Back after the winter

Three weeks ago it was -7C at La Basse Cour.

Today it was 15C and my shorts made a reappearance having not been seen on site since October:

Adam is away with Amanda and Ambrose in Chamonix for the week so we are doing some grounds work. We are building a terrace in front of the house that will overlook the field - due to the fall of the ground this will have a retaining wall which needs foundations and steel supports:

 

And, we are hosting a new addition to the team for a week. 

Let me introduce you to Mango, Amanda and Adam's dog:

The cats were originally disgusted that we had brought home a dog but now they simply haughtily ignore him. Cats have a remarkable ability to instinctively know whether dogs are on a lead or not and then to sit approximately 2 metres beyond the maximum reach of the dog. Fortunately, Mango has quickly learnt that barking at them takes energy and has no effect.

La Taupe

Going to the cinema is popular in France and there are cinemas in most towns of any size - certainly towns here that are much smaller than Fleet have thriving cinemas. So on Saturday we went to see La Taupe (The Mole) - this is released in the UK as "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ..." and has received Oscar nominations including one for Gary Oldman. It's been released in France for about three weeks but the early evening screening we went to was still full. As I've written previously the challenge for us in finding films is to search for one in VOSTF (version originale - sous-titres francaises) and this means we get the soundtrack in English and the words in French - useful for improving my knowledge of some, shall we say, colloquial words!

The film was released in the UK in September but only made it to France in February this year, probably as a result of its Oscar nominations. Great film, highly recommended and a strong performance from Gary Oldman at George Smiley - it feels like George Clooney's year for best actor this year but Oldman's performance could run him close.

Mark Kermode's review is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39IqIpXJvFk

New roof at La Basse Cour

After just over two frantic weeks of work the roof at LBC is finished. Gérard and Aurélian have done a great job, removing all the main structure and replacing it with a new, straight roof in slate with elegant zinc drainpipes and gutters. The roofers have worked very hard and what I find really impressive is their ability to handle very large heavy work with chainsaws as well as the fine detail of cutting angles on slates perfectly and fixing them with fine copper nails.

Here's a picture taken by Barbara of the Anglo-French team over coffee, vienoisseries et tartines when the temperature was -3C:

L to R: Tim, Judith, Gérard, Michel (no gloves!), Aurélian and Steve

And some pictures of the finished roof:

Gérard's last job was to put up our new girouette:

Winter Pictures

A few pictures from the recent cold dry weather:

-8C in the potager

Another cold evening

Frost on the post by the pond

The pond with a thick layer of ice

Frost on the grass

La Vague Froid

In retrospect, of course, it was never a great idea to strip the roof off in January. Not when the antiquated water supply pipe we rely on still runs along the wall for the whole length of the barn. Not when there's concrete that needs to be mixed and used. Not when a massive high pressure system linked Brittany all too  intimately with Siberia ......

Yesterday was the fourteenth day running that we had an overnight temperature below zero and it was the coldest with the thermometer recording -9C at 8am. Local opinion on the weather was varied "c'est polaire!" at the Bricocash checkout; "c'est glaciale!" at the Leroy-Merlin checkout; "c'est froid, froid, froid ...." from Gérard the roofer when he arrived at 8:30. Aurélian, his assistant, didn't offer an opinion but made directly for the soldering rig and fired it up to start hot soldering the downpipes - probably the only warm job available. Despite the cold the roof has progressed very quickly and will be finished in one more day.

North side of the barn roof

Slating mainly finished on the lean-to

South side of the roof finished with three new velux windows

The cats have hibernated in their baskets in front of the fire through the cold spell, they got a nasty shock yesterday when the chimney was swept - in France roofers (couvreurs) are responsible for chimney sweeping and Gérard offered to do ours while he was up on the roof. Smudge has only just  recovered from the surprise of a brush suddenly appearing in the stove next to her basket.

Gérard sweeping the chimney

The water pipes froze in the barn last Thursday - we had survived -8C last year but that was when the barn had a roof and the pipes were in the ceiling that no longer exists. I set to in the area that I realised had frozen and found and repaired a split pipe but by then the whole system has frozen solid. Bad timing as Barbara, her sister Judith and husband Steve were due out on the Friday. Being able to pump water up from the well saved us from having to stay in a hotel and a slight thaw freed the ice in the pipes at about midnight on Saturday night. Fortunately Steve somehow heard the water spraying from two more bursts in the pipes and turned off the supply before we had more than two inches of water in the barn.

Bienvenue a la piscine ,,,,,,

So, La vague froid (= the cold snap) has had quite an effect, Here are the temperatures at La Basse Cour for the year so far, one year ago the maximum day temperature was 13C, yesterday it was 1C!

Bons Mots

One of the things I like about the French people and their language is their ready willingness to prefix words with "Bon".

Bonjour, bonsoir, bon journée are fine but I've been collecting other common, not so common and frankly bizarre uses:

• Bon fin de journée/ soirée/ weekend - from everyone almost all the time
• Bon travaux - (Good working) - from Matthieu at the quarry
• Bon continuation - (Good continuation)- Matthieu's alternative good wish to go with another trailer full of sand or gravel
• Bon courage - (good luck, although I think it really means good luck as you are clearly mad) - from French neighbours or delivery men when they see the status of our project
• Bon plantation - (good planting ..... ?!) from the woman on the checkout at the nursery centre
• Bon route - anytime getting into the car
• Bon appetit - I struggle to find the correct English for this. "Enjoy your meal" isn't right, "good eating" not correct and a bit clumsy. It's really just a good wish to enjoy that most important thing in French life, good food.

I'm still collecting, followers are welcome to contribute any others. French readers are welcome to correct any of my misunderstandings or mistranslations !!

Roof progress

"Tu as peur - tu n'aime pas la hauteur!"

Gérard Le Ray the roofer peered over one side of the ridge of the roof and saw Adam on our roof ladder. He is correct - neither Adam or I liked working on the roof with nothing underneath us and Adam was much better than me. Adam didn't hear Gérard as he was concentrating too much on not looking down. I should add that Gérard made this comment after simply walking up our main roof frame without any ladder or support of any kind and a big drop on either side. Roofers clearly are from a different race to normal people.

Gérard and Aurelian his apprentice/ assistant arrived on Thursday lunchtime and started work at a furious pace boarding and felting the appenti (lean-to) and then removing the old chevrons (rafters) and pannes (purlins) and proceeding to fit the new roof frame. That sounds easy but it involves fitting very large (80 x 225) timbers that are hard enough to lift at ground level but all this was done at height. Although I watched them do it I still have no idea how they managed it.

The lean-to boarded and felted

Gérard walking up the main A frame of the roof

Roofers are from a different world !

Lifting the new roof timbers up to height

Aurélian and Gérard install the new pannes

New purlins installed

The new roof starts to take shape

We were blessed with dry weather over the period that Adam and I were removing the old roof, unfortunately that changed on Monday this week and, with no roof at all on the barn, we now have a small pool inside the barn on the floor. Adam and I called a halt to working in the rain but the roofers worked at height until it was virtually dark at 6:20.

The weather has turned very cold now - -5C at 8am today and even colder forecast for tonight - Gérard turned up with Aurélian and Michel at 8:25 this morning to start to lay the slates. Michel was 60 on Sunday and he's been working in sub-zero conditions without gloves. "They make the old guys tough in Brittany eh" Gérard explained as we had our 10:30 coffee and pain chocolates - it was still -3C. The slates are going on as I write this: