A New Look

A small interjection from John here. The radio is playing 'Sympathy for the Devil' and I'd swear the pigeons in the garden are joining in with the backing singers going 'coo coo'.

This summer we had a visit from our university friend and 'house mate' Bob Rae and his wife Maggie. Bob's a keen photographer and the panorama shot of our house I've used for the heading was done by him. Thanks Bob. It was great to spend some time together, having not seen them for 18 years, and realise that what made us friends 40 plus years ago still holds true.

Some Old Stuff

3 August 2018

I decided that it would be good for me to continue keeping the blog since life still hasn't settled down!  Since we are still doing quite a lot of work and John's life isn't as good as it used to be (Parkinson's) I decided I would like to continue the online. As I logged on again, though, I saw the following draft, and thought I must at least include it, then continue with the life now on the next post!

October 2016

Saturday 1st

Well, our life is the start of something new, so it needed a blog to record it!  Monday, 8 August 2016 we finalised the sale of our Normandy house and got lots of cash!! Since Brexit was 23rd June, it was perfect timing to get lots of euros.  Le Bourg Dun now has to get used to having another foreigner in the village - a Russian! Mind you, she speaks French well, and no English, so perhaps they'll forget she's foreign.

So now we are getting some of the major work sorted out, starting with changing the windows; mind you, according to my schedule it's still going to take a couple of years to finish all the work!  Still, such is life.

We have at least finished the building of the bread/pizza oven and are having a small soiree on 15 October to use it (and also to celebrate John's birthday!).  Before that we've got to get it started - on the first day we should only have the fire going for 1 hour, then 2, 3 and 4 hours in the following days before  we can use it for actual cooking. So we'll start tomorrow, and then try cooking a pizza at the weekend. Goodness knows what we'll do if it doesn't work!!!

It was amazing when we were in bed just after midnight.  I was still playing games on the IPAD, John was asleep, and I suddenly heard some noise that I thought was possibly people shooting at wild animals (they do that quite often in the country). John woke up and we realised it wasn't that, but was a firework display from the Vignaud where there was a wedding reception. The display went on for about 15 minutes and what we could see was absolutely fantastic (though a little late since there's not supposed to be any noise after midnight!).  Many of the weddings in the abbey in the village have their receptions at the Vignaud garden. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago we went to the wedding ceremony of the daughter of our friend Patrice (this was from his first marriage - he and Marie have no joint children).  We had a girl I used to work with, Mary-Anne, with us and we went to our first wedding ceremony in France. It was slightly different because they had actually done all the legal paperwork the day before at the Town Hall.  Afterwards the wedding reception for 3 hours was in the garden of the Vignaud and luckily the weather was good! Unfortunately we could only stay for about 15 minutes because Mary-Anne was flying back to the UK, but at least we had a glass of wine and some nibbles. What else do you want at a reception???

Thursday 6th

a.m.

Today is the first day we're using the pizza oven!!! We've spend the last 3 days warming it up slowly and it's only cracked in one place - and that's not too bad anyway. We want to try it out as soon as possible, though, because we've got a soiree on 15th to inaugurate it - and, of course, to celebrate John's birthday, but as I said in my invite to the friends, the oven is the main reason!!!  As for the last few days, John's been working on the oven and rubbing down the gates, and I've been rubbing down and re-varnishing the garden chairs, so all 'really' exciting stuff!!  This afternoon we're back at the French lessons, so will have to stop doing this now and get on with the homework!

p.m.

OK, so we need more practice with the pizza oven! The temperature was high, but I don't think we left it long enough for the tiles in the base to get hot enough. The pizza was OK, but not cooked enough at the bottom, and overcooked at the top where John had added more fire.  Have to have another go tomorrow and leave the oven for a while whilst it is hot so the base tiles get heated. John admitted he added the pizza about 5 minutes after it had got to temperature.

The French lesson was interesting. The teacher gave us a short article last week to read and discuss. Part of what it included was details of a museum which had a display about the 2WW and beating the Germans.  (Quite why the French down here in the middle/south of France are implying they helped I don't know. This was Vichy France and it is really obvious when you look at the war memorials - in most of the towns/villages there are lots of people listed who died in the First WW, but only a couple for WW2.  The visiting places are different too. In Normandy virtually every village and beach has a plaque for foreigners as well as the French -  British, American and around Dieppe lots of Canadians as well. Here in south Vendee it's only the French. Weird differences which we never noticed in the UK where nearly everyone was affected in a similar way, though some more than others of course! My home town of Brighton was pretty damaged, as was Coventry.)  Anyway, going back to the French lesson, the teacher asked me what I thought about the article and I replied that I didn't really enjoy it because of my German background (my mum was German, if you didn't know). Then another girl said her father was German! What a coincidence! He was a war prisoner in France and then was transferred to England, where he met her mother working on a farm as many war prisoners did. What was weird, was that we both had exactly opposite upbringings with the German link. She went to Germany as a child every summer to stay with the family and even worked in a local shop. Her mother and father spoke English and German, so she was brought up bilingual and now is a teacher for German. 

That's me standing, Vera sitting and Oma (grandmother)

hiding behind the bush.

For my family, we never spoke German, even my half-sister who was born in Germany with a German father. In fact, I didn't know she was German until I was about 11 when she wanted to come to France as an au pair and had to get a German passport. According to mum's history, she met my dad when he was a driver for the British forces running Germany after the war. They got married in Germany, and a year later came to the UK, when his family had a major meeting to decide whether they would accept my mum!!!! 

It wasn't until the late 1960s that we heard mum speak German as we had visitors linked to a German relative who lived in Birmingham. And then she had to translate for both Vera and me!!!

We visited Germany once when I was about 2, as you can see from the photo, although I have no memories of it.


