Everybody needs...

They’re all moving! In this time of financial crisis and House Market plummets, everybody else in our little clutch of outer-village dwellings is moving away. What are they not telling us?

In fact, old Philippe died fairly decisively… the man opposite changed his job… next door but one wants to be near her grandchildren… and two doors down – well, it’s just too sordid to talk about (any more)…

People don’t seem to move as often in France as in the UK, maybe because it’s such a faff. When you leave, you empty the house completely – curtains and rails, handy picture hooks, light fittings with bulbs (although they did leave us a solitary 40w on a scary bit of wire).

George and I landed in this unrecognisably bleak shell one freezing December night straight from final solicitor’s signings to find also that gas, electricity and water were switched off. With our furniture arriving next day, we got wine, water, candles and edibles from the village shops (mercifully open till 7pm), toasted our little cave and shared a sleeping bag, wearing every jumper we’d packed into the one case.

Next morning, our great big van arrived at seven thirty, having demolished a string of Christmas lights negotiating the village. (Perhaps nobody would know it was us…). There followed a frenzy of organising gas, electricity and water – the wherewithal for tea being paramount if we wanted our stuff unpacking...

With daylight we found not only our two cellars, but keys thereto, and the nice man from the water company patiently explained where the stop tap was. (Had we been able to see it the night before, we could apparently have unleashed that utility right away). Once we did unleash it, the water from the kitchen tap went into overdrive-flow and wouldn’t stop – switched on or not.

We then had visits from gas and electricity; French utilities insist on coming to inspect new customers for unfortunate tendencies and out-of-date equipment (which they find), then they tell you to get hold of a private contractor because they wouldn’t touch that apparatus with a barge pole.

In spite of all this, though, most seem to approach moving house with a gallic shrug; presumably they’re resigned to spending several months unscrewing everything because they know the place they’re going will also be devoid of content. Unless you count twenty years-worth of empty wine bottles, rusty garden implements and a gestapo greatcoat that we unearthed later.

Our current neighbours are exuberantly friendly and I’m sure we’ll miss them, but it’ll be exciting to see who’ll take their place. Our estate agent noted with hilarity that English people always ask "what are the neighbours like?" What’s so funny?

Admittedly, you have to try and glean true meanings behind the inevitable “lovely”, "salt of the earth" (or baffled “Pfouff” in France), but pleasant neighbours are a huge bonus. Even Unpleasant, you’ll have to communicate with them sometime, if only to borrow an emergency plaster or to extricate your cat from their dog…

Oh lord, the pets! Now how are they all going to get on?...

Grumpy Old Bun

Feeling gloomy and neglected in the dismal springtime, our aged houserabbit Olly had a cunning plan: pretend to be ill and get pampered to death.


And our aim was exactly that because, just like Roland before him, he suddenly lost almost all the use of his back legs. Like Roland therefore, he wouldn't last much longer; we must make his final days very happy. We began showering him with favourite greens and oats, letting him select only the colourful bits of his dry mix, and giving him constant attention until his body gently gave up.


It is two months now. His appetite is greater than ever, he loves the pampering, and he has perfected methods of making demands; he only has to raise his head and glower and we rush over to proffer a banana chip and stroke his furry brow. If we have misunderstood his demand, he growls like a bear. If we hold his parsley incorrectly, he snarls and gives us a nip. From time to time he even manages to convey a martyr'd, "No, you go - I'll be alright..."


We're uneasy about inviting anyone to the house since, in spite of daily dunking of his nethers, the fragrance of bun is all-pervading. (You can always tell when someone's trying to hold their breath).


What do we do? Two months ago we had the trauma of imminent loss; now we have the trauma of perpetual hanging-in-there.

Oh damn! He'll probably leave us out of his Will now.

Decrepitude

The signs of advanced middle-age (at 54) can no longer be ignored. I've started wearing my reading-glasses on a string, and DON'T CARE. And I've been rapturising all week about my latest clothing purchase - a Pair of Comfy Slippers. (Look - my Betty Boop feathery ones just weren't sensible, OK? - I kept tripping over them).

And I've started referring to anonymous people on the end of the phone as "bloody twelve-year-olds" - irrefutable evidence that I'm a grumpy old sod.

But is it always without reason?

We had a letter from our bank in London this week saying they'd tried to contact us without success and could we phone them as soon as possible. (Posted, however, with a second class inland stamp and therefore five days old).

Card theft? Identity theft? God! Would there be anything left? We phoned immediately to try and save the dregs, to be greeted by a chirpy adolescent from Eastenders saying "Oh, hello Dolores, just a review really - d'you think you could pop in, Dolores? Ooooh, yeees, the address is in France, isn't it? What's the weather like there, Dolores?..."

