Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Monday, February 25, 2008

Celebrity status for Franca

I am going to sound like a broken record soon, but another fantastic weekend weather wise, on Saturday I was in the garden with just a pair of shorts on with local thermometers (on shops etc..) showing temps in the shade of 21 degrees, and much hotter in the direct sunshine. There were lots of red faces at the airport on Sunday evening as we waited for the flight back to Stansted. We do have to bear in mind though on the climate change front that this is, in theory, very unusual for the time of year, or is it now… That was my last Sunday night flight back for a while, thank goodness, because I really miss Sunday evenings in France. If I have to fly back to the UK on a Sunday evening I only get a one and a half day weekend.

It may not be the Oscars but Franca has reached local celebrity status in the Charente as she got her photo in the regional paper telling the story of how we found our B&B, how the renovations were going and what our future plans are. By the time we went out on Saturday night the news had spread around the local villages so Franca was recognised by the owner of the restaurant we were eating in when we arrived. Don't worry, we will be keeping our feet firmly on the ground after all todays news is tomorrows chip paper as we say in the UK. Thanks to the power of the internet, and our mailing list, by the time you read this the news article will be all over Europe, and the publicity was much better than I thought it would be.

Fleur and I got our potage (vegetable garden) under way this weekend and I dug the first 3 feet by 10 feet bed, in which we planted peas, tomatoes carrots and some herb in a little herb garden we are making. It amazing, it looks so small having dug it, double digging mind, but all my muscles ache as if I had been doing something really strenuous, definitely out of condition, still I have a few more beds to dig so I should get used to it by the end. I am not sure how many beds I will end up with but we need a bed for the salad plants, some more veggies and franca suggested we have a fruit bed too, after all we have to grow our own charentaise melons. You notice though no offer to help dig the beds. I will probably wimp out and borrow a rotivator from our kind neighbour Jean-Luc, that will get the job done much quicker than with a fork, a spade and a rake. Fleur has been very helpful this weekend, she helped me clear out the garage, before moving on to start the veggie garden, in fact when I left on Sunday afternoon she fell asleep on the sofa. I think that’s the first time I have worn her out, but to be honest she probably wore herself out.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

An historic visit....

I am at La Rochelle airport for the first time this year, being half term the BA prices are sky high, and there is no Monday morning flight this week or next week from Bordeaux, so hobsons choice. I flew out on Easyjet from Luton to allow me to collect my car from Bordeaux, so that I could then drive to La Rochelle, then next week I will use the Stansted/La Rochelle route in both directions. La Rochelle is closed on Mondays until April so I am on the Sunday evening flight which basically means this weekend and next weekend are short weekends for me. I discovered even worse news this week, normally after April Ryanair have a Monday morning flight in the summer timetable but I cannot find a Monday morning flight on Ryanair back to the UK from anywhere in SW France. So this may get a little more complicated, but more of that when it pans out.

More lovely weather this weekend, its amazing what 600 miles further south can do to the temperature, it’s the same sunny weather in the UK but the wind feels much cooler in London keeping the temps down even in the sun, but here in Sigogne the sun is higher and stronger and the wind is not so keen, so lunches outside again and working in the garden.

The big event of the weekend was we had the last French owners of our house round for an aperitif as I mentioned in my last blog. They of course were emotional, but in an enthusiastic way which meant they bought loads of photos, and had loads of stories for us, we have learnt lots as well. We thought the house was built in three stages, however we now know that the house was only built in two stages, the first in 1829 and the second in the 1980s. Our house was in fact a sheep farmer’s cottage with a large barn and a granary. Lots more info will come now we know the family Valoteau and where they live. We had too many questions for one session, especially trying to understand the replies, but at one point allegedly the Germans used the house for parties. The house itself was owned by the Valoteau family from 1939 and it was they that converted the farmers cottage into a ‘new’ Charentaise long house. I could go on for ages but I will save that for another time. We are now busy scanning in their black & white photos, which we will blow up and make a little display somewhere in the house. We have the name for the last bedroom upstairs, since it is where the granary was then the room must be called Le Grainiere (hopefully spelt it right). May be the bedroom underneath will be called Valoteau, but we will think about that one.

Otherwise being a short weekend we did not do very much, recovering from our latest visitors and relaxing, but it will have to be back to work next weekend.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

More wall to wall sunshine...

Well what can I say another glorious weekend has come and gone, more wall to wall sunshine and temperatures in our favourite corner of the garden reaching 30 degrees. This was the first weekend of 2008 that everyone was in shorts for at least part of the time.

We also had guests staying with us, not only for the weekend, but in total almost a week. They arrived on Thursday evening and with them came the good weather, if a bit unusual for the time of year. Franca picked them up from Saintes railway station as they flew into La Rochelle but did not want to drive down to us. They were house hunting for a place to retire to somewhere in the Charente. They were a very nice and friendly couple, full of stories so they were fun to be with. For the first three nights they ate with us, which to be honest took us a little by surprise but was none the less fun, as we spent the weekend doing things we wanted to do such as cooking and researching food and drink. With them eating in more than we thought it allowed us to check the routine we will need when we are fully up and running and by the end of the weekend we had things under control and it was good fun. We even had time to experiment with Fleur at making a home made French fruit tart, we got the pastry worked out and that was fine, but we need to work on our fillings a bit more.

With guests around it meant that major messy building work was out of the question, that all gave way to cooking and cleaning, but we did have time to visit the small valentines market in the centre of Sigogne, with the fine weather it was a nice walk round to the town centre, and of course we met with a few people we knew, before having to rush back and carry on the dinner preparations. On Sunday I also found time to chop the fire wood I had collected on Saturday so even though the weather is not lending itself to evenings round the fire side we now have enough wood should the weather take a turn for the worse. I have now moved 6 car loads of wood but it still does not look like I have dented the pile of wood that represents our old roof. Luckily our neighbour does not appear to be complaining as technically it is all on his land, the bit we would like to buy if he ever decides to sell it.

Next weekend we have the last French family who lived in our house coming to look around and have an aperitif with us. We hope we will get some history of the house which will give us some much need input to create some character and ambience, as we continue with our rebuilding, and it will be another severe test of my poor French. They promised to come armed with photos and other info so it will be very interesting, I wonder if we will get any shows of Gallic emotions as some of the older members of the family return to their house, in all I think 3 generations that know the house are coming and one that doesn’t but he knows Fleur and that’s where this all started.

I am back at the airport and Franca is left to look after our guests until they decide to leave, I think it is either Wednesday or Thursday. Franca is very good at looking after the guests, her corporate hospitality and hosting skills are obviously coming back to the fore, which is great to see.