A Good Year for the Roses - I

"And, it's three top ten hits in ten seconds for Elvis Costello"

"Red shoes ..... The Angels Want to Wear my Red Shoes" - that was my contribution (memorable song from my first year in University).

"Watching the Detectives" - that one from Adam.

And, and .......... time running out ........ "Good Year for the Roses" - just got that one in before the time ran out.

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During the long periods working on the barn - especially the interminable plastering - the radio provided a distraction and background for us. We started with Bleu Armor and managed to listen to that for several weeks until we finally twigged that, with the absence of anything apart from news bulletins and adverts, it ran on a loop between 10:00 and 4:00 (so maybe that's why Phil Collins is on French radio so much).

Then we progressed to internet radio - there are thousands of stations available and we toyed with Absolute Radio 80's Hits (the music of the '80's is a sort of neutral ground between my age and Adam's; then we tried Abacus Radio '80's Hits (an American station, I suspect just an iPod on shuffle connected to the server); brief forays with Dutch stations, RFM and MacJingle 80's hits (a german station, again an iPod connected to a server) followed. Finally we gravitated back to BBC Radio 2 for Ken Bruce in the morning and Steve Wright in the afternoon (but Jeremy Vine between 12 and 2 caused us to shout at the radio too much - not good for getting a smooth plaster finish).

And so the popmaster game has become a continuing focus of the morning for us and it's concluding "3 in 10" competition.

We bought a garden

A new garden arrived at La Basse Cour yesterday. We took advantage of a 50% reduction on all stock at a local Nursery that's moving to site to buy an entire trailer load of interesting plants. We'll post pictures of them being planted over the next week or two on the La Basse Cour Grounds PicasaWeb Album - if you're not on the update notification list for this album but would like to be please email me and I'll add you to the list.

Le "Big Match"

Cyrille, the captain of Entrammes, our opposition last Sunday, greeted me with a single sentence: "Hello Tim how are you yes very fine thank you".

I've always had a good robust tussle with Cyrille in our matches (below in a cup match); last season he also came over to apologise for drilling a ball into our goal past my head. His English may be only slightly worse than my French but I appeciated his effort.

Probably the hockey team didn't really understand what they were getting when they asked me to be the captain - "Will you captain the side on the pitch - you're the only one who talks to us during the game". Quite ironic really as my sporting French vocabulary is still pretty sketchy.

So, we now have the team huddle before the match in English:

 "Are we here to look pretty?" - NO

"Are we here to have a nice day out?" - NO

"Are we here to win?" - YES Allez, Allez, Allez La Baule


 (Marianne spoke for most of the team I suspect when she said "I've no idea what you're saying but I know I have to shout NO, NO, YES")

But as well now the players know which position they are playing before the start, only one person talks at a time during team talks and I do spend a lot of time talking to them during the game. I'm even slipping into sporting clichés as I realised I'd asked at half-time for 110% effort in the second half.

And, despite a pitifully thin squad and erratic availability, after defeating Entrammes 3-0 our keen little team is now top of the table by six points. And the old guy at the back is still shouting at them in comical French ;o)

Build Update

It's been a long time since my last update on the build. It's not that we've been idle - far from it !

What has happened is that the work content has become rather more standard - it's hard to make painting and tiling sound too interesting.

Anyway, here's where we are at present:

Downstairs the utility room is decorated and ready for installation of units and worktop and the cloakroom is finished (hooray!). In the main barn area the slate flooring is finished, the kitchen installed, all the electrics are working, the walls and ceilings painted and the beams (almost) fully finished and brushed off. The main work remaining here is to lay the wooden flooring in the lounge area.

Kitchen Installed

Slate Flooring in the Barn

It's a big room ...

 Upstairs we put a new door in between the house and the barn to allow us to use the final building as either two separate buildings or one big one.

It was a bit like breaking through the Channel Tunnel when Adam and I met each other from the two sides of the wall

New door installed

And nearly finished

All the upstairs rooms are painted and finished, the exposed timbers look good in the roof.

 

We've had some help along the way - Tim Jarrett came out fresh from Best Man duties at Adam's wedding and spent all week tiling for us:

Pip has been helping Barbara with varnishing the wooden doors:

We've lime rendered the end of the utility room (the stones here were very poorly built):

 

And, as of this week, we have two fitted bathrooms:

En-suite shower

En-suite tiled out

The shower in the main bathroom

Main bathroom

 

And we've started to lay the oak flooring upstairs:

Knots in the timber flooring - is it a dog, an Angel or Edvard Munch's scream ???

New member joins the team at La Basse Cour

We have adopted the cat who joined us; really he decided to adopt us as often happens with cats .....

Here is Tenzing (Pip to his friends) with his new French passport:

Dark Skies

One of the major differences about living here compared to our previous home in the UK is that we have clear and very dark skies. One of my "after the build is done" projects is to get a decent telescope.

In the meantime I'm limited to conventional photography - here's a picture of Saturn in yet another wonderfully clear evening sky (we've had lots this year).

Les Anglais qui marchent

"Ah yes, I've seen you in the mornings. Les Anglais qui marchent"

We were at Claudette's summer fete talking to Jerome (or Vincent) - there are two brothers who run the next but one farm to us and although I've met them on two or three occasions I'm never quite sure which is which ,,,,.

Our early morning walks started as preparation for Barbara's operation, continued as recuperation after the op and are now just part of our daily routine. We leave the house at 6.30 and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we turn left and walk 45 minutes to Kervaquer and back; Tuesdays and Thursdays we turn right and walk 35 minutes to Bodrefaux and back. We've seen deer, hares, owls ands lots of other wildlife, found a lost new-born calf and we've been seen by plenty of our neighbours, including Vincent (or Jerome).

I was working in the garden when a delivery driver came down the drive - it was Wednesday and we were expecting our wooden floor to be delivered on Thursday ("The delivery company will call you first") so I was a bit surprised when the driver said he had three large pallets for me. I was more surprised when he asked me if I had a fork lift truck but was pleased I got back quickly with "No, haven't you got a hydraulic arm on your lorry?". Bizarrely it was a huge 44 tonne truck with nothing on but our three pallets hiding at one end.

"Hmmm, perhaps you could ask your neighbour the agriculteur if he has a tractor with forks on". Dominique was away but Yoann, his farm worker, looked a bit dubious when I said each pallet was 600kg but agreed to come over and help. Five minutes later Jerome (or Vincent) arrived with his tractor (Yoann said he wasn't sure his forks were strong enough so he'd called in help) and unloaded all the pallets and drove them down the drive.

 

And last week on one of our early walks a kitten jumped out of the verge and followed us for forty minutes, down the drive and into the house. No-one seems to know anything about him - Monique thought it had probably been thrown out of a car.

   

We don't know if we'll keep him yet, need to make more enquiries but unless we find an owner the gap left by Smudge's death in June may be filled ....

Funny what happens when you go out walking in the morning!