I have just contemplated taking a picture of a neatly folded blue towel with a nicely-embossed Floris soap (Syringa) sitting on it, that has been resting  in the downstairs bathroom in case the daily visiting nurse wanted to wash his/her hands. Following Vik's example from 2011, I have been trying to take a photograph for every day of the year, and during this grey rainy January, with Paul in hospital for a minor operation for a few days, and recuperating with his bandaged foot up for many days after, it has been quite a challenge. Unable to ski, walk, nor until the last week, quiz, skittle or visit, I have wondered which rain-soaked part of the garden to take each day. Once I was reduced to taking a lovely cauliflower that I had bought on Miramont market on a freezing Monday and now, nearly, to capturing a bar of soap for posterity.

The no washing thing has bothered me a bit. Each day the nurse would dash in, take from a box that we had to pick up from the Pharmacie a syringe and jab it into Paul's abdomen, say something cheery and dash off. I had to not imagine them coming from dressing post-operative wounds, from infectious children, from .. oh well you get my squeamish drift. At least I knew P was clean, so the next patient should have few worries.
The hospital wards were very clean. Patients have a single or double room with a scrubbed bathroom. All is cleaned twice a day. Nurses, orderlies, Doctors all look steam-cleaned. But downstairs the public loo leaves a lot to be desired. Soap, for a start. And although clean in the mornings it was more like the British image of a French loo by the afternoon. As I came out I eyed the suggestion box in the foyer, wondered if my French was sufficient to make clear the point that most hospital infections are brought in by visitors, and how such criticism from a Brittanique would be viewed,as infection rates in France are way below those in the UK.

 And the hospital care was excellent. Staffing levels seem high and everyone was kind and helpful. Our experience of several hospitals, large ones in Bordeaux and little local ones, while P's Dad was with us and needing much care, left us with a confidence that all staff, from cleaner to Intern respected and empathised with the elderly. Not sure about the top bods - (do they empathise with anyone, or are we all just interesting cases to them?)- but then they don't do any hands-on caring so it can't be judged.
The French system, a mixture of state funding and private insurance seems to work well. And all emergency, life endangering conditions are treated and medicated 100% by state funding, so no-one unable to afford the top-up insurance need fear for their family's health. A lot of employers will fund their employees' insurance too.

So, today's photograph. Suggestions please, in the suggestion box.

Reveillon

On the last day of the year, Paul braves the supermarket. All we needed was milk and some mushrooms, but half of Aquitaine needed oysters, langoustines, crab, champagne or Cremant and Galette du Rois for their Reveillon celebrations. He queues for 25 minutes in the 10 or less (ha! Pet Hate, misuse of Less) line, amusing himself with the altercations between those who arrive with fewer than 10 things and those waiting with 12+ items. The latter never leave the line, but allow the former to join in front of them, so Paul finds himself further back in the queue.

The Galette du Rois is a rather yummy frangipane-filled pastry containing a 'bean' which should be a china King, shepherd, Babe etc, which should be eaten warily for fear of breaking a tooth or swallowing the thing, for which, the reward, a golden cardboard crown, is not much recompense. On Christmas Eve we made sure the 5-year-old got it. But it was a religion-free Galette and being into religion at the moment she was unimpressed by both the china bag of rice and the crown. We didn't get another one yesterday - just the milk, as our menu for Reveillon was sorted and unlike our Christmas feast did not include the traditional French food of shellfish.

Later we sat around the dying fire, silly string dangling from elbows and earrings, champagne, unwanted at
one am, fizzing ignored in half-full glasses, when Chris started.
"Alright then, what resolutions has everyone made?" - One of his innocent questions dropped into a group with the hope that someone reveals something inadvertently. His face bland, eyes innocently quizzical. But it is too late to get us stirred up. We have eaten too much drunk too much and two of us can't hear what people are saying and another two being 'strangers at the feast' are not likely to reveal all to the rest of us. The usual 'eat less drink less take more exercise' are avoided but none of us can summon up much wit. I am impressed by Pauline resolving to say 'No' more firmly but nicely. Put on the spot, I say
"Keep up with my blog better"
This is actually a good way to divert Chris from trying to make mischief, as he wants information on blogs, how to start one, who can read them and what they are for.

