Quiz Question

I was reflecting on the last post and remembered a bizarre statistic I read last month.

Ask a French person the six cities with the largest number of French nationals living there  and they’ll happily run through Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and so on but will they get the sixth one?

Scroll down for the answer.

Strangely it’s London!

Rare plumage

On the way back to the UK at Saint Malo I saw several examples of a normally rare sight. Our right hand drive Honda is registered now in France with French plates and a RHD car with French plates betrays its owner as one of the 230,000 Brits now living permanently in France. In the summer it’s a rare sight at the ferry port but, like birds flocking for their annual migration, the pre-Christmas return to the mother country provides the opportunity for multiple sightings and a shared knowledge between the owners; “so, why did you leave then?”

Like so many EU regulations the one on vehicle registration is a bit woolly. Technically, once a vehicle has been in France for six months it should be re-registered, of course this involves une formulaire and various pieces of paper – the essential items for dealing with the bureaucracy here. Equally unsurprisingly many people don’t bother, it’s easy to get a French insurance policy on a foreign registered car and, if the lights are changed, the car will pass a controle technique (=MoT test for UK readers) so provided the gendarmes don’t take an interest why go to the trouble of re-registering? My Dutch friend Isabelle, who’s lived in France for years and speaks English so well she teaches it in Nantes, still drives an old Golf with Dutch plates. “Just too much trouble” she told me when I asked her why she wasn’t on French plates.

Even woollier is the EU law on driving licences. In a strange European version of the Bermuda Triangle my driving licence is currently stateless. The law says that if you change residency between EU member states you may apply for a driving licence in your new country of residence (the “may” was added to “reduce unnecessary bureaucracy”). I’ve chosen not to apply for a French licence and so I’m driving legally in France on a British licence – so far so good. But, in a truly bizarre twist, DVLA won’t issue a UK licence to a foreign address and so my old UK licence continues in a sort of limbo state. Worst of all, as the address shown is my old UK address and I may be committing an offence in the UK if I drive in the UK with a UK licence that doesn’t show my current address, but I’m absolutely fine in France or any of the other 23 or 25 or however many it is now member states. This is so complicated that I, like many other Brits in France, drive round with a printout of the EU Statutory Instrument in my car in English and French as a kind of “starter for 10” with the gendarmerie should we ever be stopped.

Might have “reduced unnecessary bureaucracy” but it’s not helped the paper shortage ;o)

Plastered - Again

Regular readers will be aware how significant a thing plaster has become in my life. I’ve blogged before about French plaster and British plaster, one thing they have in common is that they are both made from gypsum and have been in general use for a few decades. Another common feature is that they don’t deal well with damp and moisture – at some time or another everyone’s been in a damp house where the plaster is coming off the walls.

So let me introduce you to the original plaster that has been in use for thousands of years. Lime based plaster has been around for a long time, it was used by the Romans and then came back into fashion in Britain in the seventeenth century. It was traditionally the preserve of rich people and applying it was a skilled job. Lime plaster differs from modern plasters in several ways; it’s much slower to “go off”, it goes on in a much thicker layer and it is moisture permeable which means it allows the walls to breathe – vital on a stone wall with no damp proof course. One end of La Basse Cour was used as a house whilst the animals were housed at the other end and here we found some parts of the walls that had been originally rendered in a sandy lime plaster and then painted with limewash.

We had decided that the lower floor would be plastered on top of the hemp render using traditional lime and so Lloyd and the guys (Lewis, Steve and Geoff) from eco-renovations came back in to plaster out the downstairs.

Starting to apply the plaster in the (future) kitchen area

Finished wall in the kitchen area

Finishing the north wall plaster

Starting work on the south wall

Build Update

It's a while since I did a build update and things are moving pretty fast so here goes:

Downstairs
We've finished installing the ceilings downstairs and they've been plastered.