The second visit was in the 1980s after mum had died and John was working closely with a German company. So we visited his colleagues in Frankfurt and then travelled around Germany a little before going north to see Lemgo which is where mum and dad met. We even made another photo to link with one from that first visit!

I couldn't even learn German at school because I was in the top half and we did Latin. The teachers said my mother could teach me German, but mum could only tell me what to say, not why, so that wasn't much use! When I was about 17 I did start a correspondence course, and found German very simple (especially compared with Latin!) but I've never kept it up. 

What a weird French lesson we had!!!

                                                XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

So, that's the old stuff, tomorrow I'll start with the new ones!!

Here we are again!

OK, so it's been a long time since my last blog, but that's mainly because so much has been happening, but that's the very reason for doing the blog!! I keep on starting with my notes, but not getting it up-to-date so don't post it. Well, no longer, so here's all the stuff I had been saving by the beginning of this year!

April 2015

Well, at the beginning of the year we again started a new life. The change started last September when we received a phone call from Carole Pesquet whilst Paul Oldroyd and Chris Donaldson were staying with us. Pedro and Sandrine used to run a late night pub in St Valery, and have now taken over the restaurant from Carole and Martial in the local campsite. They were living in Fontaine le Dun, but had decided to move out and wanted to rent ours (and possibly buy it - but we'll see if that ever happens!).  Of course we said yes, even though it meant lots of trips backwards and forwards to finish all the odd jobs (and some were quite large!) we had been meaning to do for several years!  I had promised myself that we would never get a place finished just as we are moving out, as we've done with all our other homes, but of course that never happened. Now we only have one chance to live in a completely finished house since we hope that the only time we leave this house in Vendee is in a coffin!

Not only were the trips back and forth for home improvements, but also for John's health. Since we want to keep Normandy as our main house (maison principale) for tax reasons, we have kept the doctor up there, which means when John potentially had prostate cancer, we had to keep on going back for scans etc. - 6 hours each way! Amazingly the hospital was open on a Saturday!! The system here is quite good, you get the paperwork immediately with the results, and then you go to your doctor who will do whatever is necessary after that. Trouble for us was that we left Normandy the day after the first scan, and that's where the doctor is. However, we thought things were OK - it's difficult to tell because it's not only medical terms, it's in French/Latin as well. Still, the pictures were good - though we can't see the baby!! On the next visit it was confirmed that he has cysts, but not cancer!!! However, there is a cyst on his kidney which will need additional attention, so yet more trips back to Normandy!!

And the Vendee house, how's that coming along?  You have to ask? Obviously you don't know us well enough! Slowly, and possibly surely, though we're not too sure! We have a new deadline which is always good. The first deadline had been to get all the electrics redone and the 2 bathrooms in the gite sorted out before our visitors from May last year. Now we have our 40th wedding anniversary party in September as the next one. Hopefully we will get lots of people from the UK, so it will be necessary to have ALL the bedrooms usable so we can accommodate as many as possible.  We have young Johanne back putting in an ensuite in the spare bedroom. It's really weird, ensuite is a French word, but they don't know what on earth you are talking about if you use that term. Trouble is, now I've said that I just know you are all saying 'well, what do they call it?' and I just don't know! I'll have to check in the dictionary.  (I've done that now, and they usually just say salle de bain/douche attenante or attache).

John is continuing with the arriere cuisine (back kitchen), which will hopefully be useable by the end of the weekend because then I can continue to unpack the kitchen boxes.  Mind you, that won't make a significant difference given how much 'stuff' we've got!

September 2015

So, since then we had to go back to Normandy for John to have an MRI scan. The results went directly to the specialist since we, as usual, were coming back down south the next day and he said he'd contact us if anything else was needed. He anticipated that the cysts would not be malignant, and therefore no news is good news, since we've heard nothing!  And as for the work we've done: 

• Arriere cuisine usable, with washing machine and tumble dryer, so I don't have to keep on going into the gite to do the washing. Still got some decoration and ceiling to finish.
• Spare bedroom - old sink room taken out, though we made a mistake in telling Johanne that we didn't need to use the room until end July, and so he's not finished his work!! (In fact, he finished the work on 2nd August!) Still, he did at least come back and mend the water pump in the garden, so we can use the water from the well instead of having to pay for town water. Still have to pay for disposal, but that's OK. Apparently, if we use the well water all the time, they'll just estimate how much has been disposed of since the water meter only works on incoming.
• Wallpaper stripped in all the rooms and the corridors. Well as much as we can reach, there's still the top of the wall in the hall that we haven't finished, but since it goes from the ground to the ceiling, it's just a tad too high to reach without major equipment.
• Studio - two walls completed, bookcases brought in and loaded with books.  If you don't look at the other 2 walls, it looks great!! And we can actually move a little in the garage now we've got rid of 5 bookcases and over 10 boxes of books (only another 50 or so to go!). (Now finished so it's now not only the bibliotheque, but also the music room with my keyboards and all of John's guitars.)
• Garden - all the trees we don't want have been taken down, though we still are the proud owners of the root base of the pine tree, because it's too large to get out of the garden! Hopefully we'll be buying a barbecue oven next month (No, this year!!) and will need a crane to lift it over the wall, and we can use that to take the root out!  That's what Herve, our local saint, says. So who is Herve? He is our life saver!! He lives locally and works for the enterprise in the village which makes games fields for schools etc. so he's got a lot of experience which is useful for our garden work. He chopped down all the trees, dug out the raised garden which will be for the gite, and has made us an amazing base for the pagoda. Even got a concrete base for it, so I can't see us changing our minds at some stage in the future! (Got the whole pagoda finished now!)

