Since we took the decision to buy the field next to our house, this based on the fact that we gained full rights over the large and beautiful walnut tree in the front garden we have laboured and thought hard about the intigration of the two areas. The ‘old garden’ has at least had some cultivation and looking after over the years whereas the field is just that and has been probably for ever.

Yes, it has had some livestock in it over the last ten years and that kept it in check but over the last three years there has been nothing to keep those weeds from invading. So that’s just what they did. Some stuff reaches seven to eight feet high and the brambles have been variously described as epic, bastards and a range of less pleasant but probably more accurate names.

We cut the lot down in Summer, me and Dave, it was back breaking work, hot and I dare say miserable. There was then a two month wait before I could start burning of some of the weeds (we’re not supposed to have fires whilst the grapes are ripening – Ruch bi-law), discovered enormous Badger set and ant hill …

…what has any of this to do with fencing?

The original house and garden was dog proof. When we bought the field we started to think about integration and view and beauty and let’s face it a dog fence does not give any of that so we (I) made some gaps.

Then we bought a puppy aka Mr Cedric. That was fine when he was smaller but I’ve never had a dog before and in a rather cavalier fashion carried on with integration i.e. I made more gaps in the fence, ‘all will be fine’ said I, blah,blah,blah.

It’s not fine!

Cedders is just short of 5 months old now and I have an intimate knowledge of chasing him down the streets of Ruch with no great hope of catching him unless he wants to be caught or is slowed up enough by other curious things foe me to mosey up and grab him. This leads to nothing getting done at all.

Lesson learned: temporary plugging of gaps in fence complete.

Measuring up for fencing the field – ongoing.

Buy dog, get a fence.

Ah, whether in France or the UK the humble ham and cheese toastie a gift that just keeps on giving.

Anyone not having this with HP brown sauce – please leave immediately  !

Good morning chums

Don’t worry no waxing lyrical on the beauty of the morning, let’s talk sanitation.

Yesterday the guys from Aquatain Vidange arrived for the pooh run. I should say this is not unusual in rural France there are so many villages and frankly not enough sewerage plants or at least not local ones.
This necessitated a trip to the cellar, never something that thrills, armed with a torch and followed by two men with a large pipe and rubber gloves.

Well,
Firstly the septic for the main bathroom is under the house and is not sucked out from outside (my first discovery) after some Gallic shrugs and the like we ended up with the cellar lights actually working – hurrah! But the tres ancient and small septic is emptied by taking the top off and sticking the pipe in – boo!
I could describe the process and sites if not smells further after all ‘ I know I was their’ but people are eating and children and those of a delecate disposition maybe watching.
If you think it couldn’t be worse, we have a second tank that does the second bathroom. My understanding of this was that this tank was quite small etc etc, well it isn’t. Neither of the ‘pooh’ guys or I could quite believe it, what a colossal tank – 5m squared under the concrete of the patio area, we looked, we joked, we sucked the crap out and ran away.

So what have we gained, the tanks are emptied and the cellar lights are working, all I’m sure you’d agree positives.
What have we lost, well this is not a freebee but you’d pay through your water rates in GB so no great difference. And two years worth of pooh that we’d been storing.

Lessons learned, know your septic tanks, learn to love them in an arms length kind of way. Understand that the EU and France have brought in impracticle measures for said tanks and that this could make your purchase/selling of a house in France even more beurocratic ( SPANC regulations, yep spank regulations ).
But mostly hats of to the guys who turned up and did a distasteful job in a cheery way, I’d buy them both a pint at the bar although all three of us would need abit of a scrub down before hand.

Ttfn

PS please wash your hands when leaving this blog.

These days you will hear people talk of needing ‘space’, in times gone by maybe it was ‘time to reflect’ and going back further maybe we’d call it what it was ‘ sadness’.
Sitting and hearing the booming guns of the hunters in the fields and woods gives the very mildest impression of what it might have been like in the trenches, excepting that the noise I hear is not constant and not as loud, but it does give anyone with the mildest interest in history pause.

Mr Cedric’s here chewing on a stick and I’m a bit fluey but the sun is shining and the autumnal winds are blowing cool and strong. So much so that they’re blowing the walnuts off the tree which gives us both a bit of a start as they bang into the ground.

Then you find yourself thinking of everyone who isn’t with you to enjoy these days. Parents, brothers or sisters, children who should have had the time that you are inhabiting. It’s easy to think of life as unfair, maybe it is but it’s the only one we have and perhaps the best memorial to anyone is that you try to live your life as best as you can.