The problem with old stone buildings is that they were built in a time when people had different expectations about what constituted comfortable living. Of course, most of our building wasn't built to be lived in at all and although stone walls are great at keeping things cool in the summer they are truly terrible at keeping heat in for the other six (or in the case of 2012) ten months of the year. The modern approach is to line the walls with glass fibre insulation and plasterboard (good for mice and it stops the walls breathing), a modern approach using traditional materials is to apply a coating of lime, sand and hemp (or linseed) straw (no room for mice and fully breathable). The issue of breathing is important as old stone walls are invariably damp and need a way to transfer the moisture out of the wall fabric.

So, after we'd finished the ceilings, Lloyd Davey of Eco Renovations ( http://www.ecorenovationsbretagne.com/)  came in  and, using a high pressure application system, applied an 8 cm layer of lime render and hemp to the downstairs walls.

Lloyd puts the chopped hemp straw into the compressor

Lewis (Lloyd's son) applying the first layer of hemp

North wall partly completed

Hemp insulation completed around one of our windows

We first met Lloyd two years ago when he ran a weekend course in natural building methods and the information we gained then has helped us make some of the difficult "modern or traditional" decisions in our build. The walls take three weeks to dry and so we moved upstairs to frame out the roof space ready for the insulation and upstairs ceiling construction.

Gérard, who built our new roof, had constructed a straight and level roof on the old A frames. We then built a wooden framework underneath the roof and used it to support two layers of glass fibre insulation. This was another modern or "eco" materials decision - an eco approach would have been to construct sealed boxes in the roof space and blow in re-cycled cellulose fibres to provide the insulation barrier. Unfortunately in this case, as in the heating and some other choices we've been faced, eco solutions are still far more expensive than more current technologies - by a factor of 2 in this case.

The wooden roof frame receives the first layer of insulation

Velux window showing framing and final insulation layer

The "cathedral" style roof - 3m80 at the highest point (that's 12ft 9in in old money)

After the insulation is finished the next stage is to board out using large plasterboard panels. The rooms finally start to take shape at this point:

Mini lucarne overlooking the open barn

The ceiling of the double height mezzanine bay boarded and prepared for plastering

The ceiling above the main barn window

We knew the barn was big when we bought it and I've written before about the huge volumes of material we seem to be consuming but this latest part of the project has reminded me of what a huge job we have taken on. We've installed a whole trailer load of insulation in the floor, the insulation and wood for the roof took another lorry to deliver it from the builders' merchants and we've now used 80 plasterboard sheets in the ceilings, each one 8ft by 4ft and weighing 15kg. 

Tomorrow we start plastering again upstairs .....

100 Not Out

This is the hundredth post since I started this blog 23 months ago.

In those two years I've worn a tie (my normal daytime attire before  moving here) only twice - here's one of them:

Thanks to all those who've read the blog (including the web trawlers from Russia who seem to be particularly interested in what I write) and those who've commented on what I've written and encouraged me.

Better get started on the next 100 posts ......

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Sometimes I think we've been working on this project too long .... 

"Do they celebrate Bonfire Night in France?"

"Er, well Adam, why do you think the French would celebrate the failure of a Catholic plot to kill the King of England that was supported by the king of France ?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nevertheless November the fifth is memorable for us as it's the day that Smudge, our eldest cat, came to live with us in 1998.

Smudge in a typically "relaxed" mood

Smudge had turned up at Barbara's school two weeks' beforehand and had been hanging around evidently hungry. None of the children knew whose cat it was and, with a big public fireworks display due at the school, Barbara decided to bring her home.

Our vet thought she was about 18 months old at the time (although she could have been older) so she's at least fifteen and a half now. Like many more mature people she spends much of her time dozing in the sun, snoozing on her favourite chair or lounging in front of the fire. Smudge has always liked her food although nowadays her teeth give her some trouble so she prefers her food mixed with warm water - more soup than crunchy cat food! Memorably, we watched once as she taught our other cat Jess to catch mice.

When Smudge came to France she seemed to find a new lease of life as well as a whole new set of places she could snooze in the sun. Although she's not very active in mouse hunting these days she still contributes the odd kill (we know they are Smudge's as they haven't been eaten ...... ).

