49) A new Year begins

Fireworks on New Year's Eve

A rather realistic plastic Father Christmas on display in Auchan  at  Villefneuve  sur Lot

Christmas has been and gone and I realised it is about six weeks since I updated the blog.  Lots has been happening (hence the delay) so I thought I would do a series of random snippets, sketching out what's been going on in our little corner of France.

It's got cold; and frosty.  But no snow so far, just bright stars at night and white hoar frost on the field in the mornings.

The good news is we have a smart (and very expensive) new boiler.  The bad news is at the moment it is only connected to the existing radiators (on the main floor).  Our current bedroom (the only room in the house not being trashed by the building work) is on the top floor (in the tower - four outside walls) along with the bathroom.  Both are FREEZING cold.

There is plenty of work to do and this helps keep us warm, as well as giving the impression progress is being made (engendering feelings of glowing self righteousness).

We found three local lads (with incomprehensible accents) to come and cut down three large trees which had long since died alongside the stream.  The deal was that they would fell them (safely), cut them up into half metre lengths (safely), and then move them up to the "hangar" (safely).  I just couldn't watch.  Monsieur Baussac, our insurance man from AXA, was most insistent when we saw him some months ago that we had cover for third parties injuring themselves on our property.  At the time I thought this was somewhat over the top, but that day I was more than pleased at his foresight.

I thought that the price seemed rather reasonable, but the lads had somewhat underestimated the size of the trees and the scope of the task.  A deputation came to re-negotiate the fee (at least that's what I think they were saying).  I relented and agreed an increase on the condition the job was completed completely.  Only it wasn't (quite).  Two problems.  One of the trunks at the base was thicker than twice the length of their (very dangerous looking) chainsaws (so they couldn't cut through it).  They assured me over the next couple of years it would shrink as it dried out and they would come back and cut it up then.

The other problem was that when one of them started cutting up the last tree to be felled, it turned out there was a nid de frelons inside it.  He insisted they were very dangerous, being the dreaded Asiatic hornets that everyone around here is so exercised about.  Actually they were European hornets (as I explained to him - no red band on the tail - now being something of an expert in the peu lambines).  Despite my new found expertise in the subject, I did have a certain sympathy for his concerns.

I had read somewhere that hornets were much less aggressive than wasps, but the one thing they got really angry and upset about was a threat to their nest.  Given this amiable maniac had cut down the tree containing the nest with a very noisy (and hideously dangerous) chainsaw (they apparently don't like loud noises either), causing it to crash to the ground, and then proceeded to cut it into half metre lengths (with no regard as to whether these cuts might slice up the nest), it was no wonder they were less than pleased and were buzzing all around him.  He insisted I come and see for myself, though I tried (and failed) to explain I was quite happy to take his word for it.  I approached very cautiously but,  to my relief I found most of them  were either dead, dazed, quite possibly deafened, but definitely disorientated.  Our local hero then suggested (gallantly) that perhaps he could come back on a day with a hard frost when the frelons might be a little less active (or perhaps dead).  Une bonne idee! I readily agreed.

As a consequence of this action packed day we now have around 25 tons of logs stored in the hangar, all of which have yet to be split.

Prior to the arrival of our new boiler, our only effective source of heat was a log fire in the salon so our supplies had become quite depleted.  Now we have hours of fun ahead of us turning large slices of tree trunks into usable logs.
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We also had an uninvited guest turn up one day.  This hairy looking creature wandered into the kitchen, clearly having mistaken it (not altogether unsurprisingly) for the hunt kennels.  We quickly surmised he was from the chasse (he had a bell round his neck, a red collar with a telephone number on it, and he smelt of deer and cheap brandy).

The hairy pooch turned out to be quite friendly (despite warnings not to approach it), and it was rather nice to have a dog around again (albeit briefly).  The chasse over here is quite an institution and worthy of a separate blog post to itself.  Suffice it to say that they are very different to the English hunt, and I will attempt to elaborate at a later date.