So that's the work side of things - I hadn't realised quite how much we'd done over the last 2 months till I listed them there. All that is vital before the soiree is for Johanne to finish the en suite, put a sink into the toilet room in the main house and John to redo the floor in the studio, which is only chipwood at the moment and has started to crack in a couple of places. Then we can concentrate on the jobs which will make the place look nice! (August: Johanne has done his work as I said earlier, and I can hear John hammering to finish the floor in the studio at this very moment!)

What else have we done? Become part of a group of Anglofiles in the village and enjoyed soirees with them. Steve and Liz are the other 2 English, then there are their 2 neighbours (Fred and his girlfriend Mathilde, Valerie and  Didier, plus Marie, our French teacher. Her husband is the only one who doesn't speak English! The first soiree was a 'Murder Mystery' evening at Steve and Liz's which was absolutely fantastic, although entailed a lot of work by them. It was based on 'Allo 'Allo. I was Edith and had to sing, but luckily the windows were strong enough to put up with it! John was Rene and looked fantastic! Fred (who was Hier Gruber and the murderer)  and Mathilde  (Mimi) seemed to find the play-acting quite attractive - apparently didn't return their uniforms for several weeks, can't imagine why!!!  The next soiree was just a 'simple' meal at Marie's - nice and relaxed and gave us the chance to chat more. Being typically French, although we got there at 7.30 p.m., we didn't finish until almost midnight!  The anniversary party is going to be our contribution, but I think I would love to do them all a 'British' Christmas meal. The French in Normandy thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm sure it will go down well here.

We had a little holiday in May - drove down to see Chris and Paul in Spain. That was fantastic! We stopped the first day in Bordeaux (only 3 hours south, but we wanted to see what it was like). We fell in love with the place. Can't explain exactly why, but it was just so lively. We arrived about 3 in the afternoon so had a good afternoon and evening there. So many fantastic squares with bars and restaurants and people enjoying just socialising.  I can see us having many other short trips down there.  Don't think we made the best choice for the restaurant, but it was a bit difficult since we needed an 'early' meal (about 7.30 p.m.) so we wouldn't get back too late, and most people seemed to be wanting to eat after 9 p.m.!

*************************

So, that's the notes I had made earlier in the year. To bring us up-to-date, here's the key points since then. We've had a very enjoyable time down here, which got cut back on the day before John's birthday in October. He had an appointment at the hospital to check why he's got the shakes, and it's because he's following his dad's lifestyle and has got Parkinson's disease. Not the greatest birthday present he could have had!! There is still no cure, but there have been lots of improvements since John's dad had the disease, so hopefully we'll have a better life for longer than he had.  The good side of this is that the specialist has said that he should be OK for about 4-5 years, after that they can't say what will happen since it's different for each person. No - when I said good side, I didn't mean because it's only 4-5 years, but because it's going to be that long. That's good. We'll take 2 years to get all the work in the house finished, and then we have enough time to do lots of travelling around France. And after that, who knows, it could be good!!

Then, at the end of the year we had another downturn - Sandrine and Pedro decided not to buy the Normandy house and moved out at the end of February this year. So we've been sorting it out and got an Immobilier (Estate Agent) to sell it for us. There is a Russian woman who is interested and that would follow the non-French ownership nicely! But everything is still at the starting point and we have to wait until her banker agrees to give the mortgage for the house. We'll know for sure in a few weeks!  Hopefully it will all go through (takes about 3 months over here if there is a mortgage involved) and we will, for the first time in 12 years, have just one home!

OK - enough. It's the beginning of June and I have decided that I WILL make a post once a month at the latest, if not more frequently. Next time I'll put more pictures for the current status of the house, so you have something to look forward to!!!

Ca marche?

It's Sunday, 8th June - so much for being efficient with my blog. I have been making notes, but just not getting round to finishing them. However today we are in Le Bourg Dun and it's just started raining so hard that we thought our bonfires had gone wild but it was just the rain evaporating up from the hot road surfaces. And there's 20 minutes before I have to take the notes of a Worldcon Skype, so I thought I'd look at what I've been writing for my blog. Hah! I've been saying I'll get this organised for ages now, and just never have enough time to finish, so I'm just going to post what I've got, and start afresh. Who said retirement was boring? Or even relaxing! It's no wonder I'm still drinking my wine and therefore not losing weight. Hell, so what, tomorrow I may die, so why not enjoy today - after all, I am almost 10 years older than my mother when she died, and about 4-5 years older than my dad when he had his car accident and got brain damage, becoming a child again, but no longer my father. It sounds weird, but it's true, the more I think about the members of my family (extended - my brother-in-law came down with multiple sclerosis at too early an age, my father-in-law was the same with Parkinsons' Disease) the more determined I am to ensure I enjoy life to the full rather than take it for granted. There is no way I am going to be like my mother after dad's accident, bemoaning the fact that they had planned to do all the things they wanted when they were retired, but that was no longer possible.

Anyway, enough boring stuff and on to the posts I've been writing recently. (If you're observant, you will see the underlying theme! Yes, it starts with the letter 'w' and ends with 'e' with 'i' and 'n' somewhere in between!)

24th April

We arrived back in Le Bourg Dun at 5 a.m. yesterday following a trip to the UK for Eastercon up in Glasgow. Managed to do around 1,750miles seeing friends - Stanstead Abbotts, Sheffield, Motherwell, Glasgow, Colchester, Burgess Hill and home! Today the weather decided to turn bad just because I needed to work in the garden, but it didn't stop me - oh no! In fact, done so much work that I need to sit down with a nice glass of red wine now whilst John makes lunch/dinner (well, it's 4 p.m., so what label should you use?).  So I thought I'd get on with the blog that I've been making draft notes for but never getting round to finalising them (just like the house that I'm talking about!). Life has been just a little frantic, hence no posts, but I thought  I should still talk about what has been happening since it's been an important time in our new life. So here's February - I haven't changed anything, so you can see what I was thinking at the time as well as what actually happened.