It gladdens the heart, doesn't it, to know that one's diminishing dosh is in the hands of such dynamic brains?

Luckily my brain is too addled to worry.

The Trouble with Cherries

If you’ve ever seen Woody Allen’s film "Sleeper", you may remember the expanding pudding that escapes from the pan and keeps on growing in a bulging palpitating mass while he tries to kill it with a big stick.


A scene brought vividly back to life in our own kitchen this week by George’s Cherry Clafoutis. (Eggs, milk, spattering of flour and Lots of Fruit, festered in the oven for a while).


We did have LOTS of fruit left over from an unusually bumper crop. The trouble with cherries is that they all come at once – on everybody’s trees.


Everyone we know is pink with cherry-surfeit, and the streets are filled with people muttering around distractedly, begging strangers to take… maybe a few, then? Sometimes they’ll just leave a huge box-full on a doorstep, ring the bell and run away.


We do the same, and our Lovely Neighbours opposite give us VATS of home-made jam in return, then I make them scones. Which are a novelty over here, but surprisingly popular when tried.


When last week we’d thrust our cherries on everyone we could, George decided to use up the excess by making a Clafoutis. Since he has this ailment whereby he can only cook in platoon-size servings, the excess has indeed been used up. Transformed into a bulging palpitating mass of which Woody Allen would be frightened, and that anyone who ventures over our threshold will be eating for the next month.


By which time, we’ll be well into… The PEACHES!

Whither, Frangipani?

George has just returned from his daily inspection of The Frangipani Project.

Always a disappointment.

It seemed a good idea at the time. We'd had a thrilling visit to the local Garden Festival – trampolines, chess-piece plants, musical features, squirting water features, huge bouncing balls just like that ancient cult TV series whose name I’ve forgotten... (except, not self-propelled).

Inspired and channelled irresistibly to the Shop, we wandered round for hours like kids at Christmas. So many wonderful books, plants, ideas and amazing garden stuff to transform our own bit of green – how to choose?

In the end I plumped for some amusing and imaginative greetings cards, and George got a packet of Frangipani Seeds. The picture on the box was beautifully colourful, and you can use its vivid flowers to make those rather fetching welcome garlands - so redolent of its exotic native climes, and a joy for anyone in the grim Arrivals Surge at Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Unfortunately, George’s hours of sowing and devoted caring for these seeds in a specially-recycled plastic kiwi fruit container, has borne neither fruit nor frange. Maybe six months isn’t long enough for them to hit the surface.

To deepen his gloom, today’s inspection included a frenzied tussle with our first snake of the garden. In fact it was Sabrina-Cat who was tussling, and the poor snake was probably a baby, being only six inches long and half an inch in diameter. So it was the cat who George was trying to belabour about the ears with a big stick.

Since arriving in France, we’ve often been warned about the vicious vipers who love long grass and can’t wait to leap out at you and take a chunk. First forays into our undergrowth were therefore tentative, but a wise friend said just warn them you’re there and they’ll run off. So we stamped our feet, sang hearty songs and thrashed around with garden hoes. This was ludicrously exhausting in a 40 degree summer, and we decided to let them go ahead and bite. They’ve never been tempted.

Until now – seemingly tantalised by the half-buried perfume of George's Project. Do snakes eat frangipani seeds, or will they fiendishly lie in wait for the first juicy shoots to peep through?

Or will the cats just dig it up and piddle all over it as usual? Whither, Frangipani-Project?. And to what end?

Tick Trauma

Removal of Ticks

Step 1: Decide that the curious lump you’ve been idly stroking from time to time on Algenon-the-Cat’s neck should perhaps be investigated in case (god forbid!) it’s a Tick.

Step 2: It’s a TIIIIICK! And so is the Curious Lump on his left flank.

Step 3: George goes on the Net to find out what to do about it, having received and forgotten masses of advice on the subject since we’ve lived here (all of which was conflicting).

Step 4: Find masses more conflicting advice. Decide to pull the bloody thing off.


Do we have ticks in England, our Old Country? I don’t remember ever hearing about them, let alone worrying that one might be lurking in wait for our armpits as we strolled across the fields to the pub.

But they certainly live here in this green and pleasant zone of the Loire - we know people who’ve been afflicted!

What to do? Some say you have to twist them out ANTI-clockwise. Others say it MUST be clockwise. Or “touch it with a lighted cigarette”, or “NO, that’s last thing you should do – splosh it in alcohol”…

So today we seized the disgusting tiny grey wineskin of a thing by its neck-end with a pair of tweezers and gently tugged. Algenon howled like a werewolf, freed a paw and sliced my finger open.

