Rural Life

Day 10 of Deconfinement Diary - and it is now the glums kick in

I shouldn't feel down, I shouldn't feel anxious, I shouldn't feel "confined", but yesterday evening I lost it.  It had been an OK day, with John picking up a new client, so the promise of a bottle of fizz to celebrate in the evening, and I did win a couple of battles against French bureaucracy, but sometimes you just crack.

We have some very nice neighbours and then we have F the alcoholic, and the demi-monde that are attracted to him.  At 5pm, two of these decided that what they really needed to do was strim the garden F squats and to drink large quantities of tramp strength beer and to parade around in their jeans and not much else other than (surprisingly) PPE for the strimmer.  Two whole hours of a quarter of an hour strimming or playing with the strimmer, then a quarter of an hour drinking and shouting at each other as they only had one set of ear defenders, then back to playing with the strimmer.  It was a glorious evening and I had been stuck indoors much of the day with computers, and it was the last straw to deal with those drunken bums.  There were times when I was nearly in tears.  Normally I just sit with an MP3 player plugged in and my back to them, but last night I just couldn't.

So the abri roof isn't yet in place, as I couldn't face the comments yesterday once John got home.  Likely it won't go up tonight either, as I have a hair appointment (yippee - perhaps that will cheer me up) at 6pm and they are back with the beer, no t-shirts but no strimmer.  Also I saw a gurney going into another neighbour's house, and that is never good....

Tomorrow I will report on the challenges of getting your hair washed and cut while wearing a face mask.  My mind is currently boggling but no doubt it will all become clear in about 40 minutes!

I leave you with a couple of pretty pictures to brighten up your day.

Day 9 of Deconfinement Diary - French bureaucracy will get me if Covid doesn't!

After yesterday's triumph of finishing the sewing (still not yet in place however - something for tomorrow!), I felt strong and able to cope with the thought of firstly helping some chums get through the ANTS system, and then looking at the tax declaration stuff.  Well that was a mistake!

Actually things started well, in that we got my friends' approved digitised photos done at the local service in double quick time, plus John scanned the required documents for me so I didn't have to battle the scanner.  Then it all started to go a bit pear shaped.  First off they wanted more documents than we had scanned, so I ended up taking photos of electricity bills and health system cards and using photos.  That worked and one application to change from a UK drivers licence to a French one went.  Could I get the other one to work?  Aaargh.  It took 15 goes to get the home address entered, as the system took offense at a "lieu dit" that it couldn't automatically find in its repertoire.  As the Government will happily send tax and health stuff to the address, that was a bit annoying, but by sidling up to it, catching the system unawares, a judicious prayer to the god of computers, and by not doing anything different, it finally accepted the details and let me do all the other stuff required for the second licence exchange application.  That is two hours of my life I won't get back!!

So after lunch I went to feed the boys and water the seedlings I planted at the weekend and check on stuff.  There are cherries, but not many, not large, not whole and not particularly spectacular - a shame after all the blossom.

I also took more photographs of bee orchids, but most are out of focus.  This one worked nicely though.

Once home, I thought I had better start looking at tax forms for here and Chinon.  Big mistake!  O it is easy to find the exchange rate they said last year at the tax office - I had to access a number of different reports, copy down twelve numbers to 4 decimal places, take the average and now I wait to see if it bears any resemblance to the number I asked for on the Q&A.  If it does fine, if it doesn't …. And tax French bears no relationship to real French like wot it is spoken either.  Another 2 hours of my life I won't get back.

Rummaging in the shed yesterday evening, John found our Covid-19 remedy (not that he was looking for it, but nice to have found it anyway).  We think it has more chance of working than Trump's dodgy hydrochloroquinine anyway.

Day 6 of Deconfinement Diary - getting back to the new normal

Saturday morning is market time in Baugé, and I've been faithful to local stall holders and producers as much as I can be during lockdown.  The market was given permission to expand to include all the usual stallholders although it remains in the Place de Europe in front of the Chateau, rather than up in the market place.  It was really nice to see old chums back.  The lady who sells crèpes and gallettes was there and delighted to be back - she seems to have found lockdown very hard, particularly as she is a very social soul, so not seeing anyone for days clearly affected her.  I was also delighted to find that the Moroccan lady who does wonderful savoury stuffed pancakes and delicious cakes was back, so I could stock up on all the yummy things we have missed over the last two months.

