Dear All,
I would like it marked down, in indelible ink, that I am starting this letter on 22nd December, ie BEFORE Christmas. Just in case the postal system lets me down…
Ever the optimist, me. Marek too. I have just been sent up from the treehouse where he was working and I was drinking tea and eating the most delicious waffle-cum-biscuits that are the national food of Holland, accompanied by the encouraging words, ‘You know what you’re like sweetheart, once you get started, it’ll all just flow out.’ Anyone would have thought I was avoiding putting finger to keyboard.
So, I have an hour before I have to go and draw my friend Holly with no clothes on. And very delightful she looks too, draped on cushions for the Life Drawing class to tackle. Or mangle, really. Certainly on my part, although it is alleged that I am getting better – ‘Oh, that’s a person you’ve drawn…
’
So, Life Drawing has been added to the sum of my life since last year. And to both our lives, a selection of assorted fowls, I think the term is. We now have twelve hens, a cockerel (Rudi the Magnificent) and two guinea-fowl that have brains smaller than chickens, which is saying something. Marek fancied guinea-fowl eggs, not that he’d ever tried them, and we ordered three chicks from the Man in the Market, which were to set us back €3 a piece. When I arrived in a bit of a hurry to collect them, the man gave me a look that told me he had forgotten, although he told me that his supplier didn’t have any. OK. Having driven ten miles for nowt, I cast around for inspiration and lo!, my eye fell on a pair of enormous guinea-fowl lying with their legs tied together in the company of an aged countryman (as it turned out, awaiting wringage and pluckage for Christmas). I asked the price, nearly fell over when he said €22 the pair, decided what the hell, it saved me coming back, looked in my purse and found that I only had €20, explained the situation to Man No 1 and was about to reorder the chicks again from him, when he said,’I will give you €2 so that you can buy the others.’ ‘How marvellous you are, Monsieur,’ I cried, accepting his offer tout de suite and proffering the cat basket to receive the trussed pair from Man No 2. Man No 2 looked a bit nonplussed when I asked if they were male or female and shrugged – I suppose one’s sex is irrelevant if one is a guinea-fowl destined for the table. So, we have no idea what they are. Male and female guinea-fowl look exactly the same unless you are an experienced expert. They are also very noisy. In fact, the best way to tell male from female, apparently, is to listen if they go ‘buck-wheat, buck-wheat’ as well as ‘scree-parp-scree-parp-screeeeeeeee’. There is such a cacophony of sound when they both get going that if there is any buck-wheating going on, I can’t hear it. Which would mean they are both male. Not encouraging on the egg front. When we first got them our neighbour thought the noise was Marek trying (unsuccessfully) to start the car. They are the most amazing-looking things, though, and the Creator had either had too much to drink the night before they were designed, or there were a few bits left over from another project that it seemed a shame to throw away. Wrinkly pale blue heads, Mohican hair, eyelashes like Miss World and red-edged flappy bits sticking out of your cheeks is not what you’d call harmonious, especially on top of a body shaped like an army helmet. And yet they are incredibly beautiful! We love them.
The chickens that we’ve had since they were three weeks old think I’m their mother and rush over whenever they see me and then seem to enjoy getting trodden on and squashed under the food bin lid. They are growing at an absurd rate and I think they may be ostriches. They’re outside the front door now, practising grown-up noises that sound like the fox has got them.
Marek has built a wonderful hen-house (known as the Poule House) and everybody goes in and snuggles up together on the perches at night, the little dears. Until the cockerel arrived, I must admit there was a bit of bitchiness going on among the girls. When Rudi was introduced, the two original matriarchs rushed over to peck him into shape, at which he rose up and inflated himself above thm and reduced them to simpering heaps of feathers. They are now besotted with him and peace reigns. Quite what that shows us about male/female relationships, I’m still pondering.