So here I am, resolute on January 1st 2013. The usual 'eat less drink less walk more' is zizzing in my skull, along with a headache, but there are at least 2 half-full bottles of wine to not waste, it keeps pouring with rain and Chris helped make 2 enormous bowls of delicious tiramisu and half of one of them is sitting in the fridge.
Happy New 2013, Robins, look after yourselves. xx

Roots

As the thermometer climbs, the only thing to do is shut shutters, doors, windows, blinds, while it is still cool in the morning, then either stay in like a mole, or find a pool or river to dip into.
Our collapsible pool awaits erection for the family visit next week, so I'm lurking here, having got too warm just by doing a bit of desultory dusting, bored with waiting for Agents to bring more house-viewers, weary of calculating what we might lose through the French house-price collapse and whether it could possibly balance out so long as the Euro holds up higher than it was in 2004...

The Dog days are difficult, too hot, too long, no dance class, no randonneurs, invites and excursions always involving too much food, too much rosé, so that my Grumpy Old Man mode is ON contemplating no joyous Olympians to watch (nor joyous spectators; how wonderful it was to see British people happy and positive, how I hope that THAT is the Legacy,) deary me, what is the matter with me. Too 'ot, that's what.

Yet after the freeze of February, how glad everyone was to see the sun. Within days of the thaw, several of us were over at Chater's Domaine 'pulling out' the winter prunings from the vines' support wires, in t-shirts. We ate on Jacky Chater's  patio and were given the first bottle drawn from the new barrel (1000s of litres full - barrel not bottle) of Sauvignon Blanc. Returning Cranes, that must have been waiting out the sudden snow and ice on the other side of the Pyrénées, circled with their 'grue grue' cries and we knew Spring had arrived.
 Three weeks later we were back in the vines, as the sap was rising, the wood was suddenly springy and flexible enough to be tied in to the tying- in wire, to guide the one shoot left after pruning. All woven in one direction, it makes a startling pattern in bright new sunshine. Dark gnarled sticks lurching roughly on the same plane but at different angles, thin twigs, light tan, persuaded to lie all pointing to the right along wires that caught the sun with a steel blue shine. Dotted up and down the rows were silhouetted shapes in sun hats chatting to each other and talking persuasively to recalcitrant shoots, hoping none would snap.

These vines are old, some of them, the Merlot, over fifty years from planting. Hardly ever watered they have deep roots, some will have grown a foot a year to the aquifer. When finally grubbed up, the roots stay there. Many vineyards have gone, the poor varieties not needed since the EU stopped subsidising the wine lake.  Sometimes you see twisted heaps of ancient stumps in the corner of fields. Good for barbeques but rarely sold by their canny owners. But Chaters hang on, determined to improve the quality and maintain their organic status. So many jobs have to be done by hand, therefore. Weeding, then pamprage, rubbing out the shoots that emerge low down, then more weeding. This year there isn't enough labour and by the time we are back for the final prune before all the growth is lifted up and away by the lifting wires, leaving the bunches to hang clear in drying air away from fungus lurking on leaves, the growth has gone berserk. February, a stick, by June a mass of lush green, those roots go deep. I struggle to find the head of the stock to trim away all but the most fruitful shoots. Sorting out the non productive shoots, feet long now, from the grape-bearers, is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle in a bag. Others are quicker than I, but Roy Chater showed me how to do it and he is more meticulous than some so I am too. We work on methodically and looking back down a row, it is very satisfying to see very clearly where you've been. But we don't get it all done in time.

Just as the Spring was turning to Summer here,we packed the car with too much stuff and the twin essentials of fishing gear and wine and headed for Ireland, Wales and Somerset. (If you ever get a chance to do the ferry trip from Rosscoff to Rosslare with Irish Ferries I can recommend it.) It poured, of course, but there were some days we will remember and feel privileged to have shared. In Ireland we stayed with friends near Durrow. We had never heard of this charming elegant town on the river Erkina (nope, me neither..) but the sun shone and we were treated to a walk above their house through pastures farmed by the family for at least 2 generations. He had gone back to his roots, allowed by Irish planning law to build on his family's land as was his brother, having previously worked and lived 'all over'. Although the children are still in the UK he says he won't move. From the top of the hill we looked across hay scented meadows to mountains, Slieve Bloom, further Silvermines, the chosen house below in its spotless garden, what a treat to be given a window on their beautiful world.
Then another visit to friends in the Brecons. Another haven, beside the River Usk, the roots this time those of her parents. Altering the old parental home had been an interesting labour, documented with illustrations in Christmas missives. It was super to visit, like being able to go somewhere you had read about in a book and finding it just as you expected only more so. Again we were treated to walks; beside the Usk then up in the hills to an ancient earthwork, again with heart-aching views, of Langorse lake and Pen Y Fan and the sweep of the Usk valley. This time, rain threatened us, so it was stride back down again and off on those horrendous M-roads that swept us over the Severn and on to Somerset and family.
There is something about those blue-green spaces, seen from up high so the air seems to sing and men's fussy scurryings seem not to exist, so satisfying yet drawing out such yearning - that's when I know my soul is British!

