Rural Life

My LaCanche Cooker - at last!

Before Christmas I wrote a blog about the trials and tribulations of getting my lovely new cooker in for Christmas.

Actually, while it was in the room for Christmas, it wasn't connected to the gas so I couldn't use it.  Nor could I use it for New Year - still no gas.  All through January and February I couldn't use it other than to stack things on as there was still no gas.  This was all due to the slowest and least efficient donor of Certificates of Conformity somewhere in Briollay, whose list of why we didn't have the certificate went through - well there was Christmas, New Year, snow, 'flu, a computer virus, half term and not answering his telephone.  Finally however it was delivered, and with 2 weeks delay, a meter was delivered and connected up and now I am cooking with gas (yes, I am indeed a former British Gas employee) and on my lovely new cooker.

The sales blah from the company says that it is the piano of the virtuoso cook, or some other flowery phrase.  All I know is that I have cooked 5 meals on it now and every one has worked perfectly and been delicious, from a simple pasta sauce and spaghetti, through scrambled eggs to last night's stir fried satay chicken.

If I weren't so full of cold, I would be in 7th heaven, but right now in any case my world is a better place - and soon our ground floor room will be back to normality.  Here is the wonderous beast in all its glory.

Rules on Road Kill

It is that time of year when we are warned that boar are on the move.  Actually twice recently the motorways round here have been closed as groups of boar were on the carriageway.  A boar can do an awful lot of damage to a car.

We have noted that the start of the hunting season round here is always marked by the tale of some poor defenceless aged peasant driving home late at night who is willfully attacked in his car by a wild boar.  The outcome varies, but the most common version is that said poor peasant is in hospital, the car is written off, the boar escapes and had to be tracked down by the plucky hunters, who donate a large portion of the kill to a local OAP home canteen.

My interpretation is that some drunken old boy with dodgy vision is driving along in his "sans permis" car (small metal box powered by lawnmower engine), sees movement and chases it, thinking it is a good idea and he is indestructable as he is drunk and in his little car, but o dear, a boar is bigger and stronger than said car.

Be that as it may, many round here have noticed that while boar get ever more common, hunters who can actually shoot one get ever more rare, being more likely to shoot each other, their dogs or buildings (some friends lost a bathroom window which looked suspicious).

This year the local paper has been giving out advice as to what to do if you meet a boar on the road.  You are recommended not to try to hit it - they make an awful mess of the car.  If you can't avoid it, make sure it is dead (not sure how you are meant to do that), call the police and inform them you hit and killed it, and load the carcase in the car for consumption at home.  If you fail to call the police and are caught with it, you may be done for killing animals with an unapproved method!

My reading of this is that your car is knackered so while you save the money to get the car fixed, you have something to eat at any rate!

The importance of spaying tomcats

Spring is in the air now - well we are into March after all - and at this time of year, cats' attention turns to sex.  Particularly those cats that have not been seen to.  Our two girls were neutered before they were allowed out, and we got next door's girl cat done (with permission) once her kittens had left home.  However some new people moved into the courtyard and with the impetuousness of youth, thought that a cat would be a good idea, irrespective of whether they have any outdoor area for it, the time to look after and feed it or the money to have it spayed.  Don't get me started on the selfishness of that.

It is quite cute, but the first time it was chucked out of the window to do its business in the courtyard, it got jumped on and raped by two tom cats in succession - while the owner looked on!  Since then two more toms have turned up and had a go, while the girls of the area don't like the poor wee thing as she is competition for food.

So the sad thing is that in a few weeks there will be another litter of unwanted kittens doing the rounds, which may survive being squashed on the road before they are rehoused, but who knows?  We could well find them in the well as well.

Even sadder however is the toll on the local tomcats.  With four on the scene they were always fighting and having sex and not really thinking about staying safe.  To my knowledge, two have been knocked over on the road, and we suspect have crawled somewhere to die, another is limping around our garden with a bad leg and unsure of where he lives.  If their hormones had been under control, they wouldn't have been quite so daft and might still be around.