5th February

Well, it's only the 5th February and already things are moving along like a hurricane! Johanne has been in to finish the placo (plasterboard) in the bathroom and bedroom in the main house, and I was just getting the walls in the bedroom stripped ready for redecorating when Dmitri (VERY French name that!) turned up to say they are going to start doing the kitchen next week! That means we can get up to Normandy for mid February and, more importantly, be there for 20th when the Connect Club has a meal. (That's a club run by an English/French couple designed to allow different nationalities living/having holiday homes in Normandy to meet with each other. We tend to have Dutch, English and French mainly. It's a great idea and they have at least one social event each month. These vary from meals out (as in February) meals/barbecues, book exchanges, visits to local tourist sites, wine tastings, etc. Now we are in La Vendee most of the time, we don't get to attend many, so it would be great to be able to be there for the February.).

Anyway, back to the renovations, that means I have to change the order of work a bit now. When John eventually finishes doing 10+ hours a day on the Worldcon website (and no, I'm not exaggerating!) he can finish the preparation work he's doing on the back wall and we can get the final couple of radiators in. Phew, I really am beginning to believe we will have the main house 'livable' by my birthday!!

No, actually it would be safer to not think that, since something is bound to happen which will delay the whole thing.

At least it looks like we'll have a much more developed house for when Alison and Bob (John's sister and her husband) come to visit which we hope is going to be around my birthday - since we could then have a double birthday celebration as hers is at the end of February. In fact, I was talking the other day of perhaps getting all our English friends together for a meal at L'Escargot - a restaurant in the next village where we have developed a good relationship with the owners thanks to Olivier (the guy we bought the house from). We went there for a drink with him to celebrate selling/buying the house, and then later to celebrate his birthday. The owners are a nice couple and the food is OK - not exactly haut cuisine, and not too much of a choice, but absolutely fine. The Brits would definitely have arrived if that came off, since we thought there would be 10 of us if Alison and Bob were here too!

15th February

What a 10 days we've had - forget about the developments in the house, we seem to be constantly taking backward steps. Talk about bad things coming in threes - not that anything serious is happening, it's just really hard work sometimes!

Vancendeau came and did 90% of the kitchen!! That's good, but we have to keep on nagging him for things that he's forgotten, like the fact that they were providing us with a dishwasher, and a cupboard for all my cookery books! Plus the wok holder was broken, as was the border underneath the cupboards.

Then the central heating packed up, which we thought was possibly because we'd run out of oil, so ordered some more. The problem was we had to wait a week for the delivery, and it was COLD with no heating. We managed to borrow a paraffin stove, and bought one ourselves so it wasn't too bad in the lounge. The problem was that the central heating still wasn't working after the oil was delivered, and we had to wait for M Mignon to come. As it was all he did was reset the red button and all was well, but we didn't know that! 

And then we got up yesterday and there was no water! Since we have a well, and the weather has been somewhat wet over the winter, we didn't think that we had run out of water, and were looking into it when Eric, the electrician came to see what work was needed to finish their rewiring. With his help we identified that the pump at the bottom of the well had packed up, so we would need M Mignon again! In the meantime, Eric phoned the water company for us (we had no mains water in the house at all) who said they would try to get round to turn on the mains within the next 3 days!

Luckily they came within about 3 hours.

Hooray, we have mains water! We should have known that when the water man came within a couple of hours that things don't go that easily for us. First of all when the engineer turned on the water in the house, there was a massive leak! So John spent most of the afternoon trying to fix it - not that it was difficult in itself, but tucked away in a hole in the bottom of the wall, and John just couldn't get at it to tighten it up. Since the dial on the water meter next to this joint said 000, it looks like Olivier, the previous owner, never used mains water! Anyway, John managed to half fix it so there was just a small drizzle, and we thought that would give us time for his knuckles to recover before we had to get it fixed properly.

Oh no, that's not what this week is all about. Once we got the main leak fixed, we could see that it was also leaking on the other side of the meter. That belongs to the water company, and there is an anti-tamper collar on the water pipe so we can't fix it. So we turned the water off again, and thought about what we should do. Oh, that means a telephone call and I hate talking French on the phone, let alone to a help line. Aha! I had the great idea that we could get our neighbour, Laurent, to do the call for us since it was Saturday morning and he'd be at home. So he came to look at it before making the call but of course, as always, it wasn't leaking any more! An hour or so after he'd left, it started again but by then we realised it was actually leaking all the time, but if we turned the water off the residue soaked into the soil below the floor and the dribble isn't very obvious until there is enough to leave a puddle. When Laurent came we'd obviously had the water off long enough for it to drain away and we hadn't noticed the dripping.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to be able to phone again, so we decided to leave it until next week, and just turn the water off overnight. At least the leak is before the meter so it's not costing us anything! We will ask Marie to make the phone call when we have our French lesson on Tuesday.

Still, it's Sunday now and the sun is shining (in between the rain clouds anyway!) and we have three-quarters of a new kitchen! Ca marche (things are moving)!

 

(It was actually end of March before the kitchen was finished, but it was worth the wait!)

 

 

 

 

 



New Year - Old Records

 

I always get a little reminiscent at New Year - thinking about what has happened in my life and whether or not I like it. This could be why hearing Johnnie Walker playing Bridge Over Troubled Water a short while ago started old memories storming back - which is quite amazing really, since I've heard it so many times and never before has it had quite the same overpowering effect.