Yes, we have put down roots here. Of course. 8 years. A foot a year is deep. Good friends, familiar landscapes, a language no longer so incomprehensible (even though it still is, in my mouth!), routines and occasions we enjoy. But now we have decided to leave and taken action to do so I am impatient to be gone.

tant pis

Serve me right for being so slow about posting.
Google have laid hands on me blog and it has just taken nearly an hour to find my way onto my own page. Accompanied by the whole of Kate Bush's Sensual World - it helped to keep me calm, anyway.  So now, there is no time to post! The promised 'Roots' blog will arrive another day, for now, other jobs call.

Hibernation

We have to get out of the house soon as we have run out of bird food. They now have a diet of suet, porridge and emmental. I knew that cheese would come in handy for something other than the couple of ounces required by my tartiflette recipe.

On Sunday morning, after a week of bitter east winds, we woke to a blanket of snow beyond the bedroom's French window, and driving snow. The weather has been like this before; in February 2004 we just made it to the airport for a trip back to the UK to pick up the car. Gendarmes accompanied a convoy of traffic up and down the several hills on the Bergerac road, past abandoned lorries, following the only 'gritter' in the area - two guys on the back of a flatbed truck shovelling gravel and earth onto the road, which sank uselessly into several centimeters of snow.
As we sat in the airport, 4 hours before the flight was due, we watched the snow melt before our eyes. The plane left at 4.30 and friends told us later the snow had all disappeared by the evening.

Not this time. Now, on Wednesday morning, the snow is still thick in the garden. A mixture of icing sugar and glitter, it is no good even for making a snowman. I tried, at the top corner of the garden, overlooking the road to the outside world, to make un homme du neige, (just doesn't have the same cosy ring to it, does it?) perhaps waving for help? perhaps signalling 'cheers' with a cup of tea? but the snow crumbled to sparkly fragments in my hand. And few would have seen him anyway, for few vehicles have made it along the road.

The French do not handle 'weather' well. Some seem even to consider rain to be a dangerous substance. In this area of South West France snow is rare and short-lived - 1999 was the last prolonged fall - so there are few snowploughs or gritters. Being a Continental climate it can get intensely cold in January, particularly overnight, but sharp winters are short-lived and can be followed by good spells. We have often gardened in t-shirts in February. So we all have to shift for ourselves now.

A friend marooned up the road in St Astier has just emailed to report the ridiculous if well-meaning efforts of her Maire to clear his Commune's roads. He drove past her house, where she cannot get up the slope of her drive, in his tractor with a bucket on it. " He had attached the bucket not to the front, where he might have been able to scoop some of the snow from the lane, or push it out of the way, but to the back. So he succeeded only in compressing the snow into a hard-packed glass-like surface." A local farmer has made a run along our road and turned up our lane to free our neighbours at the top. But beyond where he has been the road is still pretty dangerous, crackling and crunching as the occasional car goes by in 2nd gear So for one more day we'll stay put.

I've found suet at the back of the spare fridge, so we've had steak and kiddly pud. I've made tartiflette and cheesy-onion bread and we've had lots of porridge. So running short of potatoes and eggs has not been a problem. By the way, the BBC food site has only 1 recipe for tartiflette and it is incorrect. Sorry, Hairy Bikers, crème fraiche is essential imo, although some French recipes use no cream-based products at all. Double cream belongs in a dauphinoise not a tartiflette.