If I was an Author ....

Peter Mayle came to France to write a novel - he finally managed to publish his novel Hotel Pastis four years after being distracted by the challenges of living in France and writing A Year in Provence. Michael Wright came to the Limousin in France to keep sheep and ended up writing C'est La Folie see http://www.lafolie.co.uk/ for more information.

I'm didn't come to France to write a book and I'm not planning to write one - but if I did it would probably be called "Plaster - just why Britain and France are so /different".

I've written before in this blog about the differences between French and British plaster and how this seems to be a metaphor for some of the wider cultural differences between the two countries. We've been plastering again but this time using imported British plaster. Getting the contrast between the areas in the building that are new and sharp with the rougher finish of the existing original walls is a challenge. I'm sure that Kevin McCloud  would have a view on this but what we've decided to do is make the new bits smooth and modern and the older original parts of the building will have a more natural look. Going to one extreme or the other would be wrong (risking on one hand a faux vintage look or a modern interior that looks like it's been transplanted into a 250 year old building) so we're walking the tightrope of compromise.

Hence, after doing the old lean-to in French plaster we rumbled back from the UK in August with three quarters of a tonne of British boardfinish plaster on the trailer. This was to plaster the two end walls and the ceilings downstairs so, nearly two years after fitting the ceilings in the house we were back on the board lifter to install the barn ceilings. The boardlifter had also come back on the trailer from the UK and was a special 4.5m high lift version to (hopefully) allow us to install the high ceilings upstairs. Even Gérard, our roofer and increasingly our general building advisor, was impressed when I told him what we'd paid for it.

Barbara, Board lifter and Adam

The ceilings went up pretty well considering the large area we were covering and so to the plastering. Using British plaster requires organisation and timing and so naturally Barbara was in charge of the organisation and prepared her work area carefully:

 Fortunately Adam is pretty good at plastering and manages to cover about three times the area I can and so we managed to complete all the work in just over five (pretty intense) days.

Adam "Laying On" above the fireplace

End wall with first plaster coat applied

Finishing the doorway to the house

Before and after plastering around a beam

The kitchen plastered !

British and French plaster are different, neither one is "better" as they produce (at least in our hands) different finishes. The pink British stuff is smooth and flat, the French white version ends up a bit more rustic (ie: rough). But - the British version is less than half the cost of the French one and, because it goes on much thinner, probably costs about a quarter the price per metre squared.

Not for the first time I find that we are importing things that are available locally but, even allowing for the extra cost of running a trailer back to the UK, are much cheaper than buying the French version. As we want sharp, flat areas in places we can justify this on decorative grounds as well as cost ones but I find myself worrying either:

a) we haven't spent enough time sourcing local materials to find the correct suppliers (but actually I think we have)
b) there's a serious problem of uncompetitiveness in France that will surely cause the economy to stagger even more in the future.

Meanwhile the barn looks good and the word processor remains waiting .....

New resident at La Basse Cour

I got a big surprise when I went upstairs in the barn this afternoon:

A beautiful Barn Owl (L'Effraie des clochers, chouette effraie ou dame blanche) had taken up roost in the A frame. He or she had got in through the post holes that are still open on the gable end and was sleeping the day away quietly.

Aren't we lucky to be able to see such a beautiful animal so close .....

Sunshine at Last!

It's been truly miserable weather over the last three weeks. We've been stuck under a persistent damp front with rain falling at some point nearly every day. Hockey on Sunday on our home pitch was another first for me - a 5m x 5m section of the pitch was under 2 inches of water - it took skill to hit the ball over the pond from restarts!

On a positive note we can work inside the barn now without being particularly disturbed by the weather and the measures we've taken against the damp on the north wall have had a good test.

The sun came out on Sunday and Barbara took some great pictures of the harvest and a cat asleep in the salad box - that's a yellow card with serious punishment for any re-offence!