Little tinker.

After another tug the tick’s horrid little hooks became apparent and we went on unleashing thousands more hooks until I managed a successful twist (in all directions) and it suddenly jerked out.

Where the hell did it go? There followed a sort of juggling-with-red-hot-potato interlude trying to catch the thing without touching it.

We managed eventually, and did the same with the second tick. They’re currently both festering at the bottom of a cup of meths – Hah!

So… how d’you know when they’re dead, then?

Hooray for Bollywood!

Was thrilled this morning when new DVD arrived – How to Find Enormous Joy in Bollywood Dance. Or something like that - my latest way to get fit-ish without noticing the effort.

There have been other attempts – bike, trampoline, hula-hoop, skipping-rope… to name but seven. And recently George and I took up yoga, urged into it by an enthusiastic devotee who no longer has a bad back.

In fact I did try it fifteen years ago, when the agonising slowness put me off – now that suits me perfectly. Specially the lying down imagining a little cloud floating round one’s bits. Although George and I don’t always recognise the bits in French, particularly when they dim the lights and you can’t see anyone else’s. Unfortunately, the flotation-tank tranquility of our first lesson was constantly interrupted by my stage-whispered hints to George: “Left leg UP!” “Arms above HEAD!”

Anyway, it’s great how it makes you feel very bendy and three feet taller, so I sent off for a yoga video for extra practice. Various Bollywood ones came up while searching on yoga, and when you think of those terrific films like Monsoon Wedding and Guru, you can’t help wanting to try the dancing and be able to do that amazing disjointed thing with your neck.

So, the DVD came today and on first run-through I’m only slightly discouraged. There is no doubt that for anyone with arms like a swan’s neck and the grace of one gliding through the water, it would be easy.

Oh well, at least I can “draw a circle with my bottom” as the Bollywood star suggests, (that's always been handy), so the hip movements are a doddle. Probably the next step should be to discard my generous joggers and buy some shimmery fluid pants and some hand jewellery – being dressed more the part must help.

Or maybe I should try tennis.

♫ And the grass is as high as... ♫♫

... the eartips of a slightly worried cat doing his morning rounds.

But wielding the enormous mower is George's job as luckily, I'm far too fragile. In fact, he's wielding it right now, and I've poked about a bit this morning in our quite colourful kitchen garden, ie the small bit outside the kitchen. So, we're okay for another six months, then.

The past few weeks have been splendid - things are growing but not rampantly, bees are buzzing but not fearsomely.

We're actually a little wary of bees since the Bee-Trauma. Soon after we moved here, these little bumbly creatures discovered not only the joys of our attic, but also the thrill of squeezing through crevices in the ceiling and frightening the hell out of us. Bees are wonderful, but not when bombarding us Hitchcock-like all over the house. Well, except for the grubby space under the stairs where we keep the emergency bucket, but that space ain't big enough for the both of us.

During our first months in France, domestic problems (specially anything to do with plumbing) were made worse by not knowing who to call. So with the bees we did what we always did then and panicked round to our very nice neighbours. They went to fetch the Pompiers, who deal with everything from raging infernos to tetchy cats stuck down a hole.

As for the bees, the Chief Pompier took one look at our frenzied hordes and said he'd come back later. Apparently bees are not so angry in the evening.

Meanwhile, however, George had an unfortunate accident involving his left eye, the metal rod of a chair-back, shards of glass and lots of blood. So that day we met not only the Pompiers but also the SAMU - you phone them when you're having a medical emergency and they are GREAT.

Calm and friendly, they patched George's eye and lowered my hysteria level enough to let me chase the ambulance to the nearest hospital - ranting away to myself, gnawing fingers to the knuckle, thrashing about trying to find the hazards button, but Driving. When we finally got there, George was as calm as they were, so they thrust me into another room (softly cushioned) and locked me in.

Anyway, they removed the shards, stitched him up, and let us out. And lo! When we got home, the bees had gone. Our neighbours told us that shortly after our departure they had surged out of the attic in a huge droning swarm, and shot off up the road.

Maybe they weren't having as much fun without bombardees, or maybe they couldn't stand all that gore in the washbasin.

Rabbits we have known

Gave the rabbit a toxic-powder dousing this morning. It's to keep his fur beautiful and free of tiny creatures, but he hates it so we don't do it enough so he looks like an old carpet. A happy old carpet, though.