But though the freeze is forecast to continue we have appointments to keep tomorrow.
Our example will be the French family who do stand up to the weather. Unlike other local farmers who have kept their tractors in their sheds and their feet up by their wood-burners, the folk who work the vineyard opposite work in all weathers. By the next spell of good weather, all the pruning has to have been done, followed by the pulling out of all the pruned growth. Yesterday, un homme dressed in a suit similar to that worn by actors in The Hurt Locker, worked his way up and down the rows with his huge secateurs and working up some warmth yanking out lengths of growth.
And he drove here to do it. My Hero.

Jenga

So we have been playing Jenga with a giant woodpile that was once an American Walnut, Juglans Nigra, 27 years old according to its rings, very tall lumps dropped from it into the lane, it filled the barn's gutters with leaves and rats collected its, to us, inaccessible nuts to hide under our camping equipment in the barn and make nests and eat them. So it had to go.
Michel the Bat Man came last February to fell it and we spent a fine weekend clearing, dragging, sorting and stacking. Now the beautiful pink, salmon and cream wood exposed inside the warty bark has weathered to a silvery slatey blue that would be at home on a Fired Earth paint chart.
I filled the wheelbarrow to take to Paul inside the repaired barn for him to stack. He becomes obsessive, turning logs to find the 'right' one, discarding awkwardly chunky ones and 'can't I bring him more of the long ones at 750 mm?'
I roll my eyes, tell him to follow the stonemason's advice to handle a stone only once; pick it up, find a place for it, don't be so precious about it.
The older pile in the woodshed that we are still using, hence needing to stack newer wood elsewhere, was built, by me, following that principle and has, after all, only suffered 2 small avalanches. But no, I have to go on risking shin and foot and play Jenga with a 5 foot pile.

Admittedly his pile is now a thing of beauty, but I think of the adage about wood warming you 3 times as you cut it, stack it and then burn it.
How about cutting - barrowing - stacking - moving stack again - arguing about it (very warming,) - lugging it indoors in a log basket - burning it...
I make that at least 7.

The other calorie-burner we've been experiencing is the tandem he's just bought.
Oh dear.
Terrifying.
Particularly going downhill when I feel my lack of control most acutely.
Until the saddle got the better of Paul, we did manage half an hour on it the day before yesterday and Christophe the carpenter shot past us in his pickup with a great deal of horn-blaring and waving and swerving.
Terrifying.
We were going to get on it again this afternoon, Sundays being as quiet as the Marie Celeste, but it is raining. So I'm going to light the woodburner instead.

And who is Michel the Bat Man you ask? I'm glad you did, it gives me a cliff-hanger for next time....

Le Clos

Hey, it's vendage time again, and the last chance for barbeques, but, do you know what, although I do want to invite pals round for a last go at incinerating Toulouse sossiges and sinking too much local wine, we have discovered a new joy - shutting our gate.

We had new gates (and a new fence and a new drive and a new barn after the 2009 tempête blew it down,) in early 2010, but what with all the to-ing and fro-ing to hospitals etc, we rarely bothered to close the things. But all through the summer we've had unwonted visitors, especially when I am wearing my disgraceful gardening shorts, have just started cooking, while P is either up a ladder or sinking his first pint.

We live just down the lane from a Chambres d'hôtes. To reach it, intrepid Parisian tourists have to brave the neighbour's large greenhouse growing bionic aubergines, no, biological peppers, er, tomatoes bio, ah, got it, - organic veg, then a long chicken run, before finding their pretty but little house. That's if they don't just miss it completely, carry on , run out of road and end up in the woods with their 64 varieties of edible fungus. Neighbour Francis assures me they are there, he's counted, picked and eaten them. I'll take it as given.
So the Parisians tend to drive back down and turn into our place looking somewhat relieved.
And I have to say it is looking much better now Paul has renovated the big barn doors that are the first things you see, with the hollyhocks around them having a second flush. But their faces fall as they spot the shorts, and the wearer directs them back up the lane to the chickens.
The last straw was a woman who actually argued with me (come on, Madam, I would know if I was running a B and B,) then almost demolished one new barn door and was a squeak from hitting my car, as she turned round and drove off.

So since we got back from Corsica in mid-September we have been sporting our oak. For one spell, after Rupert-from-Siddalls came to lunch, we saw no-one for 5 days. It's a nice, safe, closed-in, private, nested feeling. We got loads done; P fixed the 40+ feet of guttering that has been bothering him for ages, I've sadolined some exterior woodwork, gardening has gone on, bread has been made, we had two barbeques just for us and P bought a tandem online.
He clearly feels we're ready for new adventures.