Progress

Progress!!!!!!

The builder's arrived and I am happier than one ought to be to welcome someone who is making such a mess. Paul is English, comes highly recommended and is very particular about keeping things swept and tidy. I have threatened to buy and chain and padlock to keep him here for a couple of months but I fear a month is the maximum he can stay before he goes off to another site. For the moment there is a large opening where there was once a door into the new rooms. On Saturday evening I arrived home to find Skeep, one of the Village Labradors inside the house eating the cat’s dinner. It is a little strange to go to bed knowing the house is totally unprotected. It is one of the joys of living in this area that even so, I feel completely safe in my “open house”. No need for a cat door for Matilda now.
Monday morning is my regular time for calling all tradesmen who failed to arrive as scheduled last week. This week it’s the jackpot. Nil has arrived to build the new staircase and dismantled the old one faster than a speeding bullet. Fortunately there is an entrance to the house on the second floor or it would be parachute time. The made to measure Armoire is installed and looks better than the photo in the design magazine we copied. Clothes are now hanging in orderly rows instead of being squashed in assorted suitcases and hanging behind doors where they have been for the past four months. Last but not least, the odd job man is coming next week for two days. Progress at last.
But, it is mixture of good and not so good. Yesterday, after my morning shower I went downstairs to find everything is the pantry in pool of water. It seems a dodgy seal on a pipe broke in that room when the new pipes were being laid in the new room. The shower water went sloshing straight into the downstairs room. The terrace resembled a bazaar of wet belongings for the day. Then a fountain gushed forth later in the when the builder accidently broke through a plumbing line. Fortunately it was a dry sunny day. As I write, a loud expletive from downstairs fills the air as more water gushes from the ground!!!!!! Another break through??

The previous owner who now lives next door finds this wreckage all too much and averts her eyes when she passes.

Food Glorious Food

Food Glorious Food
France, Fetes, Food …. a Holy Trinity to be celebrated with the abundant sacramental bread and wine of each region. The annual Fete de Responchons was held in Cordes sur Ciel today in warm sunny spring weather. This festival celebrating the arrival of Spring and a wild asparagus. It is found growing along the roadside and collected by the country people. Lunch for a couple of hundred people was served in the covered market in the old city. This asparagus is weedy looking with a bitter taste and needs to be boiled before adding to any dish, usually eggs. Not only have the asparagus arrived in the market but I have decided to plant a little bed of this delicious vegetable for myself. For me it will herald the arrival of Spring each year as surely as the first cuckoo I heard this week.
My new abode has the tiniest of gardens so I decided that everything I plant must be either edible or fragrant. After much strenuous digging and considerable time spent on eliminating all the roots of couch grass, the previous occupants of my patch of land, my trench was ready. Following the internet instructions for filling the trench with rotted down manure I then drove up to the dairy nearby, braved the three barking dogs and asked if I could take some of the same. I’ve planted Argenteuil plants or Griffes as they are called, advertised as the “the ultimate white French” variety. If the information given by the experts is reliable I can now look forward to a generation of asparagus each spring.

Baking "The biggest Croquant in the World" is also an integral part of the celebrations at the Fete de Responchons. The cooking takes place in the Place de la Bride, the highest point in Cordes. This local biscuit is baked in a homemade thermometer-free oven using the embers from a huge fire lit by a couple of intrepid locals who then supervise the cooking.
The oven, about three meters square is constructed by first shoveling and spreading coals on the ground under a huge tin biscuit tray. A chef in white coat and toque pipes about five hundred biscuits on the tray while the fire is being prepared. A Second tray or lid is then placed over biscuits. More hot coals are heaped on this top tray which is then covered with corrugated iron and the whole thing is left for about an hour while the biscuits bake. The aforementioned locals take a peak at the biscuits from time to time and adjust the coals accordingly to ensure they are cooked evenly. The biscuit mixture runs and spreads into one big lovely mass and even if it is not the biggest croquant in the world it is enough to feed the few hundred people who have been hanging around waiting for it to cook. It costs only a euro for a generous plate of the yummy warm pieces of the croquant. Usually eaten cold they are very crunchy but eaten this way, straight for the big "oven" they are even more delicious.

Dawn Chorus

Dawn Chorus

I bought a house in this village after five years of being a carefree tenant with no responsibility, and fell headlong with eyes wide shut into an unheated house in coldest winter for decades. Once upon a time my house was insulated on the upper level with bales of hay and warmed on the ground floor by the cows brought in to live with the occupants in winter. It was restored and used as a summer house by two intrepid English women, so although there is a wood burning fire upstairs, downstairs was sans chauffage, no heating at all. The thick stone walls which help keep it cool in summer also ensure that without heating it is arctic in the winter. I ate upstairs and then waited for it to be late enough to jump into my warm bed with electric blanket which was truly my saviour. Then I slipped in the snow and was certain I had broken my coccyx and had a sprained wrist in a cast for two weeks. The builders never arrived; the water and electricity authorities likewise, which along with the non arrival of various other assorted artisans, made life difficult. The climax was a fire in the chimney. I was terrified of losing my new house, even worse, momentarily I could not remember the emergency number. While I waited for the firemen I put Matilda, my cat, outside for safety if the worst happened and quickly packed a small suitcase with warm clothes, computer and passport. I kept a close eye on the chimney expecting it to explode or burst into flames at any moment. After what seemed like an hour, five handsome firemen arrived in a big red truck, lights flashing, fortunately no sirens. I could write one of those books about living in France on no subject other than France Telecom and Orange. Suffice to say I had no telephone for a month and no internet for two months. I felt very isolated from family and friends.