After lunch (mostly Moroccan yummy things) we went out to do stuff, with first stop at a Vide Maison.  A widowed friend managed to sell her house just before lockdown, and can now disperse her stuff, prior to final signatures and heading back to Réunion to be with her children and grandchildren.  We will be sad to see her go.

My husband is very special - he got me a present on Thursday - a trailer full of horse poo.  Today I got to spend a chunk of the afternoon transferring it to a wheelbarrow and then taking it down the hill to sit and mature near where it will be needed.  How kind!

Each time I went down the hill, I was able to admire these flowers that came from some random bulbs I bought at Aldi and planted last autumn.  As I've lost the packaging, I've no idea what they are, but I am really enjoying them.

Today's cat pin-up is Fergus, looking rather imperial.  Until a couple of seconds before I took this, his back paw was pointing at the sky, but it came down, so pretty perfect!

Day 4 of deconfinement diary - personal grooming

When lockdown was announced, a massive wail went up from ladies all over France - no hairdressers and no beauticians!  O M G!!!  What were we ladies to do?  Our hairdressers sent out dire warnings about trimming fringes, home colouring and DIY hair cuts - wait they said, it will all be OK, and we will have more to work with, to make you look beautiful.  The two tone hair look was accepted for once.  Similarly for beauticians - they sent out advice and a long list of DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME, as well as DO TRY THIS AT HOME strictures, and many started to get their products ordered on line and made available at Drive pick up points.

With deconfinement however, life can get back to normal - or sort of normal anyway.  In the interests of this blog, and more importantly for my own peace of mind, I had an appointment today at the beauticians.  The rules are strict - arrive on time, not early; wear a facemask; bring the minimum into the place with you; use the gel at the entrance on your hands on arrival.  Once installed in your treatment room, it was also clear that the nice soft coverings had been removed and paper towels cover the treatment bed.  When you have to remove your facemask, you have to remain silent until you put your mask back on.  When I booked my next appointment, Noemie said that I would need to follow the same rules again.  "It's sad," she said, "but I can't see it changing for a while."  In faultless French of course.

There is an option for a voluntary contribution to the extra costs of maintaining strict hygiene, as they try to avoid increasing prices - I added a few coins to the pot.  We are all in this together after all.

The outward face of the house is looking rather splendid at the moment, as I have tended that rather than my own façade.  The geraniums I got from Aldi last year made it through the winter, and a bit of TLC meant they are blooming fit to bust.

The canna lilies, lemon verbena and vine are also looking very lush just now, although it will be a few months before the cannas flower.

The climbing rose that John pruned a bit late now has flowers.

And I am very pleased with my semper vivum drainpipe planters.

Day 3 of Deconfinement Diary - well that's what my brother said I should call it!

Wednesday is market day in la Flèche in the Sarthe department, just over the border from us and a mere 18 kilometres on the roads (a bit less as the crow flies, but not much).  It is the best market for miles around and I have been using it every week for the last 15 years.  During confinement, that was actually a bit dodgy, and I was probably lucky I wasn't caught by the Evil Gendarme.  The ones that I met, who checked my attestation getting into the market, were always fine and charming.  But a friend knows people who were fined and sent home without getting their goodies, so yes, I reckon I was lucky.

With deconfinement, it wasn't totally clear how the market was going to work, but it was certainly going to happen.  When I got there this morning, the clothes, shoes, kitchen goods and live chicken stands were all set up facing le Loir.  If you wanted the good stuff - food, flowers, plants - you had to join the queue (again), as numbers in the inner square where that bit of the market was, were still tightly controlled.

