Rural Life

Expect the unexpected

Life round here is never dull (life in Worcester was generally dull), but the last few days have been rather too exciting.

On Thursday we became the proud owners of a trailer - essential for all those trips to the dumpwhen you are taking down someone's leylandii hedge.

On Friday we narrowly missed being serenaded by a Brazilian blues guitarist at our local pub.

On Saturday, we did our usual marathon stint as volunteers at the village "journee champetre" - the local version of the village fete except it starts at 2pm with a petanque competition that gets very serious as the day goes on and beer gets drunk.  Of course to get to that stage, the local chaps have been working since 6:30am collecting pig carcases and setting up marquees.  From 1pm, people drift past the pig roasting area to check that the spits are turning, that the pigs are good quality and that they have enough garlic, herbs and harissa lathered all over them.  Usually at 7pm people startto turn up in search of kir and gossip - this year the rain started at 5:30pm and didn't give up until about 7:30pm, at which point people started to arrive.  There is then food, and once people are too full to object, the local brass band (the Cadets de Baugois - once heard, never forgotten - take that as you will) and drum majorettes put on their annual show.  Finally there are fireworks and a dance that goes on to the early hours, at which point the men of the village dismantle it all, so you don't know anything has happened by morning.

This year, we made the front page of the Courrier de l'Ouest as a lady choked on a piece of pig and died at about 9pm in the evening - so everything else was cancelled as a mark of respect.  Not the nicest evening therefore.

So on Sunday we went over to visit a horse we are keeping an eye on while its owners are away, and we saw a hoopoe, which was a nice surprise.

Then during the evening our neighbour (feckless Joel) tapped on the door and gave us a huge bowl of perch that he had caught that day and couldn't deal with the full catch.  So as Harry Potter started on the TV, I started gutting 30 perch.

Today was relatively normal - we were cutting down trees in the blazing sunshine.

Life is certainly not dull here.

Apricot Time

After all that lovely blossom in the Spring, we were hoping for a good apricot crop this year, and it is exceeding our expectations at the moment.  If you have any good apricot recipies let me know, particularly things that can be preserved (frozen, bottled, put in alcohol, etc) as we will soon be swamped.

The first weekend in July I was in the middle of a tour of England (partly explaining the lack of blogs recently) and up in the North East.  Now I love Tyneside and I had had a fabulous day with my friends at Howick Hall, but I really didn't need to be reminded of what I was missing at home when Much Beloved sent me the photo below.

I got back home finally on Thursday and we had a go at picking some ripe fruit - well we got enough for a good scoff of fresh apricots for ourselves, but it was on Saturday, on a really hot day, that we had a go at doing a proper pick.  They still aren't quite ripe in general yet, but we got an easy 5 kilos, some of which are now in alchohol, some were stewed and are very nice on porridge, some were turned into apricot fromage blanc pudding (too good) and some are being eaten.  Tomorrow I think we will have to have a major jamming session and give some away.

It's a lovely problem to have - so I'm not complaining, but do send me any recipies you come across!