Moving on to farm machinery. Our third tractor caught fire when Marek asked it to do a job way beyond its capabilities. It survived relatively unscathed and we have just sold it, realising that Marek needs a big monster one if he is to continue wanting to push over small trees and tackle the brambles once and for all. We also acquired a piece of land on a ridiculous slope that hasn’t had anything done to it for years (it took us five years to buy it) that probably needs the attention of a bulldozer, but is certainly beyond the scope of a cute little bright orange Someca 450. In fact it’s gone pale tangerine at the very thought. Perhaps he should get an elephant. I have seriously thought about engaging the services of a carthorse to pull logs out of difficult-to-get-at bits of the woods, as we will insist on pretending to be self-sufficient. Or a bullock perhaps. We went to an old-fashioned grape-picking morning in a nearby village where they did everything, for fun, ‘à l’ancienne’, including trampling the grapes in a cart pulled by two of the biggest bullocks I’ve ever seen. The size of rhinoceroses. Not as short-tempered, though. Having downed a breakfast of fried eggs, fried ham and wine (!) prepared at the edge of the vineyard, and then picked a couple of rows of grapes in the pouring rain, we all tramped back to the village hall behind the bullock cart and drank huge quantities of grape juice squashed from the grapes in an ancient press, complete with twigs and leaves and no doubt a few weevils and wigglies. There was country dancing and then an enormous lunch, which we didn’t partake in. We have not yet reached a level of Frenchness where we can withstand eating four-course, three-hour meals at lunch-time awash with red wine. Pathetic.
The treehouse, having been put on hold for a while, as we had run out of money and enthusiasm, is now back on track, with a wood-burning stove to keep it cosy. I have painted upstairs with a wash of half magnolia half water, which gives it a bit of a Scandinavian feel and the windows are a bluey-green. During the storm (or tempest, as the French call it, much more dramatically), in January, the tree that bears most weight of the six holding up the treehouse moved its bracket about 5cms and didn’t straighten up again. This meant that Marek, two tough friends, the jeep, ropes and an army of Acro-props had to shove/winch/jam the tree back up so that three more supports could be put underneath. So it ain’t going nowhere now, which is reassuring to know should you ever want to come and stay in it. The storm was a good test for it, as we had phenomenal winds that laid waste huge tracts of the Landes (next department westwards) which is mostly pine plantations. Something like 60% of the trees came down. A lot of them snapped off and fell every which way, so it has been very difficult and expensive to salvage them. Also, a sudden over-abundance of timber has meant big financial problems for a lot of growers. There were trees down all around here, although, miraculously, hardly any fell on buildings. A lot were right next to houses but somehow fell away from them. A vast 300-year-old cedar, growing about 20 metres from a local small chateau, which would have flattened the building had it fallen on it, fell in the opposite direction. Phew. But then you have to pay someone to come and cut the thing up and take it away. Still, looking on the bright side, lots of free firewood for everyone. Five of our trees fell, by the heat of whose wood we are currently toasting our toes.
During the jazz festival in August we tried our hands at B&B, as there are about a million extra people in the area needing bedding and breakfasting. The jazz goes on for seventeen days and we only had one night with nobody and one night we had nine extra people. I have never washed so many sheets in my life but the sun shone and they dried in minutes, and everyone was delightful, a total of 27 different people in all. They ate their breakfast under a tree in the late morning, having got home at three in the morning after the concerts and snoozed in the afternoons before going and doing it all again. We had three Columbian children with their parents and as luck would have it, we also had six unusually chilled kittens who allowed themselves to be carted about, dressed up, put into boxes, and sat on chairs. A couple from Frankfurt insisted on taking us out for a meal and making us a pie out of our own blackberries and three jolly ladies of a certain age got hopelessly lost on the way home in the middle of the night and arrived in such a state of hysterical giggles that they didn’t get to sleep for hours and then re-lived the hysterical giggles telling me about it the following morning.
I wouldn’t want to do B&B all the time, but a short burst was excellent fun and I suspect that jazz fans tend to be easy people to have around. The house had never been so clean (I normally only do housework when someone’s coming round, but I didn’t want to be thought a complete slob, so I was out there madly polishing taps and washing bathmats and being generally ridiculous. I’m pleased to say that the madness has passed and the dust gathers once more. I remember Mum, fairly aged and therefore less willing to get on a chair to flick cobwebs down, saying that the best way to get rid of the cobwebs was to take her glasses off so that she couldn’t see them. Marvellous.
Blimey, I’d better start doing some News in Brief or I’ll be onto page ten and you’ll all be asleep.
So, I’m still teaching French to a selection of brave British people and English to one doughty Frenchman.
Marek is now set up as a carpenter/builder under a new scheme that could only be French and is designed to encourage people to stop working on the black but is useful for us, as we can be part of the great French health system.