The memories were of the day I actually bought the LP - back in either February or March 1970. At the time I was still in my first job, working as a secretary for what was then the organisation controlling television - Independent Television Authority - later it encompassed radio as well the name was changed to the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Anyway, this job was up in London - opposite Harrods - and I was still living at home in Brighton, so had a long commute each day. To be honest, I seemed to have a long commute for all my jobs except one (Sussex University) until the late 1990s when I started life as self-employed.  Anyway, back to the 1970s, the commute was usually almost 2 hours, with 1 hour on the train. That was an 'interesting' experience! On my first journey I found an empty seat on the 7.35 a.m. train and got peculiar looks from the people around me. It was only after I had used the same seat for over a month that I realised the looks were a result of me taking someone else's seat. Not that it was reserved, or that they actually knew the person who normally sat there, but you just automatically sat in the same place every day. Why? Don't ask me. The only time we actually did talk was the day I bought the LP.

Little did we know when we left Brighton at the usual 7.30 a.m. that a train had broken down in one of the tunnels through the Downs, and trains were stacking up. We travelled to the outskirts of Brighton and then stopped. Then moved a mile or so more, and stopped. This carried on with absolutely no information of what was going on - well you didn't get any in those days. I was crocheting a new dress at the time (well, it was 1970!) and virtually finished it whilst we were still just outside Haywards Heath station. After about 2 hours, we actually started talking to each other - what a shock! Never happened before or after! And by about 10.30 when we still hadn't moved for over 45 minutes, revolution occurred and all the passengers decided to climb out of the train - which had carefully stopped just a couple of hundred yards PAST the station, with the train behind being a similar distance BEFORE the station. Good planning, eh. We clamboured out and along the side of the track back to the station, with the railway employees shouting at us and these normally smart and sophisticated businessmen shouting back. Great!

So I had to catch a bus back to Brighton which took another hour, by which time I was pretty stressed since this was, of course, before the invention of the mobile phone (which, according to Wikipedia (yes, I just checked!) was not available to the general public until 1983) so I was not able to let the office know I wouldn't be in today. To calm myself down I went and bought this album in Brighton on my way back home. Great afternoon just playing it over and over again. And the next day my boss even apologised for not believing my excuse when I did actually get to a phone - the evening papers had been full of it.

God, it's a day for memories, whilst waiting for John to bring second helpings of the pork joint (VERY LOW PRICE! VERY BAD FOR THE DIET!) Walker started playing California
Saga/California by the Beach Boys, which we played as we were driving down that coast and seeing Steinbeck's museum!! In fact, as we drove down the coast to Monterey we were playing Beach Boys all the time - and then we stayed in a motel next to the Monterey County Fairgrounds where they held the 1967 Pop Festival. Shame that wasn't because we had been there, but it was still an important event in our history


Since I'm wandering along memory lane, I thought I'd go right back and start a life history - it's OK, not the whole life, that would be too long in one go.  That's the problem with getting so old now, there's so much to remember and I would like to get some of it down before I start losing my marbles! This history isn't necessarily accurate, but just as I remember it with absolutely no research to back up my memories.

Had a slightly different upbringing to most Brits since I was born to a German mother and English father. Dad worked away from home most of the time - coming home roughly one weekend a month - which made life hard for mum who was always very conscious of being 'foreign' so didn't have many close friends to help.

One of my first memories were of playing out in the rough ground at the back of our Council flat underneath all the washing lines, cutting my hand quite severely with a spade, running in to mum who was with a visitor (no idea who, but must have been someone official) and so poo-pooed my cries.  I still have the scar on my hand to this day! That makes her sound very strict, which is wrong, she just had no time for exaggeration and honestly thought I was going OTT just to get attention. As the mirror image of that, I remember her not giving a damn about what people thought as she was shouting at me out of the window of our flat "Breath Eve, Breath!!!" I had suffered from bronchitis for about 6 months (something to do with enlarged kidneys I think, but why they should be connected I have no idea - remember I said no research here.) and one of the consequences was I had to remember to breath rather than it coming natural. So as I was playing away quite happily, I'd often forget to breath and collapse.

Other family, a half-sister who is 5 years older than me.  She is from my mother's first marriage in Germany. I did have another half-sister from my dad's first marriage, but she died about 2 months before I was born. Pretty bad build-up to my birth for mum really.

As a young child I was quite shy - I remember crying my eyes out at junior school (I'd have been about 6 or 7) when we were merely doing a dance in a circle.  I didn't know anyone there and I was scared!  And I craved acceptance by others.  This got worse as I went to secondary school, since I no longer fitted into the local gangs as a 'Grammar School Girl' living on a council estate.  Just having homework was enough to make you stand out.  Also, I couldn't fit in properly at school since mum wouldn't let me bring anyone home - or at least not without a few days notice so she could tidy up. When do teenagers plan that far in advance, I ask you?

All this estrangement was good for my education, though, as I spent most of my time studying and did really well at school. 

Now, that sounds terribly sad, but it wasn't that bad - after all I didn't know anything else.  Towards the end of my school career things began to look up.  I made friends with a couple of schoolfriends who were involved with the Court School of Dancing, and got me to go along.  Not only did I learn to waltz, tango, etc, but over the years I also learned that I wasn't too bad as a person, and that boys liked me.  (The latter being the most important, of course!)  The Court School had this great idea of a 'disco' on a Saturday night where the girls would sit around hoping to be asked to dance by some hulk before the half-time break.  Why then? Well there was no alcohol sold on the premises, and if you'd 'scored' you might well be taken to the pub nearby for a half-time drink.  Girls on their own just wouldn't go into a pub.  It was at one of those Saturdays that I met Graham - the boy who was my first love (both emotionally and physically) - but that is getting ahead of myself a little.

The other way of meeting boys I had at this time (early-mid 1960s) was to go to the local cinema on a Saturday afternoon.  It was the 'done thing' to go to the cinema mid-afternoon, and during the interval between the 'B' film and the main feature the boys would see what 'talent' was in and if you were lucky you'd be picked.  None of these 'dates' lasted more than one or two meetings, though.