We've had house-rabbits for years because they're funny and fiendishly clever. We used to have one who slept across our bedroom doorway all night, popping up and downstairs to his litter tray as necessary. When the cats first met him, one of them took a swaggering swipe across his nose and he bit her briskly and deeply on the ankle. Since then, rabbits reign.

When we came to France we had two. They hated each other because we had been wrongly sold a baby male to keep the existing male company when his female died. Naturally the old male took great offence at this pointless interloper, and they spent a year ripping each other into bloodied pieces.

However, our move to France involved an agonising ten-hour drive with two cats and two buns in the back of a very tiny car, George and I snarling at each other every time we got lost and me hyperventilating my way down the wrong side of the road. When we finally got here the rabbits were too miserable even to heave themselves out of the travel-boxes.

But next morning... they were so thrilled to have come through this hideous trauma together that they fell rapturously in love, and were inseparable till the elder died last year.

We've decided not to get another, so Final Bun spends a lot of his time companionably doing whatever we're doing. Every so often he flings himself on his back with eyes closed and legs waving in the air - a sure sign of bunny delight.

He likes it when we do it, too.

Village Shops

Did the village shops today. Before we arrived in France, I had this dreamy vision of strolling down each morning for our daily baguette and exchange of cheery repartee in the bar. This was not immediately the case - I was so embarrassed at the inadequacies of ancient school French that I wanted instead to stroll down to the river and jump in it.

However, the enormous warmth and encouragement of just about everybody we've ever met here made our plunges into conversation a heck of a lot easier. Several years on, we still make ludicrous mistakes but nobody minds and I don't get anguished. Now we confidently gabble away to captive audiences in the butcher, baker, bar, grocer and post office, unstoppable until they manage to back their way to the door, or just fall over in a deep trance. (We have a similar effect at parties).

The shopkeepers have always been so kind in helping us to integrate - "The Annual Dinner Dance is coming up"... "Don't forget the Bike Ride on Saturday"... . What's best in the village shops, though, is the masses of advice we're given: what's in all the wonderful breads, who grew these rosy apples, and as for the meat... the butcher only needs to start on "what to do with beef cheeks" to induce a bombardment of age-old family recipes from all the other customers. We've tried every one - after a few hours of festering, beef cheek becomes succulent and flavoursome and a definite favourite of ours. (Ghastly though the idea was when first confronted).

They are generous in their praise of English food, too. The baker told us all the family really liked George's Christmas Cake, and yesterday couldn't wait to show off a "traditional English Easter cake" that someone makes her every year because she loves it. (There are two or three other UK couples in the vicinity). I had no idea what it was, so she made enquiries and today informed us its name is Hot Cross Bun! Good Heavens - I always used to buy supermarket special packs of shiny cellophaned clones - how was I supposed to know the real thing is sort of brown and lumpy?

Anyway, off to assemble some of these fresh provisions into lunch.

The Joy of Eating

Breakfast in the conservatory for the first time this year. Streaming sun, bursting tufts of blossom, bluetits battling away over the grease-blobs in the maple tree - Enormous Joy!

Apparently you shouldn't feed birds in the summer in case they forget what they're supposed to eat and become bloated fat-burger addicts. Soon, then, we'll have to settle for the sight of the worms being heaved elastically out of the soil and snails being smashed against the path until their shells explode. Nature IN THE RAW!

Anyway, enough of the gore. We'd never had a conservatory before - we were lucky that this one was already built when we bought the house four years ago, because it's such a great room. From spring onwards, that is. In winter it's a constant minus 20C and is useful mainly to pin the cats down and stop them bouncing their sodden and splat-covered feet all over the settee.

We've had friends round for two lunches in there during globally-warmed-up March. At least, the first was warm. The second time, people looked horrified at the prospect of leaving the cosy sitting room and asked if they could have their coats and cardis back. They bravely persevered when we brought two more heaters in, and once they could control their quivering cutlery, tucked in to Rosbif and Yorkshire Pudding with gusto. Not to mention Spotted Dick.

George and I love to cook French-style but it's good fun dishing up English stuff sometimes, specially if the guests have never tried it before (so can't compare). The first few times were pretty scary, though. Specially as our home layout is open and all kitchen traumas are shared graphically with people who are going to have to eat the results.

But all you have to do is wimper or start wacking yourself with a ladle, and someone is immediately at your shoulder with handy hints and a tissue. Did you know, for example, that a 1Kg joint of beef only needs 20mins at 220C? I'm sure in the UK I'd have left it in for about a day and a half. (We compromised and did 30mins and it worked beautifully)!

I know - Why don't we open a restaurant?