Flood Defences

I've blogged before (Springtime!) about the groundwater levels around the house, since the major storm on 23rd December we've again been suffering from water seeping out of the ground and coming across the driveway. One of the tasks we've had on our "to-do" list for a while is to get an interceptor drain dug to pick up this water, at the same time we wanted to put a concrete floor in our outbuilding known as "The Grange". We had asked Kevin from Furniss Terrassements back (in 2011 he had laid the flooring in the barn and dug the drainage that has progressively dried out the stone walls).

The weather has been foul of course and the time that Kevin was with us distinguished itself with rain, hail and - bizarrely - two sunny lunchtimes when we could sit outside.

The before picture - as Kevin gets to work the groundwater covers the drive

The new Grange floor installed

As the ground at the back of the Grange slopes up the drainage ditch was deep

The water level in the ground is evident in this picture taken before the drainage pipes were connected

18 tonnes of gravel turned up for the trenches and to re-surface our open area

A big improvement ......

As the drain is connected the water starts to flow ...

And flow and flow ....

As soon as the drain started to work the surface water disappeared all the way along the drive. Of course its hydrographics and physics and somewhere along the way I've probably done the equations to describe what happened, how fast the water flowed and what volume comes out every hour. But still - like machines that harvest peas and how planes fly - knowing the "how" doesn't take away the "wow".

And, after all the rain recently, the drain is still flowing and the drive is still dry.

Blown Away .....

The awful January weather has seamlessly slipped into awful February weather. As I write this the wind and rain are hammering against the windows - again. We have 100 kph winds and 25mm of rain forecast for tonight ....

On Saturday we went to La Baule to watch the France-England rugby match in a bar with the hockey club. Many fields were flooded on the way and the salt marshes looked like lakes (normally they just look like fields with reeds growing in them - I only know they are salt marshes from looking at the map). After we had just missed out 24-26 on another year's bragging rights the television switched to news coverage of the weather; from Biarritz through Bayonne, Aquitaine and into Bretagne the pictures looked almost the same as the ones we had been watching the evening before from Cornwall, Somerset, Wales and Scotland.

There are many historical links between the Atlantic coasts of Britain, Ireland and France. They are all linked by suffering from the same terrible weather as well this winter.

Read in High Places .... ?

It seems that the blog may be attracting a wider readership than I thought.

After my sardonic comments about M. Hollande's press conference - and my willingness to pay for Le President's morning after the night before croissants - we received an advance tax demand. That's the first time we've received that from les impots.

Disappointingly there seems to be a more mundane explanation. Our friends Sue and Steve had received one too for the first time (they've been here for many years) so it seems it's simply the French government trying to prop up its cash-flow to fill the €30 Billion budget gap it's heading for next year.

I will, however, certainly check the blog followers carefully in case the name F. Hollande should appear ;o)

The only way is up ....

Our staircase has been fitted!

The architect had the staircase in a strange place - right in the corner at one end of the barn. It would have meant that to get from the kitchen to the open mezzanine above the kitchen would have involved a 35 metre route march right along the barn and back the same distance. In the end, for all his strong points, we didn't think the architect could do either bathrooms or staircases.

Then we had it half way down the barn in a double-turn arrangement but that made the bedroom shapes really complicated (it's all about 90cm passage widths and turning zones).

So we ended up doing something that initially I didn't want to do, bringing the stairs up in the double height section. However, it's a wonderfully light and contemporary design and works well in the space.

Some pictures as it went in and finished:

 

The only way is down ...

I went to University in September 1979 in the near aftermath of Margaret Thatcher's first election victory. The most popular badges in my first (and probably second) year were variants of "Don't Blame Me - I Didn't Vote For Her".

It was an interesting time ("Interesting" as in the British sense of the word - odd, difficult, challenging - rather than the French sense of the word - attractive, encouraging, desirable).

But at least, for better and often worse, you felt you knew where you were with Margaret Thatcher and the effects of that period still define many of the differences between Britain and France.

Fast forward 28 years to the near aftermath of Nicolas Sarkozy's election as President of the French Republic. I was on my way into the Paris office and was picked up from Charles de Gaulle by a woman taxi driver who, after asking me if I was English, then asked me what I thought of M. Sarkozy.

She then treated me to a 40 minute exposition on how Nicolas Sarkozy had, simply had, to introduce the same labour market changes as Margaret Thatcher had; how he had to abolish the 35 hour week; stop people retiring at 60; reduce benefit payments and free up self-employed people (like her) to generate wealth. I wonder sometimes if she is still driving and, if so, what her line of conversation is today with Brits arriving at the airport.

On to 2012 and the near aftermath of Francois Hollande's election - M. Normal as he styled himself. On the way to hockey I quizzed the other guys in the car on what they thought of their new president, I'll use initials to protect the innocent ..... A (an accountant) said "we might as well leave the country, if we stay it'll be higher taxes and more higher taxes and an economic recession. What's it like in England". D (an electrical technician) exploded in a stream of invective using a number of words I had to write down and look up afterwards (most weren't in my dictionary ....) - they weren't complimentary.

