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:

Up on the roof with Phil

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the roof
And all my cares just drift right into space
 

On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me

One of the strange things about France is that every minute of every day there is a Phil Collins song playing on a radio station somewhere. Pretty amazing for someone who doesn't sing in French and hasn't had a top five hit for twenty-three years. I've heard Phil Collins on NRJ, Alouette, Skyrock, Chérie ......

We started work on removing the slates and wooden battens from the roof today. Neither Adam or I are particularly happy working at height but fortunately we had a masterclass last week from Gérard Le Ray who is the couvrer (roofer) who will be installing the new roof. Gérard came round at 6:30 at night to meet us and immediately headed up onto the scaffolding to look at the new lucarnes and the existing roof. he then proceeded to give us a demonstration of how to remove the slates and climb up the linteaux (battens) nailed to the chevrons (rafters) - "just use them like a ladder". Somewhere near the ridge his phone went off and he proceeded to talk on the phone whilst holding his torch in one hand and pulling off slates with the other. 

So, this morning we stood on the scaffolding, looked each other in the eye and, in Carole King's words, climbed way up on top of the roof. Actually stripping the roof all seemed a bit quicker and more straightforward than we thought it would be:

 

 We've completed about a third of the total roof area, this has revealed more about the history of the roof. The oldest chevrons are mainly constructed from chestnut, have been replaced in several places but the original ones are fixed to the pannes (purlins) using hand made nails which probably dates them as pre 1850, the pannes have a very chequered history, some seem original with beautiful hand forged nails but in places they've been replaced rather bizarrely with what looks like the remnants of an A Frame. These are in poor condition and, together with the chevrons, will have to be replaced. The good news is that the ridge beam seems good despite the wandering line of the roof ridge and the various pieces have been neatly scarfed together by the original carpenters, the A frames still look in good condition from on top (we've only been able to inspect them from below up to now). The chevrons in the area of the roof that Gérard Le Ray was climbing on were in particularly poor condition and one broke off in my hands - I guess roofers just have a sixth sense .....

To distract us a little we had the radio on and, right on cue, Phil Collins came on with "Another Day in Paradise".

Vital Supplies

We've been in the UK for the weekend finishing off Adam's kitchen in his new Southampton house. I drove back via the overnight ferry with a very heavily laden trailer. One of my principles in writing this blog is not to fall into the trap of xenophobia, bearing that in mind I'll look at what we decided to bring back in the car and trailer - and why:

Food Shopping

• 320 Taylor's Yorkshire tea bags - it's true that you can't get decent tea in France ....
• 3 kg of organic rolled oats - to feed my porridge addiction, French versions simply make gruel not porridge
• 2.5kg os Seville Oranges - for marmalade, never seen these in French shops. Confiture d'oranges isn't so popular here.
• Heinz baked beans - unobtainable in Brittany, sometimes you just fancy them
• Muscovado sugar - unobtainable here as far as we can find

Other

• Black exterior woodstain - expensive in France, truthfully not much cheaper in the UK
• Fish Blood and Bone fertiliser - not found a source yet here 
• Prunus Subhirtella Autumnalis - Barbara's birthday present (it's a flowering cherry). Just because we saw one and we haven't been to all the local nurseries here
• A builder's grade step ladder - to replace the flimsy bent one left here by the previous owners. Haven't found a sturdy ladder I trust in France yet.
• Double extending ladder - a second one for the roof work we're about to do. Safety first this one, I wanted to be able to buy a brand I knew; important when I'll be the one 22 feet up in the air on it !
• A one tonne pallet of paving bricks - cheaper and better quality than we've yet found here.

So, the reasons for loading the poor old Honda up to the brim again were threefold: some things just aren't available here (generally food),  some things are significantly cheaper in the UK (the saving on the paviors more than paid for the trailer both ways) and we don't have a broad enough set of sources here yet for everything we need.

Fortunately the incongruously dreadlocked customs official who pulled me over and checked the car in Portsmouth didn't ask why I had any of these items on board. He only wanted to know if I had any knives, explosives or firearms on board - now if I needed any of those I probably would have got them in France !!

Houston we've had a problem ....

Can you remember where you were on April 17th, 1970?

I was at a cub scout meeting, actually we'd all gone next door to Karl's house to watch the arrival and splashdown of Apollo 13 as the three astronauts completed what seemed an unlikely safe return after the explosion that cost the mission and nearly cost their lives. For students of accuracy the actual phrase is as in the title of this post although the phrase is often misquoted as "Houston we have a problem".

Our equivalent of Jim Lovell's words are when Adam says "Tim, you might need to have a look at this".

In our case "this" has been

• the number of insect holes in the wood of an A frame (these are the major structural timbers that hold up the roof)
• a big bend in the line of one the walls
• a loose sablier (the stones that sit on top of the wall and support the roof)
• a drip of water coming through one of the major beams (how did that get in there ?)

A Frame - with added insect holes

and any number of other major, significant or minor problems that turn up everyday in renovating a 200 year old building.

Update on the Build

There has been a lot of progress on the build since my last update.

We rebuilt the tops of the walls on the lean-to and cemented wooden wallplates onto the top to take the new roof that will be put on shortly.

The lean-to is now securely covered with tarpaulins to keep out the worst of the weather.

After Christmas Adam build the two stone lucarnes on the south side, due to the sloping ground the wall is  higher on this side than on the north side. Although it's not a huge difference it makes all the work just that bit higher on the scaffold and, as neither of us are that great at heights, it's been an additional challenge. The scaffold is along most of the south elevation of the building.

After three lucarnes we've now got the process of winching up the 150kg stone lintels running smoothly; first lift about 3m to a scaffold platform, secure the block, move up the winch to the top bar on the scaffold, measure the height and the chain lengths carefully (don't want to end up with 150kg of stone hanging in the air just below where we want it .... ), carefully swing it over the uprights and a final lift onto the prepared cement bed. Here's what it looks like in pictures:

It's now possible to get an idea of what the south elevation will look like when it's finished:

Back on line again!

Bonne Année, bonne santé et "Happy New Year" à tous nos lecteurs!

The blog's been enjoying a longish Christmas break and is now back to bring you updates on our build and other observations on our life in France.

I'm pleased to report that our highly trained team of rodent control operatives have also enjoyed their Christmas break:

 

Unfortunately they have got a little bit too used to sleeping by the fire and I came face to face with a mouse next to the compost heap yesterday. Boot camp for the cats tomorrow!