As so often in the country - this story is about stones....and the importance of roof tiles....and the eveil of rain

 Some weeks ago there was a thunderous descent of stones into our upstairs bathroom...struggling with swearing about the non visiblity of my slippers...I was nearly flushed back by the flow of water down the stairs.   Disaster laughed at me - wetly. 

The  bathroom upstairs had just melted into gludge which itself was soakiing the wooden floor that was the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom.  Hopelessly I tried to push the flow into the sanitary loo bason..

Then gave up in order to find as many buckets to catch the water below...Eventually my battered mind remember where the mains water intake was.......yes, in the glass veranda outside where it was also pouring with rain.

The upstairs bath had become detached from its wall, tilted crazily to the floor. Fortunately the loo was still  more or less upright - but unsteady.

Enough sordid detail, the Gread Tidy Up had to start.    Fortunately I knew a couple of local men who were used to this kind of operation.  I let them use my beloved Audi break and a remorque to take 'stuff' to the local dechetterie (= official dump site).

As the site got cleaner, as I was again able to use my downstairs bathroom, shower loo and all...we all gathered round the kitchen table to speculate on the origins of this disaster.

The plasterer suggested a possibility: that there had been a minute rain leak between a couple of roof tiles over the years which penetrated into the plaster of the bathroom.  This weakend the plaster walls in the bathroom which then dropped into the bath...and so everything fell over...

It seems plausible - no point is summoning the insurance - but definitely a revision of the roof - and general restoration of the upstairs bathroom, bath, wash basin and loo. All the plaster and wood would be covered in a heavy, shiny dark blue paint - new lights would be installed and  all porcelain or china objects disinfected and re-installed.

It has been done.....I am waiting for my first summer guests to come...and be brave.

The impact of an 80th...

 It is only three months or so - from today (24.01/) that I made the fateful decision to give up driving...I gave it up because at times on the Dordogne rural roads that I have known for over 40 years - I felt unsafe -  incompetent....and definitely worried about the speed of others on the road...

My nearest shopping town is some 12 kms or so down hill from my house....the road width is not up to the super size lorries and wild trees keep falling into the road - when not actually being cut down.

Why did I give up you might want know ...because I had just passed my 80th birthday is the simplest answer. But the cherry is that I have found a very charming, good looking, local part time driver who will take me anywere I want....using my car. Or perhaps that is the real reason.

Good by Audi - good by independance

 Dear Readers!   

prepare yourself for a shock - even if it is only the one that hits me...some months earlier this year, in deepest rural Dordogne I woke up in my warm country bed whilst in my early 80's - warm because its mattress was covered with an electrical heated stretch sheet. (sorry readers, such is apparently NOT available in France).  I went to the kitchen, refilled my water bottle and brought back of a cup of tea....somewhere under the bed was whatever I was reading last night...and I began to think....

Thinking led to the decision to give up driving....whilst I still had all confindence in my Audi I no long had in my judgement behind the wheel.

I decided I would no longer drive....unsafe for me, unsafe for others on the road. My decision has been well accepted by all who are affected by it - with great kindess and some comfort - and a lot of help.

embarassing bolts on sundays...

 Yes, this Sunday has seen me make yet another bolt for the Bakery...I leave home at about 11.45 in the hopes to reach the Bakery before noon.  Dear Reader - please imagine my nervousness as I skim over pot-holes,slide round piles of rubbish on the road, as I hog my side of the road in the face of an oncomer...whilst trying not to be worried by the ditch on the passenger side to which the car appears to be attracted....

I get to my destination before mid-day, brake carefully once parked in a wide space that allows me to easily get out of the driver's side door...

I breathe, collect my basket from the boot of the car, make sure I have my elephant bag, put the car's keys firmly but carefully into the alloted pocket for car keys, shift everything to my right hand side with my stick firmly in my left hand.   Breathing deeply I walk towards the Bakery door.    Oh, bliss! It opens automatically as I get near the sliding doors - so there will be service after all!

Inside the Bakery are quite a few people wandering around, unperturbed - not even noticiing my frantic entry, concentrated on the bread in their baskets or under their arms.   I stop, I breathe - deeply, noticeably - I slow down and start to look around.

Ah, Dear Reader I can hear you think: but of course, she is in France, Bread is King in France....

...apologies....I was out of wine!