I made an effort to watch M. Hollande's press conference live today on French TV, he seemed to have arrived directly from riding the infamous motorbike :

Most of my French acquiantances seem to be very fatalistic about the situation, they don't think anything will change and the President's words are just that, words. 

A few items from my point of view about the most covered French language news conference in history:

• How is the "Responsibility Pact" with employers going to work, tax cuts for new jobs is an interesting idea but it still needs the dead hand of the state to be involved.
• Unemployment is a critical issue, specific high-profile government measures can't make the same impact that a growing economy would
• €50Bn cut in government expenditure - really? Where's that going to come from in a country that is still wedded to the government spending 57% of the GDP?
• And batting away the timid "Private Life" questions from the demure French press, just when the French need a President focussed on the economy and growth the story is lost in the "Guess who is the First Lady this week" question.

 I'm able to watch all this with a certain degree of detachment, give or take a few euros of tax on the margins - I'm happy to pay for M. Hollande's morning croissants - we're happily largely isolated from the state of the French economy. But this is a great country and its people need great leadership just now.

So, what do you miss about Britain ?

During the Christmas break and our return to the UK I was asked this question several times.

So, in no particular order, here's a short list:

1 - Proper Beer
It was a real delight to be able to drink some really good British beer over the two weeks. Ringwood beer at the Owl's Nest, Gunner's Daughter at the excellent Old Cannon Brewery in Bury St. Edmunds, Greene King IPA at The Nutshell - Britain;s smallest pub, the rarely available Abbot Special Reserve at The Oak and Harvey's Special at the Pelham House Hotel.

2 - Free Delivery
Our trips back to the UK are characterised by large numbers of deliveries and packages arriving at our host's houses; things we can't buy in France (spares for our lawn mower), things that are cheaper in the UK (satellite decoder, paint) or things that I just can't find on the internet in France (anti-butterfly netting for our cabbages). But everything comes with free next day delivery - here we are always charged for delivery even on purchases over a thousand euros from Muzillac 10km away - and rapid delivery is three days. I know we are in a distant part of France and the country is much bigger and the population more spread out than in the UK but distribution here is hopelessly inefficient.

3 - Weather forecasts that make sense. I've just watched a programme about the sixtieth anniversary of the first television weather forecast that included clips from the various styles of forecast over the year - Meteo France is stuck somewhere in the early eighties at present.

4 - High quality retailers
Nothing in France even comes close to Waitrose.

5 - BBC iPlayer
We're blocked from using it in France. We may possibly be subscribing to a VPN service shortly ,,,,

And, for contrast, 5 things that work better in France

1 - Traffic congestion
Our ferry arrived at 6:30 in Portsmouth, we cleared passport and cutoms at 7:00 and drove straight onto the M27. At 7:15 we were stationary in our first (but not last) traffic jam .....

2 - Car Parking
We spent a small fortune on parking charges in Southampton, Bury St. Edmunds and Lewes. Mostly it's free in our part of France, you have to pay to park right in the middle of Vannes but the option is free parking and a 500m walk. I've been tempted to find out if a foreign registered car will be just too difficult for a traffic warden but not been brave enough so far ....

3 - Energy
There's been a lot of wringing of hands in the UK in the past few months over rising energy costs. Despite a "free market" the costs just seem to go up and up. In France it's a bit different, technically the electricity market is open but 97% of houses are supplied by EDF whose prices are regulated by the government. 83% of electricity is generated from nuclear sources so costs are all pretty stable. For our energy at present we're paying less than half what we did in Fleet in 2010.

4 - Customer Service
Never thought I'd write this ..... but I've been having a long negotiation with Veolia over installing a new water meter. I've twice been into the local office run by a friendly lady who's run around and found the person handling my request and got them to come and speak to me ( and once to call me as they were out). I'm sure the service is a bit more expensive than in the UK but actually I'm happy to pay for this.

5 - Diesel prices
It's a government tax thing but I'm paying about £1.08 per litre for diesel (my UK fill was £1.39 per litre).

Pointing the way

On 11th April we started the pointing of the old building. This consists of raking out the old clay jointing, removing any loose stones or pebbles, cleaning out any gaps and then ramming the lime and sand mixture into the deep holes, filling any wide gaps with galettes (small biscuit sized stones) and building out the pointing to the original stone lines. With cement the process is to get the surface as flat as possible before leaving it to set, there's a much more beautiful and fulfilling process with lime that takes much longer and consists of leaving the jointing surface rough until it has gone firm and then brushing it with a stiff bristle brush to expose the grain and let the jointing surface flow smoothly flow around the stones. The final effect really integrates and brings a sense of consistency to the varying sizes, colours and shapes of the stones and makes the walls look as if they are a single entity. In reality of course they were built at different dates, have been patched, repaired and neglected in equal measure and stone is a natural material with great variability.

We stopped pointing on the south wall in June when the temperatures made it impossible to keep working - lime goes off too quickly in hot sun. Adam re-started the work at the end of October - really very late in the year to try to point with lime which doesn't like cold or frosty weather either. Apart from one disasterous night - when driving rain washed out all the previous day's work - the weather has been on our side and today the final area was finished and the wall signed off.