The big difference going in this week, was that if you didn't have a face mask on or with you, you were given one (and possibly a sharp talking to).  Fortunately I had mine, so once numbers allowed, I was let in to shop until I dropped, or couldn't carry anything else.  I was able to get all that I wanted (or could remember - total fail on bananas) - butter, milk, yoghurts, rice puddings, cakes, cheese, fish, salads, vegetables, black pudding (the real French boudin type - yummy), paté, bacon, and gossip.  What bliss!

Some stall holders weren't finding it as easy as you might expect.  You would think that with an enclosed space and newly found freedom, people would take the time to look at all the stalls.  It appears not!  My friend Brigitte took the following two photos - she sells beautiful cut flowers, and this was her first week back at the market.  She found she was on the side of the square less visited, with few passing by.

As a contrast, she took a photo of the "main drag" through the centre of the square, with rather more people.  It is particularly sad for her as at each end of her row, there were big stands selling plants, but people went round the back of her to get to them.  Both fishmongers were on the main drag, as well as the coffee bean stand.

The bloke that sells yoghurts was on the other side of the main drag, and was also having a slow time of it - again his first day back.  I heard him discussing the challenges of positioning with either a journalist or local councillor, so there may be changes next week.  It is very hard for these small producers as the markets are their main route for selling to the public, and they really do need people to come back to them.  As the Yoghurt Man said, it was like trying to rebuild the business from scratch - the 10 years he had already spent on the markets seemed to be forgotten by many.

 

Day 1 of (limited) freedom - not that I've noticed any real difference

Freedom!  Well sort of, anyway.

The weather to greet our new found freedoms was vile this morning - rain, blustery easterly winds and cold.  So while our boulangerie was open again on Mondays (they had been closed during lockdown on Mondays), it wasn't an unconfined joy walking up there, even if I didn't have an attestation.  But actually I did notice some differences - slightly more cars out and about and the barber at the top of the road was open and cutting hair.  But my plans to be out and about planting spuds and going for a walk in the One Acre Wood were confounded by 25mm of rain in 18 hours and a nasty wind that makes going into woodland a tad foolish.  However as the screen grab below shows, from here on in, it is due to get better.

The main excitement of the day was provided by Zola, when she brought in a sparrow.  We thought she had a lizard, so didn't bother chasing her.  It was only when I went upstairs to carry on working and saw her staring at the curtains, that I realised something more was afoot.  Our bedroom windows are large and it is a long way down.  The sparrow was unharmed, so it was a matter of getting the timing absolutely right to let the bird out, and close the window before Zola launched herself out of the window in pursuit.  Fortunately I succeeded.  

Otherwise, the news is full of how people are coping with going back to work and concerns about public transport.  Small pockets of infection are cropping up which should serve to keep people focussed on the key messages of social distancing, hand washing and keeping safe.  We are still waiting for our free face masks, but the 7th May copy of Private Eye finally turned up, saving us from an old but previously unread copy from February 2016.  There was a spoof in there of Johnson working out which way to jump over Brexit and which would give him the better chance of becoming PM.  Some things shouldn't be joked about.

With better weather, I should have more interesting things to report tomorrow, when I go out and about to see what freedom tastes like!

 

Day 55 of lockdown - not long to go!

From 00:01, the strict lockdown is over, from tomorrow I can go this far if I want to!

And I won't have to fill in an attestation either!  Joy unconfined!  Except it isn't that easy, is it?  The virus is still out there, we still have to social-distance, we need to have a facemask around in case we need it and we need to be very careful.  I'm not sure that we need to be alert (your country needs lerts…), but we mustn't forget and we must be vigilant.  For me, the pleasure will not be having to worry each time I leave the house as to whether my journey is necessary or should be justified.  The number of imaginary conversations I have had in my head in case of being stopped by the gendarmes!  But normal things can happen, like visits to the vet, the hairdresser, even to family within the magic circle!

Today has been a tad annoying.  I wanted to carry on planting potatoes as the first lot are up and taunting me, but as soon as I got to where they need to be planted, the heavens opened and it rained solidly for 30 minutes.  It eased off for long enough for me to pop out and pick a couple of kilos of broad beans and then started up again, until I got home.  This afternoon has been hot and sticky, so I happily potted on a bunch of seedlings and prepared a raised bed for something (not decided what) while we wait for the next batch of storms.  There are red alerts for rain and flooding further south.