So people, heed my words!  Spay both your male and your female cats - it is better for them and it is better for you and it makes life a lot easier for all.

A late spring

There is no doubt that this has been a hard winter, and for my chums in the UK, the problems are still very much with them as more snow falls today.  Here in the Baugeios, it is a blustery early spring day, with sunshine, clouds, quite a stiff breeze and temperatures up around 10 degrees C.

With it being so nice, I have spent odd moments today walking round the garden, in between frantic bouts of e-mailing to sort out next week's business trip.  The first of the broad beans are finally starting to push through over two months after they were sown - that felt like a real victory as I was convinced that even with the killer fiends (cats and chickens) that we give garden space to, that the mice would have had a feast!  But they are late - and I fear we won't be able to stir fry baby broad beans and asparagus tips fresh from the garden together this year.

Round the quince tree, there are the first snow drops coming out - probably about 8 flowers in all, and on Monday they were living up to their french name - Perceneige or "breaking through the snow".  However looking through my photos of the quince tree last year, it was surrounded by lovely crocuses by mid to late February.  Today I noticed the very first signs that some crocuses might come though and don't expect to see flowers until March.

Last year, Easter was about as early as it could be - indeed the last time it was so early, the English and French had a major battle here in our village in 1422 and the English lost and the course of the Hundred Years War changed in favour of the French.  All the blossom was early too - hardly surprising as both Easter and fruit tree blossom are closely linked to the moon, and our pear tree always flowers at Easter.  Consequently when we had a sharp frost in the first week of April, we lost all the fruit - the only thing that seemed to do well last year were apples and they are always later.  Easter is later this year and I hope the fruit trees take heed and don't flower too early - with this recession, we will need all the fruit we can get!

Here is a pretty reminder of how nice a big block of crocuses can be from last year.

Rewarding Volunteers

While we were still in the grip of snow, ice and freezing temperatures, we had a hot date with all the rest of the volunteers who worked on the Comice at Chartrene.  All?  Not quite.  Some decided that temperatures around -8 degrees were too cold and could not be tempted out, some had to work on the Saturday, and others were not invited due to administrative cock-ups.  However there were a good 300 of us in the Centre Rene d'Anjou on the 9th January, prepared to be rewarded for our efforts in August.

I should be clear that this was not a reward for making flowers for floats or for performing the Windmill in Old Amsterdam to massed ranks of rural dwellers.  No, this was for running a bar for half a day during the event and for John helping to dismantle stands after the event.  Others had done similar tasks and more over the two days and the preparations and dismantling.

The party started at 8pm, but drinks and nibbles didn't arrive until 9pm when we were invited to sitdown and enjoy a film of the event - it was well done, no pictures of Windmills in Amsterdam, but perhaps more views of ploughing matches than I was ready for when waiting for my dinner.  At 10pm the speeches started, with thanks to everyone, particularly those who had given up two years of their lives to the organisation of the event.  Then at 10:45pm the food -finally.  At 11:30pm the dancing started, with a short break for a reprise of the Chartrene performance of YMCA, before champagne and cake at 12:30am, and then more dancing.  We left early at 1:45am and the party was going strong - these rural types know how to party and they know how to dance - tangos, waltzes, quicksteps, polkas - for us English types it was culture shock of the most elegant variety.

Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures of the dancing - blame John's mobile phone!

 

Snow in Winter - whatever next?

I don't know about anyone else but I am getting a tad bored with the Arctic high pressure that has settled over North West Europe and seems to like it here.  While bright blue skies and crisp mornings are a pleasure, particularly if you don't have to scrape a car windscreen, walking timorously because of black ice loses its appeal very quickly.  And I defy anyone to find early morning temperatures of -8 degrees C a good thing at all!

