Rural Life

That's quite enough of 2020!

As the t-shirt says, 2020 - one star rating.  And I think the one star is because you can't have a no star rating!  New Zealand and Australia are already shot of it and here in France we have just over 6 hours (and counting down) more to tolerate.  Not that I imagine the start of 2021 will be any better really, but short of alien invasion, this year really has had most things cr@p.

But to put a better spin on it all, things are looking up!  This morning I went to open a new sack of chicken feed and pulled the two bits of twine that are sewn along the top to close it - miracle of miracles, it all pulled apart in one smooth movement.  It didn't even need a starting nudge with the scissors!  For those who open bird seed, chicken food, cat litter, posh flour and pasta and all the other paper sacks with stitched tops, you will know the astonishment and pleasure this gave!

Nature is also doing its bit to show that there are good things to come.  The broad beans I sowed in late November are coming up, and following a badger track, I found a load of narcissus bulbs coming up under a hedge.  There are also loads of orchid and cowslip rosettes to be seen, while Aldi was selling hellebores and I was there in time to get one!  Nature shows the way (although we may also get snow in the new year).

Culture also goes on.  The online store that shall not be named, but is about the only way currently I can buy new books in English, exceeded its estimation of delivery dates and these two lovelies turned up today!  These are two of my absolute favourite contemporary writers.  Louise Penny's Gamache is the detective we would all want working on a case on our behalf - this book is about an investigation in Paris, but normally he is in the Quebec state of Canada.  Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant is a member of the Met, but is shacked up with a river goddess and is part of the Wizarding special section of the Police, so a little different.  I can't wait to get stuck in!

So I leave the final farewell to 2020 to S Clause, and look forward to the new challenges and charms of 2021.  I decided a sweepstake on the date of the start of the next confinement here would be in bad taste, but so far people have mentioned the 5th and the 15th of January.  Bonne Année, et surtout la santé as we say over here.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 45 - make do and mend

Another dreary day here in Anjou - not cold but dull, damp and dreary.  No reason to go outside other than to feed the chickens, and realistically it would have been a good day to stay in bed with a box set of DVDs, except we have lost the remote control for the DVD player.  There are about 5 more places to look for it, all of which involve major efforts moving furniture and having a jolly good hoover, which isn't appealing on a Sunday.

I did spend the morning doing a bit of filing and also looking at paperwork for my French business - I am further on with that, but ground to a halt when I hit the brick wall that is the vicious circle of:

• log in to your user area
• Don't recognise your username or password
• Opt to change password as "forgotten"
• Change password
• Password changed successfully - log in using your username and password
• log in using username and new password
• Don't recognise your username or password
• repeat ad nauseam
• Aaaargh!

Clearly I am going to have to brave the URSSAF helpline!

After lunch, it was down to make do and mend - FIVE pairs of trousers patched and sewn up, plus a jacket.  We can now go about in public without being in danger of flashing flesh or losing keys and coins.  It would be nice to buy a new pair of jeans, but a combination of guilt at the production process of denim, horror at the price of many varieties, horror at the bad fit of most other varieties available to us and not being able to get near a Marks and Spencer are ranged against me.  Even if I could get to an M&S (other clothes stores are available), the likelihood of them having the right cut and size has generally proven to be 1 in 3.  John has a better choice open to him as Espace Emeraud utility trousers (other shops are available) are pretty standard and suit him down to the ground - it is more a matter of hating buying new clothes and being mean (where clothes are concerned).

He is also mending a dining chair (not ours), so it is more than just keeping our money away from purveyors of clothes.

Clearly I'm not going to grace this post with pictures of mended jeans or work trousers, but as a Sunday treat, here is a photo of orchids and bromeliads as they should be seen in all their tropical glory.  Happy Sunday!

Autumn Lockdown - Day 44 - it's getting to be a bit like Christmas!

After a couple of truly miserable days, this morning we saw the sun!  Not for too long - it was raining by 4:30pm, but this morning was definitely sunny.  As it's Saturday, it is also the other market day, the one in Baugé.  Last week was quiet, as the weather was awful, but I thought it would be a lot busier today, as it was fine.  Although the car park was pretty full, the queues were actually quite short - I think 5 minutes was the longest wait.