Back to my shyness and inferiority complex - this meant that I didn't believe I was intelligent enough to go off to university, and with a foreign mother who didn't really understand the education system, plus a working-class dad who finished school at the age of 14, no-one pushed me to stay at school after 'O' levels (as they were then).  I went, instead, with my 8 'O' levels, to do a 2-year business studies course at the local technical college - financing myself with holiday jobs. Here I blossomed - I had a whale of a time and got a good grade, plus another couple of 'O' levels and an 'A' level in English Law (that one I'm really proud of).  Back then, though (1969) the only career that non-university girls were really groomed for was secretarial work, so I became a secretary with what was then the ITA - the Independent Television Authority (now you can put the first bit of this blog in context). 

We were the governing body that ensured 'standards' were kept within the independent television network - I seem to remember there was a committee who sat each day to both time and quality control all the advertisements that were going to be aired that day.  What a job!  Still, it meant that we had one of the very first colour television sets - a large one too.  That is until 2 men in brown overalls came in one day and took it out the front door - they looked like workmen so no-one thought to query what they were doing!  

Anyway, there I was feeling really grown up because I was commuting from Brighton to London each day and my world changed.  No kidding, though some of the impacts would have happened anyway, such as the launch of colour tv (1969 for ITV for those historians amongst you, whereas the BBC had been broadcasting colour since 1967).  The other event which would have happened anyway was the first moon landing.  Now there was something absolutely mind-blowing, and the bosses very kindly allowed us into the 'viewing room' so we could watch it on colour tv.  Have you ever seen those early pictures?  (Silly question for most sf fans, I know!)  Not much colour - the moon is mainly grey, the sky black, the sun white... the only colour I can remember was the stars and stripes patches on the arm of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  Still, at least we could see that there was no colour!

I was only at the ITA for a short time, but it was full of firsts:

• Saw first landing on the moon there
• I was involved in the launch of decimalisation
• FIRST TRIP TO FRANCE!! That's where we come virtually full circle in a way. Not that I fell in love with the country on that trip. It was a bit weird - I went with a girl I used to work with at the ITA, although by then I had moved on and was working at Sussex University. It was a trip full of weird experiences.
• She had bought tickets on the train from London, where she lived, so I had to catch the train from Brighton to London to meet her, just to come back down to Newhaven again - but since they were combined train/ferry tickets I couldn't just meet up at Newhaven.
• We were on the train from Paris to the south of France (where her father had rented a house for 2 months) when I went into the toilet - an empty room with a hole in the floor in one corner and a sink in the other. I was so scared that I'd gone into the wrong room because there wasn't actually a toilet there, that I couldn't go. I managed to last over 6 hours without using that room!
• I realised for the first time that 'upper class' people weren't all pompous asses - her father had retired, but was called back by his employers - Barclays Bank - so he could organise the bank's move to decimalisation. He used to be Chief Accountant/Treasurer for the Bank! Not the sort of person that a council estate teenager usually meets.
• I found I didn't like coffee, didn't like wine, didn't like much French food at all! Amazing how things change!

And on that bombshell, I think I'll stop this history and let you all get off to bed! More next time - probably again the first weekend of March, but who knows, maybe earlier, maybe later.

Our First Christmas

29th December

Well, it did and didn't start well. The first good bit was we did actually have heating as well as lighting in the main house. As I mentioned in the last post, however, as with everything French - almost! Well, from the ouvriers' viewpoint they are waiting for us to do various jobs, but there are still a couple of radiators which could be fixed and some of the electric sockets. Anyway, we've got used to this French work ethic and don't want to become one of those moaney customers - we want to keep friends with them.

The second good bit was we decided on the kitchen providers and paid a deposit on the 'meubles' (just before the TVA (VAT equivalent) goes up) - so we should have a kitchen in March. My first thought was it would be great if it was early March, then it would be a birthday present! And we could have a soiree for the neighbours for both the finish of the major house renovations and my birthday. Realistically, though, (especially given what I've already said about French ouvriers) we are more likely to be getting ready for Easter before it is finished!

And now the bad bit - well, it had a good portion as well, luckily. I was browning off a large oxtail joint and dropped it in the boiling oil, which splashed all over my face. The good bit was it didn't go into my eyes, but I've been suffering with the burns for the last 4 days, picking off the bits of dried skin and looking like I've got measles with the red patches! It's not just the look, though, it is sooo painful. Next time I'll be a bit more careful, but accidents do happen.

5th January 2014

At the moment I'm sitting  watching Miss Congeniality 2 up here in Normandy,  and thinking about being more efficient!  Hah! That'll be the day! But, it's the start of a new year, so it's the good old 'first clean page of the exercise book'.  So let's get back to finishing the description of our first Christmas of our new life down in Nieul. 

As I mentioned in the last post, we'd got the bathroom in the main house refitted with a lovely walk-in shower, double sink unit plus black and white tiling, so we'd thought our Christmas present to ourselves would be to christen it on Christmas morning. We slept in the new bed in the main bedroom Christmas Eve, woke up there and had a beautiful shower Christmas morning. Trouble is, we also found out that using black tile grout is OK when all the tiles are black, but where you have a strip of black tiles amongst white ones, the black grout runs into the white grout. Oh well, hopefully it is just excess and will wash off soon, and then I'll just have to bleach the white grout round the edge.

As is our Christmas morning tradition, we had champagne and smoked salmon scrambled eggs for breakfast (really virtually brunch, but hey who's counting?) and started watching tv. This tradition was started when we watched the original 3 Star Wars films in one Christmas Day, just stopping to get dressed and for meals now and again! This year it was the first series of 'A Person of Interest'. The meal we stopped for was venison rather than turkey and it was brilliant,  - starting with a taste test to see if we could decide which was best, foie gras of duck or goose. We preferred the duck, surprisingly enough. The other surprising thing was that the venison was English!

Boxing Day meat was rib of beef and we had both cold venison and beef for several days afterwards!