We are using up fire wood at a scary pace, although I guess that is what it is there for, but the chances of refilling the wood stack in the next couple of weeks are looking slim.  While we will work with chainsaws in the afternoons in the wood if it is frosty, we won't do anything like that where there is snow on the ground - it is just too dangerous.  And that is what we have - a rarity in Anjou we are told, but 4 inches of snow fell yesterday afternoon and with a high of -0.9 degrees this afternoon, it didn't do much about melting.

The cats have decided that snow is quite fun if they can come in again as soon as their paws get cold, and pink paws get colder more quickly than black pad paws - not a lot of people know that....  The chickens are beside themselves - they don't know where to put their feet, there are no grubs and other yucky things to find, and if there were, they would need to dig in the snow to find them.  The chickens don't do going in the snow.  Or strictly, ours don't - Joel's don't have the choice, although they have spend a lot of time standing on the garden chairs today.

However, one can't really grumble - this is what winter is all about and hopefully the prolonged frost will put paid to all the nasty microbes out there like peach leaf curl and tomato blight and codling moth and fleas (not strictly a microbe but something that needs dealing with).

Keep warm!

Impact of two cats on garden wildlife

Back in the autumn I hinted that I had been keeping a tally of what Maigret and Poirot had been catching in the garden.  Some people on the Wild about Britain site chose to interpret that as meaning that I was a "sicko pervert who gets her rocks off on this sort of thing" - such charming types you do meet in cyberworld.  Actually we did it to see what sort of impact having two young and fit cats (as opposed to one elderly and cantankerous feline) would have on the wildlife population of the garden, particularly the sparrows, which are numerous here.

We kept a tally per cat through the year, counting only those kills that we saw our cats with the body for, and with lizards, it had to be the body rather than the tail, which detaches very easily.  Maigret was the more effective hunter - Poirot is not built for stealth - but Poirot got the bigger prey, and still yearns to catch and eat her own chicken.  Fortunately our neighbour regards this ambition as a joke and doesn't get cross when she tries.  We take the same attitude when she goes for ours, as we know from experience that once she gets pecked by one of the chickens, she will leave them alone.

Between the two of them, they have got 27 lizards, a nest of 5 baby robins, 4 baby blackbirds, 2 sparrows, 3 pigeons and 22 mice.  The robins were a shame, but we have suitably pruned the tree the nest was in with the hope of stopping the same thing next year.  The blackbirds had been left in the rhubarb patch on the ground - any cat would have got them.  The sparrows were babies chucked out of one of the 8 nests on the side of the house - they could well have been dead or dying anyway, and certainly given each nest had at least 2 if not 3 broods this year, it was not a major impact.

The toad fought back - so that doesn't count, and he is still patrolling the garden when not hibernating.  The hedgehog got jumped on a few times but again is fine.  I have no qualms about the mice or pigeons - both are vermin around here, and as I have said before, a good mouser is well regarded in this rural community.  So much so that next door's cat, Nenette of the kittens, who is also a formidable ratter, has been rented out in exchange for firewood, to rid a local small holder of their rat and mouse problem.  We gather she is having a wonderful time!

Apologies for lack of photos this time - some issue with Typepad and my computer not quite getting it together today, although there are nice pictures on the links in general. 

An update!  I have won in the battle for getting photos on, so here are the two savage killers, ready for the next victim.

New Cooker for Christmas

No - not a reference to my Christmas present from my beloved - more a howl of pain for trying to get stuff organised so that I can use my new cooker at Christmas and not have to eat dinner in the bathroom!

Back in September I ordered my lovely new cooker - a LaCanche - customised as befits a major element of our main room decor to our taste, so brushed steel knobs, brushed steel central heat plate and British Racing Green enamel bodywork.  It would take some time to be made and delivered to the kitchen suppliers, but not a problem apart from the plummeting Euro exchange rate.

As ours is a totally new gas installation (the year has been blighted by perpetual road works and similar), we have to get pipework installed and and a certificate of conformity before we can have gas and a meter.  The gas fitter is very busy but will fit us in on Monday, having been booked in September.