Normally around now Baugé hosts a large and rather good Christmas Fayre in the big René d'Anjou centre, but that was cancelled back in September I think, as it became clear that Covid wasn't going anywhere soon.  However today's market was augmented by two stalls selling wine, one selling macaroons, one selling books and a huge fire/steam powered cooker selling take away meals.  It was very impressive (but I didn't buy any of the food).

While I was waiting in line for fruit and vegetables, a familiar figure walked down from the Mairie ringing a bell, and making jovial HoHoHo noises.  He was dishing out sweeties too, but only to small children, so I didn't get one.  A few I watched him offering the basket of sweets to, looked absolutely horrified!  I think they might have been concerned he wasn't obviously wearing a mask (I bet it was hidden behind the beard!).

As well as the Christmas Fayre, there would normally be all sorts of fun for the children around now.  There are decorations and Christmas trees and bits of red carpet all over the place but it's not the same.  The various committees that organise festivities and events all year round have clubbed together and hired in a small merry-go-round for children to have free rides on.  As I didn't have a child in tow, I had to be careful to photograph no faces and ideally no children!

When I got home, John had ClassicFM blaring out with a number of seasonal tunes, to help the festive season along - so much nicer to listen to than "right on" talk radio or depressing news stories.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 43 - a ray of sunshine

I have spent the day wrestling with the requirements of French bureaucracy for clients and the weather continues to be singularly horrible, so I am going to share with you a few photos we took in Guadeloupe, to bring a ray or two of Caribbean sunshine into a dreary December day!

Maximum sunshine in this photograph of breadfruit on a tree.

Maximum wildlife with this photo of a pelican in flight.

Plan a walk along this beach with your feet in the waves.

And after your exertions, enjoy a chilled beer at the site of Catherine's bar (actually called something else but very nice all the same).

Have a nice, relaxing Friday evening!

 

 

 

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 42 - a dank day in the country

It really has been a totally miserable day.  I did go out to see a client this morning and feed the Boys in the Country - you can see from the photo below that the sky was sitting on our very low hills, and all was ridiculously wet.  The cats were not keen on being out and about and herded me back up to shelter as soon as they could, and basically were keen to see the back of me so they could go back to sleep.  No one came with me for my walk round the boundaries of the other two plots.

This afternoon I did get to go out again, this time to the hairdresser - o the bliss of being properly coiffured once again!  Cecelia is very strict about her clients following the rules of hygiene, and is working very long hours to try to catch up with the backlog from the very tight lockdown.  She says that December is normally frantic anyway, but that this year, it is even more frantic than normal.  To ensure she can meet customer expectations, she only has Sundays off, stops at 4pm on a Monday to collect her children from school, has a two hour lunch break on a Wednesday to spend time with her children but otherwise the salon is open 9am to 9pm, and she is the only person working there.  Don't tell me the French are slackers!

I solved the problem of the Christmas card picture - I have ordered 80 photo prints of the picture I want to use, and will stick those to the stiff paper we already have, to provide a mount.  That sounds like it should be an expensive option, but the total cost is under 9 Euros including postage and packing.  The only issue is wondering when the photos will actually arrive.

Again following on from yesterday, given the level of pain and swelling from the sting, we are pretty confident it was a wasp queen that got me, having decided to overwinter in the house.  However she is history as John dealt with her with severity.

I believe Love Actually is on French TV tonight, so we will watch it all through for the first time ever (seen bits from time to time) as our nod to the festive season, and hope that tomorrow is a bit more appealing as a day.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 41 - a bit of Christmas cheer

A funny day today - before breakfast I had a call from a client in the UK 99% certain in confirming that I had won a new contract with him (his actual description was "it is more sure than Brexit"), but that it would take a bit of time to sort out the paperwork.  Now contracts have been given out by HM Government recently for millions of pounds without the level of due diligence required for this bit of work, which amounts to about £8,000 over two years.  Still, every small victory has to be celebrated, and it was a weight off my mind.