The only disappointing thing about Christmas was that we couldn't cook it or eat/watch tv in the main house. This had been one of the key points in our original plans, but hey, we didn't know about French workmen's scheduling skills when we originally made that schedule. And to be honest, why does it matter? When looking at it logically, there's just us so it's not like it is crucial that we had it finished. However, we do use times like this, and the visits of friends, to give us the impetus to complete one or more of the stages in the whole process, just not the optimistic one we started with. As Eric, the electrician said, 'Of course you can have the house finished for Christmas - just don't specify which one!' (he said it in French, obviously!).

We had planned to come up to Normandy the day after Boxing Day, but a combination of bad weather, not being organised enough, and realising there was no reason to rush, meant we didn't leave till Friday. The only downside of that is that we couldn't get to the doctors to get a new repeat prescription. The system over here is rather more complex than back home - or perhaps its not a France/UK difference, just a resident/non-resident aspect. We have told the UK authorities that we are no longer resident in the UK, so we were no longer able to use the national health system from the day after our phone call. To get under the French system, however, is a little more complex. We have to get the S1 form which says we are no longer under UK national health, birth and marriage certificates translated - but not by anyone, it has to be an authorised translator. Then we have to register it with the local authority here in Dieppe, and hopefully after 3 months we may get our carte vitale which means we get 70% of the cost of medicines repaid. Unlike the UK, no-one gets free medications here (mind you, we only got free medicines when we were 60, before that we either paid a fixed fee per item, or paid an annual amount to get free prescriptions for the year).

So Monday saw another first - an appointment with a French doctor. I took copies of our repeat prescription requests and it was quite interesting as she'd never heard of one of John's blood pressure tablets . How much difference 75 or so miles can make! Total cost of not getting our residency sorted out earlier was over 100 euros! Still, it was for 3 months' prescriptions (apart from one of my blood pressure pills, which was only a month's worth for some reason) and as soon as we start the process, we'll get reimbursed the 70%  of any further medications we need when the process is all completed.

Tuesday - NEW YEAR'S EVE!!!! 

Round at Carole & Martial's from 8 p.m., so we had a light meal at about 5 p.m. because we knew we wouldn't be eating till about 11 p.m. And we were right! Mind you, it was worth the wait - started with lobster, followed by fruits de mer (seafood platter), then cheese and dessert as per usual with French meals.  Nice small group - just 11 of us, Carole & Martial, of course, then John, Mary, Dominique & Valerie, Igor, Lulu, and Igor's young son. We eventually left around 3.30 a.m. and in bed by 4, ready to start again for lunch. I do love the French concept that you should start your first meal in the New Year with those that you said goodbye to the old year with. The trouble is, no-one is really up to it so soon after the excesses of the night before. Lulu and Igor got to bed around 6 a.m., Martial and Dominic about half an hour earlier whilst Carole and Valerie gave up about 5 a.m. I think. Though I think Lulu's problem wasn't so much the lack of sleep as the bottle of whiskey that she and Igor managed to finish between them the night before. John and I only managed to last until about 5 p.m., of which I'm sure Carole was more than grateful.

What a great way to start the first New Year of our new life!

A Week (or perhaps longer) in our Lives v.2

So, as you may have noticed, doing a regular record of what is going on in our lives at the moment didn't quite happen! We were far too busy to get down to actually writing about it, and when I did have the time I seemed to be playing card games on the computer. I wonder if this is going to be a theme!

Anyway, rather than wait until I had filled in the gaps, I thought I'd start anew since this is another new chapter. 
 
This is what I wrote back in August . . .  A couple of weeks ago the guy redoing the central heating came and took away all the old radiators in the main house. It's such a shame this is France - these radiators are the big cast iron ones that in the UK we could sell for a reasonable return. Unfortunately France is about 20 years behind the UK in most things, and hence they are still in the rush of wanting new modern stuff, not 'antiques'. Also, since many people are modernising their old houses, there are a plethora of them, so it would be very difficult to make enough money to cover the effort involved. So they went down the tip. (Well, I assume so - it could be we were being taken for a ride by  Monsieur Mignon and he took them off to sell himself. Still, it would have been one hell of a job to get them out of the house so I'm looking at it that that is the equivalent of having to pay someone to do it for us.) He also took away the enormous safe we had under the stairs. That's not a usual thing to find left behind! But it was sooooo heavy! (Mind you, wouldn't have been a very good safe if it wasn't!)

Interesting thing about French workmen - they seem to be able to do everything! Take young Johanne for instance, only 22 and he did our 'tout a la gout' to connect the house to the mains water (we had/have septic tank but are required by the Mairie (Town Hall) to get connected to mains waste disposal within 1 year of purchase). We then used him to rewire the gite. He's just finished replumbing the bathroom in the main house bathroom, putting in the shower and sinks as well as doing the wall tiling and the floor.  He also offered to mend the roof! Now is this because they just didn't have the same specialisation in France as in the UK, or is it just that we never met such broad spectrum workers in the UK? Or is it because in the UK we have lost the apprenticeship route?

Johanne must have left school before he was 16, because he did a 5-year apprenticeship with M.Garreau (who is doing the electrics in the main house) and then worked with his brother-in-law before starting up his own business. He is also in the process of building his own house!  Somehow I think university has taken something away from us.  I remember being quite surprised at the mental difference when I went to university. I was 21 at that time, having left school at 16, done 2 years at college and then worked as a secretary for 3 years. So I was still young, but had seen something of the world, and found I had very little in common with the young children who were with me on the course - those who had gone straight from school to university. Most of my friends were much older (John being the principal one, who also had been out to work (having been chucked out of university the first time round because he was enjoying himself too much) before coming to Leeds) or were of that mentality. It's an interesting point that I will no doubt ponder on over several bottles of wine!