The fine tale of a complicated scam

Today I have had the pleasure of being chatted up by a TDH* bearded man.  On offer was a scheme to reduce my electricity costs by making various changes to the structure of my house.  My house has six ground floor rooms and a bathroom and four larger upstairs room with a library and bathroom, stone and mud construction near 300 yrs old...

His offer was that he would inspect the structure of my house and make suggestions that would, most likely, reduce the future carbon tax and increased electricity prices.  He was armed with a large folder that contained obvious EDF bills, some interesting looking charts with downward going lines....

Unfortunately for him I had mentioned the initial contact to my daughter who got her detective hackles up and started to dig in. It was decided that, rather than cancelling the appointment, we should let it happen and.....Tell the Gendarmes!    (Yes, I can see that looks like the title of a book...)

Firstly the name of the prospective electrician had been given to me by a lady who had driven into my short drive - very evident from the main road - with a request for help about....something...She then told me that there were ways to reduce the possible effect by contacting a certain person. She telephoned and made an appointment for XyX to visit me at home at a specific time.

Then I asked my neighbour in the house just below me if she had an initial contact on the subject of electricity prices later that day..Answer NO. Clever daughter then discovered that the name of my future electrical expert did not exist...

So we decided it would be useful to local society in general if we let the scan go ahead - and keep the gendarmes in the loop..

He came, parked his car - the tenant of the house below mine was opportunately in the vegetable garden with her telephone.   (Yes, yes, in Dordogne you need telephones to help you garden..) So she registered his number plate....And my two quite hefty Dutch workmen who happened to be on site, made notes.

He came in, I offered him a chair with a view to the outside.   My French son-in-law was seated on the opposite side of the table. His dog was weaving its heavy way in and out of the table legs.  After a few questions my son-in-law suggested all this was a waste of time..than the TDH should leave which he duly did.

Son in law then telephoned the local Gendarmes who checked the number plate..car not in the name driver who was supposed to have been my advisor...not a local car, supposed conducter not a local person...possibly not even born in France..

Drinks all round at home!!

 

Warmth, leaves, wind - and and the tree that looked back at me.

 This sunny Sunday - the 3rd of November - was mostly spent by me sweeping up leaves from the terrace outside and - inside the kitchen - sweeping up dead flies..In a way I was glad my garden man was not here to do it - like most men (?) he likes to use machinery to do things...and his leaf-blower is hideously noisy.  He wears it on his back, cigar in mouth, and stomps to and fro.    I had  cleverly put all the chairs on the table so there were no obstacles as I went to and fro. All suggestions as to how to get moss off stone easily gratefully accepted.

In the kitchen it was dead fly time and I confess to having used a fly killer spray - yes, yes, I did cover all the pans, crockery etc (my nose) before spraying.   When I was much younger - and permitted to go up ladders - I did use those sticky coils that you pin to the ceiling.  For some reason the flies are attracted - and get stuck. Then one has to go up a ladder and unpin the sticky mess....

After my hard work I decided a drink on the terrace was merited. I duly supplied myself with a glass of wine and decided to somnole a little whilst resting my eyes on the clump of oak trees on the  corner of the woods.

After a little while I began to feel a little uneasy....I looked around but there were no persons to see...all was unnaturally quiet...I looked towards the trees....there was one looking back at me...!!

Vanishing tree act in the Dordogne

 My house is convienently placed on the 'Route des Plateaux' - once known as the D103. It goes to St Astier and  should be named 'Route des Pins' for on both sides there are plantations of tall,skinny pine trees, naked from their roots until their crowning glory of leaves. I have a curious feeling that they are a recent plantation.

 Driving between them is a curious sensation for while most of them away from the road reach high for the sky, possibly three houses high, the roadside ones seem to lean over passing cars. No, I do not know what variety of pines...some authorities suggest that there are a little short of 200 varieties.  Then, suddenly, a large swaithe has been reduced to neat piles of naked wood, the heads nowhere to be seen.

Apparently most of these will end up as paper - perhaps supporting headlines in newspapers. Some might end up as those light-weight vegetable boxes that you tread down into firewood.  Actually I have noticed that you can 'cut' them up with strong kitchen scissors...

And, once at a meeting of the local Foresters association, in which I am probably the oldest member in years, I remember  complaining about these brief plantations for I have always thought of trees as near eternal deities, not something to be sown and harvested like ....leeks or palms....but something to be treasured and respected - like the ancient oaks.