So armed with that knowledge, I headed for the market at la Flèche for all sorts of goodies, but rushed around a bit rather than taking my time and enjoying the scene as I needed to get to the office supplies and copy shop to get the Christmas cards printed.  Last year it was so easy - here is the computer, insert your USB stick, select the file you want to print, do a test print, buy a ream of expensive heavy paper, put about 50 sheets in the printer tray, decide how many you want and hit go.  All done by me.  I got to keep the rest of the ream of heavy paper, which doesn't work in our printers, to use "next year".  Back I go today with my trusty USB key, the rest of my expensive ream of paper and a light heart, only to be told I would have to send the file by email, had to buy a new ream of paper, and to book a time to come to collect my prints.  As they also didn't have the required envelopes and printer labels, I left with what I went in with and a problem still to be solved.  So much for using local businesses (although it turns out they are big enough to sponsor a boat in the Vendée Globe race, so not that needy)!

This image is actually pretty relevant, as for the first time in about 13 years, I have had some sort of office Christmas party!  OK it was actually a professional society special interest group Christmas do, but that's the nearest I get nowadays.  There were games and competitions, including a scavenger hunt, all done by Zoom and hosted by the 2019 Most Interesting Mathematician (she kept her title in 2020, as they couldn't run the competition).

Since then I have been stung by a hornet that was trying to hibernate in my office, so I'm not very happy and typing with one finger.  Here is a pretty view to round off the post.

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 40 - intellectually that should be it

Quarante - Quarantine - 40 days of lockdown, and in theory that should be it, although the French government never said that it would be over today, but next Tuesday it should be, except...  Those pesky daily new cases figures are not getting down to the 5,000 a day that would mean they feel they have this under control.  I suspect a slight alleviation of restrictions on Tuesday next week, and then another lockdown about the 5th January.  I'm not putting money on it though.

Today has been a day of little jobs, but that make things progress.  This morning we cut more bits off the cherry tree.  The next thing will be to get the main trunk down and then we will have to decide what to do with that bit of the garden, which has always been very sheltered due to the size of the tree.

I also designed the Christmas card, ready to take to the printers tomorrow, and wrote the Christmas round robin - yes, I know everyone sneers at them, but actually I like to know what is going on in people's lives, beyond the fact that they ARE alive, and do as you would be done by and all that!  After lunch we visited the Boys in the Country for much needed cat cuddles and then to the One Acre Wood to secure some firewood.  One of the delights of the wood, is that it is on a ridge of hills overlooking the Loir valley, and we have a splendid view for miles.  It was looking particularly pleasing today.

It's about time to reassess how the orchid is coming on, and you can see that there are some interesting developments.  The first three buds on the new flower stem would appear to be branches that will have flowers on, while the next couple are starting to look a lot like flower buds and slowly swelling.  It is very odd, for days nothing seems to change, and then all of a sudden I notice something different.

If you want to compare, the first photo was on November 9th (Day 11) and the second on November 23rd (Day 25).

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 39 - a walk in the wood

Today has not been an exciting day to write about.  I've been doing a bit of work with one of my clients, and would heartily recommend the Water, Mills and Marshes LPS website as a place to linger to learn about the Norfolk Broads, the mills there and the work being done to restore land and buildings, and to educate people.  I was there in early March, just before the first lockdown hit, and it is a hauntingly beautiful area.

Less cheery was the news that the staff at the Francois Rabelais Hospital in Chinon have been affected by Covid quite badly.

Yesterday however, after a visit to the Boys in the Country, I took the long way home and visited the One Acre Wood for a walk and contemplation.  The previous Sunday we had both visited and had worked hard to fill the trailer with firewood.  The weather had been perfect - sunny and a hint of warmth.  Yesterday the conditions were less good, and I was on my own, but there were still interesting things to marvel at, including self-seeded cyclamen plants, and the ever changing light and views as more leaves fall. 

The service trees do not make good firewood (although we gather they aren't bad for charcoal), and often just collapse and fall for no obvious reason.  We tend to leave the trunks to rot down or provide food for whatever passes through the wood.  I found evidence of something having a good rummage in one of the logs.

