do I spot a softer subjunctive mood? The signing off is no more helpful, with its flowery sentiments:

Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, Madame, l'assurance de mes salutations distinguées,
or, Je vous prier d'agréer mes sentiments respecteaux.. Yes, yes, what's wrong with Yours Sincerely?

and this ps. from the EDF meter reader:
Information for happy, fortunate dog-owners:
Your companion is most certainly not bad, and as we wish to continue to have good relations with him, we advise you, to cover every eventualitie, to maintain the distance between us during our passage. Thank you for your understanding.

My understanding, shut the dog up.

And the phone! The cold calls from utilities companies that might be an important query; by the time you realise it is not, you're caught. The artisans calling to say the washing machine's ready/ he can't come tomorrow, so when..?/I'm at Sauvetat with your parcel, how do I get chez vous?, all delivered in an elided stream of rapid, strongly accented syllables.
Sometimes, still, I weep, thinking we will never cope, fear making some total error with father-in-law's medical appointments and instructions, or a complete, illegal, misunderstanding about tax. Will we be hauled off to Devil's Island for some bureaucratic misunderstanding?

A little image for you as I sign off to make P a cuppa. Lunchtime last week, a lay-by, a sudden shower. Two lorries, head to tail, one with one of those hydraulic tailgates backed up to the other, a tarpaulin spread from one roof to another, dipped headlights on.
On the tailgate, a table, with tablecloth, around which sat four drivers, one serving up something, one cutting bread, all laughing.
Vive la France.

after a short interval..

Sorry about that.
I meant to write, I really did, all through a glorious early Spring that followed a busy January, but ... I must be on a well-paved path to Hell.
Some people still write to us imagining we are lounging around in perfect sunshine, ignoring the times I tell them how relieved we are that we put in a woodburner two years ago, that many nights in January drop below minus 10, that it can rain from November to January non-stop, and, that in the height of summer we shut the house up tight to keep out the heat and stay in like moles, if we can. Even our friend Ted, who used to take Naturist holidays in Croatia, was beaten indoors by our August sun.
May and June, then September and occasionally October are the lounging months, if we can ignore the ongoing work.
I can, Paul can't.
He is now engaged on the last big decorating job, the 50 foot Salon. He prepares, I will paint, and I look with trepidation at the acreage of wall. A later report may address the vexed question of French paint, (shudders and rolls eyes.)


It's cold today, after temperatures that nearly reached 100 degrees in May. I'm considering putting the duvet back, unheard of in June, and we have to dodge sudden downpours, - yesterday we had hail and a storm, and we picked a sunny interlude on Sunday morning to go and vote.

To be on the Electoral Roll, able to vote in National 'Parliamentary' elections, one has to be a citizen. (Images here of funny red hats, sans culottes and shouts of 'aux armes, citoyens'.) So we can't do that, but we have inscribed to the right to vote in local elections for the Maire and Council and in European elections. We have our 'Pli Electoral', a sort of voting identity card which is stamped each time one votes, so we found them in the filing cabinet, (that was a rare thing, being able to find what we were looking for in the filing cabinet,) and had a good look at the Party 'infos'.

These arrive in the week before the election. The poor post-woman hauls round to every household a bulging A5 brown envelope, stuffed with colourful, thin, re-cyclable papers which carry the information of all the parties, candidates, policy outlines and so on. Either you take a selection with you to the Polling Station, or you can collect a handful there. The shots of Sarkhozy on BBC news showed him collecting his handful. He seemed to be looking, puzzled, for his UMP leaflet; I wondered for a moment if some wag had hidden them.
Therefore, you walk into the booth with a handful of confetti and no-one knows which one you are going to use. For it is by selecting one sheet and putting it in the provided brown envelope that you register your vote.
No need to put a cross, a tick or press a chad while wondering if you've remembered a candidate's name and logo correctly or whether you have inadvertantly voted for the Monster Raving Teddy Bear's Anti-European Libertarian Front - yes they have a fair few of these in France too. Pop in the paper, discard the rest with the heap in the booth which the Officer is supposed to have removed but hasn't, happily a lot were Front Nationale, go to the box, pop in your brown envelope, sign your name et voilà, civic duty done.
And, had I chosen to, I could have taken with me a slip of blank white paper and put that in, to register one of many 'votes blanches', which are counted and declared.

The Maire then shook our hands and thanked us for exercising 'le droit et le devoir' - the right and the duty, and off we went with an au revoir.

Back then to an afternoon lounging watching the rain, fretting about the seedlings I want to plant out, the pots I want to re-arrange on the new courtyard... Oh well, I won't need to water them.
Speak soon.
At least, I intend to...