Some of the courgettes that "got away"

Squashed Salad

Gardening - Challenges and Sucesses

Despite the amount of time that we've spent on the barn the potager has been productive again this year. The weather was cold, wet and extremely challenging through the Spring - as we all agreed at Claudette and Jean's summer garden party - and in July it got worse. We had multiple sowing failures of beans, spinach and parsnips and everything is weeks later than last year. In 2011 we had enough potatoes to get us through to February, this year a devastating attack of blight means that we've just had to buy potatoes again. Some things did very well however, particularly the soft fruit and we had great crops of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

Blackberry in flower

This Blackberry was originally growing two houses ago in Farnborough, a root was then taken which is growing strongly in Suffolk at Judith and Steve's house and a further rooting made it over to France in 2010 on the removal truck. This one produced nearly 25 pounds of fruit this year and yet another rooting is growing ready to be transferred to the top potager this winter.

Despite the failures and problems we have had some spectacular successes. Last year we couldn't grow courgettes at all - this year they've been brilliant:

 Almost all the root crops have done well; beetroot and celeriac particularly so. The peach tree produced a large crop although about three weeks later than in previous years and the ever reliable walnut is beginning to drop another large crop of walnuts although again it's about three weeks later than last year.

Saving the best to last - our pumpkin and butternut squash crop has been excellent:

Harvest Day

 Nigel Slater has a great recipe for Pumpkin and Butternut Squash: Nigel Slater Recipe

Our New Neigh .... bour

"Where did that horse come from?"

It's a reasonable question, especially at 7:45 when we came back from our morning walk. When we'd gone out it was dark and when we came back there was a horse in the field at the bottom of our garden.

Neighbours are a relative word for us - Lucian lives opposite us and then his son Dominique and Nicole about 400 yards down the road, then Jean and Claudette a bit further along. But really we are tres rurale as the French say. We often have cows in the fields adjoining us - they have much more character than you might imagine - but once you've seen one you've seen them all really. And cows have a nasty habit of escaping into our garden where they are currently the prime suspects for one of our apple trees that seems to have been nibbled.

So a new neighbour is a big thing for us. And horses seem to be quite rare in the area, certainly I've never seen one on the farms next to us. This one (working name "Champion") is a very elegant tan with a blonde mane. He's showing some wear and tear on his flanks - looks like he's spent the summer in a harness somewhere - but Bertrand (Dominique's son) comes down every morning to groom him and dress his worn spots.

Carrots gratefully accepted

Champion

Due to our rather hemitic life at present as we press on with the ceilings I've not got the chance to find out the story (or Champion's real name) from any of the three generations of our neighbours who are involved with the farm. He's enjoying being in the field next to us and loves galloping around the field at full speed - I've never ridden a horse but there's something really majestic about a horse in full flow.

Build Update

It's just over a year since we started work on the Barn - that's an easy sentence to write and a year into the project we have achieved a lot but still have lots more to do. Being so close to the action makes it difficult to keep a sense of perspective so sometimes it takes a visit from someone who's not seen the barn for a while to remind us what's been achieved. A year ago we were installing steel beams into the barn, this week we are installing insulation and plasterboard ceilings hung from the beams. When the barn is complete no-one will see the steel beams but the ceilings will be in full view and, in some ways, that's the big difference today as we increasingly start to work on items that will be seen. It needs a different kind of mindset; work in millimetres rather than metres, kilogrammes rather than tonnes, single screws rather than hundreds.

We now have windows and doors in the main openings

 

and a new fireplace (with carved granite lintel )  

Both the upstairs end wall (which will be in our bedroom) and the downstairs one have been insulated and boarded ready for plastering

And the upstairs floors have been braced, strengthened and completed ready to support the new ceilings

We have a pretty respectable workshop now - here's Barbara on the crosscut saw :

And Adam's been working on building the new windows for the small windows we didn't get done with the main barn glazing 

As I said at the beginning - very different tasks and skills from what we were doing a year ago .....