Once I have the certificate of conformity, Gaz de France will come round and put in my meter and put gas into the pipe - they have just asked if I can wait until the 30th December for that, as I am not really a priority.

The gas cooker arrives on Monday or Tuesday - it is big.  It will go where my current crockery and ingredients shelves go.  Those shelves will move on a temporary basis to where the old cooker (a bit of a beast like a small range but with a gas bottle hidden away in it) currently sits, once the new cooker is linked up with the gas and is working.  As the final stage, the old cooker will go into a cellar until we can clean it up to sell it or think of another use for it.  Think of one of those children's puzzles with the 15 squares to move round to get the numbers in the right order - that is how our house works, and finding the space to move a block into to move others around is a nightmare.

So if I waited until the 30th to get linked up, all the crockery and ingredients would be spread over the living room and at risk of being broken or eaten by cats, while I have a huge and gorgeous cooker that can't be used and I try to produce Christmas dinner in no space at all on the old cooker.  As I generally do goose with 7 vegetables as the main event, life starts to get difficult.  Like I say, the bathroom could become the dining room.

The lovely lady from Gaz de France did try the line of there are little old ladies without any heating out there who are a priority over me, and I respect her for it (although I suspect those little old ladies have other sources of heat - no French peasant does cold).  But not enough not to be a bit insistent on having my meter next week.  Of course it could all go horribly wrong and I could be begging not to have the meter put in until the 30th, but I hope not.

Imagine below in British Racing Green - you can see why it is urgent!

The Drove Road

I finally got round to getting the photos developed from my summer travels in the UK.  I spent some of the wettest weeks of July and September and November (not strictly summer but similar weather conditions in each month) in the UK for work.  However it was a privilege for part of that time to be spent in Somerset and I stayed at the Coombe House Hotel near Nether Stowey twice - much recommended.

From my roost at Nether Stowey I had to go to Taunton a few times and there are two possible routes.  The sensible but very long one is along proper roads around the Quantocks and via Bridgewater, the not so sensible route is over the top of the Quantocks on what some might call roads but are really more like narrow tubes between high hedges.  Naturally I opted for the dangers of the narrow roads over the hills.

This did mean that I found my way back to my favourite place when I was a child - Triscombe Stone up on the Drove Road that follows the line of the Quantocks.  I did a couple of walks up there - my risk analysis for both walks was that I was crazy!  It was wet, visibility was minimal as the clouds sat on the hills, there was no one else around, my only waterproof was a high visibility vest and mobile phone signals were dodgy at best.  Still, you are only young and foolish once, right?  And I survived.

So here is the Drove Road - a wonderfully atmospheric place.  One day I will walk the whole of it from end to end, while I am still young and foolish enough to.

Life is difficult sometimes!

Two excuses, actually probably three, for why updates are slow at the moment on both blogs.

First off, my main desk top computer gave up the ghost - I think the technical term was a boot drive failure, anyway it is taking ages to sort out.  While we have Windows reloaded, we haven't got an Internet connection on it, and while I have downloaded the driver for the ADSL box, I need an ISO reader to get it to work, which the lovely Internet Provider a) don't bother to tell you, and when they do, b) don't provide a link to one.  So far I have only found ones to download that work with Vista or need an Internet connection to run, which I haven't got as I need an ISO reader to make the link between my computer and the ADSL box.  Someone needs to do a computer update to the Flanders and Swan classic "The Gas Man Cometh" about computer assistance call centres.

Secondly, I have been off working and being trained quite a bit recently, which has reduced my sitting in front of a computer time nicely, and has also meant that while in front of said computer, I have had other priorities.

The final excuse is that when I do get to work on my computer, and as it is getting quite wintry now, two furry people think I am there for one thing - cat comfort.  As you can see from the photo below, doing anything under these conditions starts to get a bit fraught.  I will get this sorted out in December - I will!?