Further round, I found a new mushroom had come up - it is a bit late, as many of the others that were around earlier in the year have rotted away or are looking like something from a horror movie.  I don't know why but pied de mouton (hedgehog mushrooms in English) seem to fruit very late in our woodland, and this is a rather nice example.  They are edible I gather, but I'm never entirely sure about them, and none of the hunters or scrumpers that come through the wood take them, so I leave them as an interesting curiosity and further evidence of the excellent biodiversity there.

In the words of the song, it beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as holly berries are everywhere and haven't been eaten yet by the birds.  In another week or so I might be inclined to cut a few sprigs and make a wreath, or I might just leave them to be enjoyed by nature.  I'll see how I feel.  I won't have them in the house, as the berries might be food for mice, and might be poisonous for cats.

With three cats living in the house, you would think I wouldn't be too worried about mice, but Zola brings them in and then forgets about them.  A couple have been living hidden in a crack between kitchen units and only coming out when we aren't moving, to eat their way through a packet of polenta.  Once we realised what was going on, we kept the packet in place, and caught one, and took it away outside.  Its chum finished the packet on Sunday morning.  On Sunday evening, it was looking for something else and making a noise, and for once Zola followed up, laid in wait for about 10 minutes and caught it.  And ate it - as the only evidence I found was a tail and a bit of "inner mouse".

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 37 - more like Winter actually

Just over 2 weeks to the shortest day, and it isn't really light here until nearly 9am on a good day.  There was also a bit of a frost here this morning - the weather station in the garden recorded -0.7ºC, but that was at head height.  The pepper and aubergine plants still standing in the garden and the canna lilies at the front of the house are all showing signs of having been well frosted this afternoon, and it is probably time to cut them all down.  Except that it is too cold and yukky to really want to go out side and do that.

Surely not, I hear you mutter?  After all the douceur angevine, and you are in western France and all that, means that it is always warm and glowing?  Not all the time, no.  This morning it was a real labour of love to stand in the queues in the market, although I have to say, they were a lot shorter as a lot of fair weather shoppers couldn't face it.  I did the circuit including the tea lady up Rue Basse in about 45 minutes as opposed to an hour or an hour and a quarter.

There was a ceremony at the War Memorial as I left - poor Anciens Combattants freezing as they saluted the monument and then had to listen to a speech by a Mayor.  There weren't many of them due to Covid.  But then it started to rain too!  Once home, I had the honour of being sat on by Zola to help me warm back up again - even she couldn't be bothered with the outside world today!

After more rain, which fortunately didn't turn lumpy, it brightened up enough this afternoon for me to pop out for a bit of a walk, not much and not far, but something.  Looking to the south east from one of the lanes I went up, there is a nice view across the valley, although the clouds were not at all friendly.  There is more rain on the way, and as it gets dark, I guess it may become solid.  There was snow this morning in Normandy I gather - brrrrrr!

 

Autumn Lockdown - Day 35 - my favourite palm tree

Yes, clearly I am clutching at straws here to find good things to talk about!

I've had a busy day, what with meeting the bank manager, helping with a hospital visit, taking details of a potential client, driving around a lot and being shouted at by cats.  The weather has been singularly horrid.  None of these things make for a good blog.  So I have rummaged around in the computer vaults to find something sunny from Guadeloupe and have decided upon my favourite kind of palm tree.  Well I call it a palm tree, but I'll bet biologists will have other views.  Here's the science bit courtesy of the Botanical Gardens of Deshaies about the Travellers Tree.

So, not native, but found all over the place there.  Here are a couple of young ones.  These are already taller than us, and rather nice and elegant to my mind.

The apartment complex we stayed at had a few in their grounds, that were rather bigger, so that the shield-like apex of the leaves is at face level.  These are a nice, liveable with size.

But here is a salutary lesson, in that like all trees, they get big and probably too big for their space - think any leylandii hedge, think oak tree, think walnut tree.  This monster dominated part of the Botanical Gardens - very beautiful, but I would suggest quite vulnerable to strong winds.

I'll do better tomorrow, I promise!