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Thursday - getting locked in the loo!! That's just a note I made for myself and it's not something I thought I would be writing about! Olivier, the guy we bought the house from, took away anything that he thought he would be able to sell, and that included quite a few of the door handles for some reason. In the downstairs loo we only had a handle on the outside of the door, and I stupidly allowed the door to shut when I went in. The trouble is it was just after 12 noon, so Eric, the electrician, and his mates were all down the local Auberge having lunch, and John was in the gite so there was no-one around to just open the door from the outside. I could just see myself being there for ages, and was even considering trying to climb through the 1ft gap at the top of the wall, but luckily after 15mins John came through to find me.  What interesting times we live in!

 *********************
This is another note I started thinking I'd finish it off in a couple of days and post it . . .

Wednesday, 20th November 1 p.m.

So, for the first time in months I'm sitting here with enough time on my hands to write another blog entry. Well, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels like it. We are in Le Bourg Dun at the moment, just returned from the bank where we arranged to take out sufficient cash to pay Roger for the work he's done on the roof.

Oh, you don't know Roger do you. He's an English guy we met at the local rubbish tip down in La Vendee - well, where else would you meet?  He lives with his wife in a village about 15 mins drive away from Nieul, and does odd jobs. He needs to do work since the exchange rate has fallen so much he needs more money. The trouble is, he only wants cash and the French banks make it difficult to get cash. We have a cash card, but that has a quite low weekly/monthly limit. The only other way is to go into the your branch (here in Normandy, of course) and arrange to take a single amount out of the machine in their office, but you have to give them 24hrs notice!  Anyway, we've done that this morning so we can call in tomorrow on our way back down south.

Roger has been helping John do the bathroom in the gite, which is where we are living at the moment as the main house is being pulled apart by the electricians and central heating guys. Whilst we've been away he has also been replacing the broken tiles on the roof, and mending the guttering, so we should have a dry house down south!

Ah, down south! Hopefully it'll be warmer and dryer than here in wet Normandy. (Just looked at Bing weather, and it's 7 degrees down there, whilst it's only 4 here. It's also raining here, and won't rain in Nieul until after 5 p.m.) Even so, I  hope the central heating work is finished and we'll have a warm house tomorrow or Friday at the latest. I bet we won't, though. We don't have an email address for M Etienne Mignon - the plumber, and so can't let him know when we'll be back. Yes, I could phone but that means talking French on the phone, and I hate that! We'll take down a convector heater so we have some warmth and pop into his shop as soon as we get down there - it's only a 5 min walk from the house.

Must stop for lunch now - very easy to prepare since it's what's left over from the meal we cooked last night when we entertained Carole, Martial their 2 friends and their son. As usual, I cooked way too much, but it was only a recipe for 8 when there were 7 of us so not as excessive as it could have been. After all, I only cooked one main course whereas I often cook 2 or more, just in case someone doesn't like the first - and in case everyone doesn't like one dish, I obviously have to prepare enough for everyone to eat each one! Then John and I eat the leftovers for the next week! 

Over the weekend there was a Herring Festival in Dieppe, and we bought fresh herring (surprise, surprise!) and coquille St Jacques. The herring we soused ourselves - our first attempt, with carrots, onions etc - and I must admit to them being gorgeous. Coquille are just fried, so no probs there and none of them or the herring left! Just some of the cold meats that we gave in case someone didn't like fish (see, I told you!). However, we have got lots of chicken forestiere (a casserole of chicken and mushrooms with haricots), some of the potatoes and lots of green beans left for lunch today. Plus the cheese, and only 1 pot of chocolate soufflé.

Oh, that's making me feel hungry, must stop now and reheat everything!

22nd December
Reading that last entry is interesting. We are down in La Vendee now, and entertained an English couple on Friday that live here in Nieul - Steve and Liz. They found out that we were buying the house back in March last year when Olivier was having a car boot sale (most probably including the door handles!) and left us a 'Welcome to Nieul' card, which we thought was really nice. We only had enough left from that meal for the Saturday lunch for us. And the other English couple we know who run the chambres d'hotes we stayed in when we first came down to look for houses came over for a barbecue in the summer, and they managed to get through ALL the food we cooked. Don't know if that's just a coincidence or something to do with being English!

Anyway, it wad good having Steve & Liz around because it gave us the impetus to buy yet more furniture and make the house more livable in. We still haven't finished all the final painting and everything in the gite, but did the important stuff like buying a 46" TV, a settee and a dining table. 

We have all this stuff up in Normandy, but we wanted to be comfortable for Christmas here, since it is yet another first - the first Christmas of our new life. 

We had hoped that we would be having Christmas in the main house, but the best laid plans . . . When we got back from Normandy neither the electricians or the plumbers had finished. The former didn't matter too much, but the latter was crucial since it was COLD.  M Mignon came round the next day and gave us a couple of paraffin stoves to keep us going whilst he got the gite heating working, so we weren't too bad. Now the electricians have done 95% of their work, as have the plumbers, and the remainder will be finished when we've done our bit on panelling the walls. 'Done' doesn't mean that it all looks beautiful, though. We have wallpaper hanging off the walls, great big holes in the plaster/walls, cables hanging from the ceiling and piles of stones on the floor!. Not what I ever thought the word 'done' would refer to.

But, we do have radiators that are warm and lights that work, so that's a fantastic improvement! We are planning to sleep in the main house for Christmas Eve so our Christmas present will be to wake up and shower in our 'new' (i.e. half finished) bathroom. Given how expensive paint is over here, I can't see us finishing the bathroom until our next visit to the UK which isn't being planned until Easter.

But as the French say, 'petit a petit l'oiseau fait son lit' (little by little the bird makes its bed). And John's just made me a cup of tea so I'll go up to bed and play card games on the ipad!