I thought I would use up a few pictures that I have taken for the lockdown blog but haven't used, even if they are rather nice.  So here is my mass of red hot pokers - a rather rampant variety that we brought over from Worcester, and have moved around a bit.  This is probably still not the best place for them.

Did you know that lobelia overwinter if it doesn't get too frosty and you don't chuck them out as soon as they start to fade?  I think this lot are from last year, but could be from 2 years ago, and still going strong!  They also self-seed.

Despite the hedgehog, the proliferation of snails, slugs and chickens in our garden means that growing strawberries in the ground is never very successful, so we have them in hanging baskets.  We have a few Mariguettes (best tasting ever, but hard to get hold of the plants), the infamous Korona variety that we bought just before lockdown and this unknown variety that we got from Aldi last year, that has unusual pink flowers.  Can't remember what the fruit are like, but they are pretty!

Anyway, this is the last episode of Lockdown Blog, but as reactions on Facebook seemed to be that I should continue with this entertainment, a new series will start tomorrow.  All I've got to do is think up a snappy name for it...

Release diaries?  Waiting for the 2nd Wave?  Freedom blog?  Wait and see!

Day 54 of lockdown - much nicer things than yesterday!

Thank you to those who shared their anger, sorrow or amazement at yesterday's key story, and as a reward, I will be relentlessly upbeat today.

Yesterday was Victory in Europe Day, while today celebrates Europe, and I stopped at our local war memorial on the way home from the market to pay my respects to the fallen.  This area was in Occupied France, with a fairly heavy Gestapo presence at one of the local chateaux, and work camps not so far away.  There are a couple of isolated memorials, one in the local woods for a Resistance man and one in the woods for two British airmen, shot down a couple of days before D-Day.  In November, local airmen go and put poppies on that memorial.  This is our village's fine tribute.

After writing yesterday's blog, we set ourselves up outside in the garden for Friday night beer o'clock with Chinon and Tunbridge Wells.  We were charmed to be joined by a garden resident we don't see very often, but are always very pleased to see.  I do ensure that there is water available, and leave this one to find their own snacks of snails and slugs.  Everybody say "aaaaah", and no, I don't know what that pale line in the spines is, but it was on the real life hedgehog and it isn't a trick of the camera.

This morning I was checking over the seedlings and met this fine fellow stuck in one of the plastic modules, so I helped him out with a bit of vegetable material and hopefully he has gone off on his way.  He was so beautiful though!  And while they don't show on the photo, he had little copper effect bits on the edge of his carapace.

It took the blasted post snails only 2 nights to completely eat the label I put on the post box to tell the local council how many face masks we would need.  So today I had another go at putting a 2 on the box, this time using copper tape, as they don't like the electric charge up 'em.  I hope this works!

Finally, this afternoon I was potting on tomato seedlings and John was working out a way to fix the garden bench that collapsed under him (it is nearly 20 years old and the joints gave out, nothing to do with confinement ounces, which John has avoided anyway, as he works so hard).  We had to stop after a while as the rumbling got to such a level that we knew it was time to go in.  After 10mm rain was dumped on us, we've been inside for a bit, but now the rest of the tomatoes are calling to me.  Here is the lightening map for what went on in the skies around us.

 

Day 52 of lockdown - a little bit of everything

I think I said yesterday that I had to leave a note on the post box about how many face masks we might need?  Well overnight some peckish little monopod decided that my sticker was exactly what it wanted for dinner - look at the state of this!

It's been a funny day, with a GP appointment, a visit to the supermarket (cat food and rice still in short supply, but plain packaged flour in huge bins!), little work, nice weather and zero motivation.  So I thought I had better make good on my promise of making ice cream, not least as I had bought half a litre of best, unpasteurised, direct from the cow, cream yesterday.  Here it is churning away, and if you spot any little black dots, those are vanilla seeds from pods I brought back from Guadeloupe.