Talking of the health system, I had to take a ghastly tooth to the dentist, which he managed to save and crown, along with its neighbour. Never cheap, crowns, but the dear dentist explained that I could either claim a percentage of it back or pay him a significantly lower sum in cash. I had been warned in advance to expect this, and it is very French. They set up a really complicated system, they talk about it a lot, and then they do something else that actually serves people.
Unless they don’t, as when just recently we sold tractor number 3 and needed the log book from the previous owner, who had promised to send it to us a year ago when we bought the tractor. I left him endless messages, finally spoke to him, he was vague and said he had lost the log book but would get a duplicate, we waited, I finally said that I would go and get the duplicate if he gave me the relevant bits of paper, which he did suspiciously quickly, we drove an hour to the Prefecture in Tarbes, were greeted by the least helpful people in the world whose instructions I was following but who asked me what I was doing with all these bits of paper, then relented and became helpful and were about to give me the gilded document when it was discovered (oh cursèd computer) that the tractor was not actually registered to the guy we bought it from. Squeal of brakes and the proceedings screeched to a halt, and with a hushed whisper of illégale in our ears, we left the building fuming, consumed with murderous thoughts of rushing round to Monsieur’s house and battering him to death with all the paperwork, which the Prefecture had kindly triplicated for us. Of course, the murderous thoughts passed, as Monsieur, even though he should not have sold anyone a tractor knowing that he didn’t have the log book, is actually a perfectly nice bloke, with too much to do, sheep and horses to look after, a small business to run and the blood of people who never do anything by the book coursing through his veins. Even the people at the Prefecture had said it was perfectly normal behaviour, just that it was not able to produce the required log book. So, we are now waiting to see if Monsieur can find Other Monsieur that he bought the tractor from 28 years ago and extract a bill of sale from him. Apparently Other Monsieur is about 80, so I hope he can remember. Mind you, my experience of ancient French people is that they can remember everything, especially if it happened 28 years ago, so I am holding out every hope for Other Monsieur. I am picturing drinking a glass of red with one or both Monsieurs once everything in sorted. As I said, ever the optimist, me.
Well, that last bit wasn’t exactly brief but was probably the most important thing that has happened recently, APART FROM, wait for it, that we finally have a buyer for our Aveyron house. After two and a half years, we had two people wanting to buy it on the same day. Mad. The French couple won, and although the dosh is not yet in the bank, things are trickling along in the expected fashion and we are in the process of breathing a sigh of relief. There are no termites, lead or asbestos to let the side down, which I’m sure you will appreciate is marvellous.
This may be the last item – I have just agreed to go on a trip from here to Santiago de Compostella with four girls and five CAMELS. Yes. Next September 21st will see us set
out, providing an enormous number of things have fallen into place before then. Not the least being me learning how to handle a camel. Of course, we did have camels as neighbours, but I never asked one to obey my wishes or whether it fancied a three-month trip to Spain wearing rubber shoes. I’m hoping my experience with guinea-fowl will come in handy.
This really is the last item. We’ve had a selection of lovely visits, nicely spaced throughout the year, some delightfully anticipated and some wonderfully last-minute, so thanks to Tim and Alan; Sue; Mark, Mo and Molly; Richard, Lorna, Tim, Joseph, Patrick, Anna and Frances; Bridget and Ted; Chris and Meryl; Colin, Helen, Simon and Sue; Dom and Vesna; Steve, Barbara and Sam; Alli, Martin, Tormey and Saskian for bringing fun, silliness, inspiration, Marmite, Earl Grey tea, and large quantities of wine into our lives. You are all very welcome to come again. In fact, bring all your friends. If I’ve forgotten anybody I’m very embarrassed but we definitely loved having you and please come again anyway.
So, we wish you all the jolliest Christmas and a 2010 full of peace, love, giggles and adventures.
Lots of love à la française (whatever that means for you),
Jane and Marek xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
and, not wanting to leave anybody out:
Fubs, Babiole, Little Girl, Tibby-Tabs, Cutes, Blacks, Sims and Skips (cats)
Rudi the Magnificent, Gertrude, Wilhemina, Pidge, Bwown, Bonsai, Blanche, Specky, Goldy, Babe, Blondie, Pecks and Fifi (chickens)
Pinkfoot and The Other One (guinea fowl)
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