Well you get the picture; a “Winter of Discontent”. Just as I reached an all time low the birds returned and now I wake up to the Dawn Chorus, magic. They have returned from wherever they fly in the winter and I’ve discovered some of them fly a long way. In the last three weeks they are up early singing and letting us know something out there is still alive and spring is here. It is wonderful to just listen to them as one goes about the daily routine. I recently placed an old nesting box on a wall of my house high up under a roof so they are not in the direct sun and where they are safe from Matilda. Now I am anxiously waiting for a little bird to set up house there. Because it is so quiet and unpolluted in the Tarn they take centre stage for entertainment. In Sydney where the winters are milder the birds, including the noisy parrots, seem to sing or crow, all year round. Here seasonal changes and the departure and arrival of the birds are important and significant events

Late last year I went to Marrakesh with a friend, my first visit to Morocco. The Riad Menzeh where we stayed was just wonderful with the added attraction of local birds called tibbibts in residence, nesting in a chandelier. They were extremely tame and came to sit with us at breakfast. Their song is only three notes, repeated endlessly. One guest thought it sounded like his name fred-er-ik. I recently wrote to Bernard the owner of the Riad and asked if the birds were still there. He replied they are happy “it is the love season”.

At coffee this morning a friend said that two hoopoe birds have built a nest near his house. Next month the nightingale will return and then it will be birdsong all night long as well. I am interested in finding a group of people near here in the Tarn whom I might join to listen, watch and learn about the birds in France. Even if you live in a city where the traffic drowns out birdsong you can listen to the Dawn Chorus on www.birdsongradio.com Happy listening.

A Sounder of Sanglier

A Sounder of Sanglier

Finally, at last, I've seen a a wild boar or sanglier in French, not just one but about twenty of them!! Quite late last evening, driving home from a concert in a nearby village, there in the headlights appeared a huge sanglier on the road. It turned quickly away from the headlights and back into the field to the right where I could see lots of them milling about. They then proceeded to take their right of way and calmly cross in front of the car, huge females and quite tiny babies. It was so exciting and I felt quite privileged to be watching them amble down to the Cerou River which runs though our valley. I was also surprised to see they were brown and quite pale because I thought they were always black. A friend has a large male black sanglier head with tusks mounted above a door in his shop. He is called Albert but sadly no one seems to want to buy him.

A group such as this which is called a Sounder is usually about twenty animals. The male is solitary so these would all be females. I feel much happier now as it seems all my friends have a story to tell about sighting sangliers and I had never even seen one. Maddie drove smack into the middle of a sounder last summer killing one before she was able to stop. The car was pretty much killed as well. It was during the wheat harvest and the workers quickly scooped it up it for their next week's dinner.

No sooner had I set off again than I sadly realized they too, might soon be on someone's dinner table. The hunting season starts next week. In fact I heard someone practicing to-day; the first shot of many. Walking in the woods here is a precarious past time in the winter and if I hear a loud bang anywhere near I quickly abandon thoughts of a pleasant ramble and hurry back to my ittle cottage. At the end of the season it is a tradition that part of the hunt kill is given to the community. Each year the mayor of our village extends an invitation to all off us to a hunter's lunch where the menu is sanglier, deer, and other game caught during the season. Sanglier is a dark strongly flavoured meat and features on many local restaurant menus. There is no talk here of giving up the hunt, it is a long held tradition. The animal is not protected and the quota given to the hunters depends on their numbers in the area each year. They gorge themselves on the cereal crops so are not loved by the farmers as they cause enormous damage and are rigorously culled each year.

From the protection of my car I found them adorable and I find it impossible to take part in the Hunters Lunch or Dejeuner Du Chasse.

T

In the Beginning

What do you do each day? This was the question most frequently asked of me when I first came to live here. I came here to the Tarn in France to help a friend with the restoration of an enormous building which had been built as an embroidery factory around 1880. That was easy to answer; let the builders in, rush to the hardware shop three times before lunch, (because they will be closed between mid day and two o'clock),climb and descend the five flights of stairs countless times a day and then try to get some assurance from the builders at the end of each day that they would return next morning. In addition to painting,and daily cleaning up(something our French builders had never heard of)and falling into bed exhausted each night, that is what I did each day for six months over and over again with little variation. Once the building was fit for habitation we rented out apartments, ran a coffee shop and an antique centre for the summer.

After eight months hard slog at La Gaudane in Cordes sur Ciel it was time to return to Australia. But instead I rented a cottage in a tiny Hamlet nearby for six months and bought an old Peugeot 205. That was six happy years ago come next Australia Day. Now I am joinging the army of global bloggers. I hope you will enjoy sharing Time out in the Tarn with me.