The slow stages of making ice cream were also a good excuse to watch the government announcements on easing of lockdown from Monday next week (staring the Man from le Havre).  Some of it had already been mooted, but the new map was revealed without the amber bit - Centre Val de Loire has gone green for those who are interested.  It was nice in the supermarket (there is a point to this surprising statement) in that I saw a number of chums I've not seen since lockdown started.  One is pretty vociferous against the Government, and I had had a bit of a hit back at her on social media about something she'd posted, so it was good to discuss the issues face to face and not while swearing at the intermittent nature of WiFi and the problems of autocorrect on the phone.  She is normally pretty strongly for the unions and the far left, so I was surprised when she said that they were also useless and incoherent - her anger was at the amount of perceived lying that was going on - about PPE, about bonuses to health care staff (her daughter in law had not yet received hers), and about the state of the health service in general.  But when we got onto the school issue, she said that she was really pleased that her grandson would be able to go to school half a day or a day a week from next week, as she felt he was becoming afraid of the world outside his house and garden.  The little darling (he is rather cute) is only 4!

Anyway, for most of my readers, this photo of the TV screen is the one that will interest you.

Borders closed for the moment, no restrictions on travelling up to 100km as the crow flies from home (carry a justification of your home address with you however), while beaches and lakes will only open if the local mayor can convince the Préfet that they have measures in place to ensure social distancing is maintained.  Still no bars or restaurants can open unless for takeaway.  They also exhort those that are vulnerable to stay home and confined as much as possible, but it will be personal choice.

In that vein, I had to speak sharply to these two (Poirot and Zola) about setting a good example on social distancing.  This is not good, although it is rather cute.

Given their size, this is rather better, and still rather cute.

Day 51 of lockdown - a little tirade about face masks

With some lockdown restrictions lifting on Monday 11th May here in the Green Zone of France, there is a rush to ensure everyone has at least one face mask to their name.  I am very grateful that our local councillors will be doing the rounds over the next few days, popping them in our post boxes (I've had to leave a number on the letter box so they know how many to leave!).  And yet...

Well for a start, there is this conundrum for those of us who wear glasses.

I gather wiping the inside of your glasses with shaving foam helps.

But practical issues of steaming up aside, I have a whole bunch of issues with face masks.

Disposable ones - after all the hassle we have been having over the past years about reducing waste, reuse, recycle etc, suddenly people are using disposable face masks that have to be put in the main garbage, and some are using several a day.  That's not going to help the planet, is it?

Washable ones - except you "have" to wash them on a 30 minute, 65°C wash with detergent, no softener, but you can put them in with other stuff you are washing.  Hmm - so my washing machine is a bit old and doesn't have a 30 minute cycle, I don't wash anything at 65°C, and certainly nothing with elastic, which doesn't like that sort of temperature, and a full 2 hour cycle for our 3 (or 5 after our delivery) face masks?  Plus anything else we want to shrink of course.  Plus the cost of the electricity to power heating the water that much.  So that annoys me.

Then there is the politics, with a small p, of wearing a face mask.  The people I've had issues with over social distancing, or keeping a decent amount away from me, are those wearing masks who seem to think it makes them suddenly cleaner than clean and able to get up close and personal.  Think people who crane past you to see what is available from the fish monger, or little old ladies who want to get to the cashier more quickly so get up close and personal.  I remonstrated with one this morning, and she asked me if I had the virus to be so concerned.  As her mask only covered her mouth, me pointing out that I didn't know about me, but I certainly didn't know about her went over her head.

I am waiting to see how easy it is to have a hair wash, cut and blow dry while wearing a face mask, or indeed my visit to the beautician....

And of course the reason for wearing one, is if you have symptoms, you keep them to yourself, it doesn't stop you from picking up the virus from others, as it doesn't include eye cover.  Aaaargh.

Moving swiftly on, here is a pretty flower from bulbs I planted last autumn and I've lost the list of what they might be.  They were a nice surprise this afternoon.