Neither a truffle nor a cepe

We are convinced that we have truffles on our land, and we are now at the height of the truffle season.  We are in the middle of a famous truffle area but, of course, they grow underground.  Without a dog or a pig they are almost impossible to find.  Tragically, the only person we actually knew with a trained dog was recently murdered.  We did go hunting for cepes (unsuccessfully) and later found out that you won't find cepes and truffles in the same area.  You apparently have cepes where there are chestnut trees.  Truffles are found where there are oaks, or sometimes hazel or juniper, all of which we have in abundance.

The planning department building in Cahors 

Much (too much) of our time has been taken up battling with the infamous French bureaucracy.  This has ranged from car registration, the water board, EDF, telephones and television to health care, business registration and planning issues.  Again this merits a blog spot on its own.  We have traipsed through many long corridors of power, sat for interminable hours waiting our turn in queues (who said queuing was a peculiarly English habit), and all of this in some of the most spectacularly ugly buildings in the region/department/canton/commune.

Above is the planning department building in Cahors.  It is a wholly inappropriate design, in the wrong materials, out of scale and taking no account of the existing historical architecture surrounding it - the planners would never allow it (unless, of course, it was for them).  

At the house, however, it has been a hive of activity - and a veritable magnet for white vans.

......and yellow delivery lorries with their intrepid drivers-cum-crane operators (this bloke was a true artist).

Our two builders started work again the day we got back from England and we are hoping the plumbers may turn up sometime next week.

From scenes of dust and devastation like this one above we have now progressed to............

a more constructive phase - a temporary staircase..........

and the beginnings of walls in the new bedroom.

But what really pleased us was when this chap turned up to empty our ever-so-dodgy septic tank.

What a relief.  Ever since we moved in we had dreaded the moment when this ancient, cracked concrete edifice might collapse and disgorge its contents all over the floor of the barn.  Ugh....................

Our digger man was a real class act; very professional, very sympathique, and with a wry sense of humour.

First the new fosse septique went in, then it was filled with water.................

Next the filter bed was laid (a far cry from the rather archaic brick structure we had in Gressingham), and then everything was covered over with the topsoil which had been carefully kept to one side.  All that was then needed was a sachet of Eparcyl flushed down the loo to really get the thing fermenting nicely.  What a joy.  You find many people living in France become very involved with the whys and wherefores of their fosses septiques and you would not believe the satisfaction we get from a flush of the loo, knowing it's all now going into our brand new super duper multi chambered and officially certified system.

The only downside is the possible effect this may have on our walnut cultivation.  This year we had a spectacular crop from our single lone tree.  When we mentioned this to our neighbour he tapped his nose knowingly and pointed out that the outflow from the old septic tank fed right onto the roots of our walnut tree......

There are also still many eccentricities we continue to discover living in France, some of which puzzle, some exasperate, some are charming and some are wonderfully intriguing.........  We spotted the above in Cahors.  It actually turns out to be a bus stop.  Clearly a somewhat home made bus stop, utilising the wheel of perhaps a defunct bus (the French are very keen on re-cycling).  What really intrigued us, though, was that someone actually thought it might get stolen, so they have chained it to a street sign.

On returning from one of our frequent visits to the Mairie we came across a concrete lorry blocking the road.
There was no other road we could take without a detour of about thirty miles.  We turned the engine off and just sat there as five men spent the next twenty minutes or so to (rather leisurely) spreading the concrete.  We have (had to) become much more patient since living in France.

Finally - we spotted this on a back road between Cezac and L'Hospitalet.  Two blokes building what appears to be a still (presumably to make the brain curdling beverage, eau de vie).  I couldn't help noticing a resemblance to Fletcher and Mr Baraclough from the TV series, "Porridge".  I could just imagine that the bloke on the left had no idea what he had been asked to help build, but the mischievous one on the right obviously had everything worked out nicely.