The pull of memory is never going to be that far away. Sadness is a part of living and perhaps a necessary part of what it is to be a balanced human being so maybe just accept it when it comes to you, no need to embrace it just acknowledge it like any other passing friend, use it if you’re inclined but try not to wallow or let it turn into despair.

Mr Cedric and I are going to play fetch in a minute, he likes it and I like seeing him running around and getting under my feet. Undoubtedly he’ll run over my asparagus bed and I won’t really mind. I’ll remember everybody I need too even those I never knew and I’ll give sadness the nod it deserves.

But only a nod.

No pictures – live with it.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward – or something to that effect. Well we’re not facing the valley of death so on this particular damp and drizzly morning as we discuss the potential jobs there will be no charging, my back simply won’t stand for it.

So where did yesterday leave us, besides with back ache and a displaced pelvis. The polytunnel arrived as did the man to fix Arni and the fire continued to be fed from the waste in the field.

And so it was that as we surveyed the field from the viewing deck of HMS Broadbent-Clarke we saw a little more expanse without the hills of purgatory – and it was good, we then scurried back inside and that is where I pen these thoughts now.

A second hook of doom has been authorised, the roofer paid in full but no multicoloured cock on our roof which seems a shame but in our defence this option was not made clear.

The sound of chewing goes on and Mr Cedric has retired for second snoozes.

Oh yes the bloody AGA has stopped working, got to stop pithy twitter note coming on.

It’s a slow one.

A very slow day, one of those where even lifting your eyelid seems like a little too much effort and yet we’ve got lots done,

Gautier, re the drive belt on Arni the vegitator – check
Déchèterie, to get rid of recyclable rubbish only (the workforce went through each bag separating it and telling me where to put things and yes it did get a little obsessive.- check.

Le Clercs,  we needed veggies etc – check.

The Mairie, where we talked sanitation ditches (everybody does), fence permits (don’t need one), and waste metal (we have an ancient Peugeot parked under the tree at the bottom of the garden, have had for years ( no comments please) – check, check and check.

The post man delivered the required certificate of conformity for the car so now we can man up for the trip to the prefecture in Bordeaux to organise number plates – good news ( note to self: take every certificate you have, in French and in triplicate. Although I don’t know what they will do with my 25m swimming certificate from the 70’s I’ll bet it will be required).

Discussed the resitting of the yet to arrive or be built polytunnel and shed 4

Run Mr Cedric up and down a large hill in the village and hand in knife found in public gardens.

As I said it’s a very slow day and we’ve decided that 40 winks are in order so I really don’t know why I’m writing this instead of winking..

Ttfn

Oh and more FIRE 🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

As a prelude can I just say that anyone who suggests that the French don’t know how to queue is mistaken. Photographic evidence is available of the queue of tractors and loaded trailers outside the local wine cooperative for this disbelievers.

Right, Agriculture.

Having finished the building of Shedopolis yesterday and informed the brother in law using the standard ‘broadsword calling dannyboy’ signal (Dave was instrumental in the building of shed 1 and is a star breeder of squash and pumpkin) we have this morning bitten the bullet and found the cheapest polytunnel available in France and ordered, agriculture can therefore no longer be avoided as a topic of conversation.

Well let’s start by admitting that what we will be doing will not count as agriculture. There will be no early morning with the lambs however ‘sweet’ you think this is, nor will there be cows or people with their arms up them whilst commenting in husky tones on wether calves are to be expected, the price of hog futures etc etc. This is because I know when enough is enough and starting down that road at my age is simply not going to happen.

So what we will be doing is ‘agriculture light’ as they say these days, or if definition is your bag – we will be looking at just the one leg of the true definition (Wikipedia) to wit veg. As for everything else, that will fall under the banner of gardening.

Today we will be starting with – FIRE 🔥

I had thought that today I would get down to some more informational stuff. The garden, the field what the plans, half- plans and random thoughts are, but as seems to always be the case the inconsequential fights it’s way to the fore and demands attention.

It is a fact that if you have a dog like Mr Cedric you are going to have to excercise it and by pure logic get excercise yourself, but the feast of ways available to record what your doing is staggering.

As Cedric ( he’s a Lagotto by the way) gets older we go further, which means we can be more varied with route and terrain. We get home at the moment looking like some returning expedition to locate the source of a mythical river, but we always know where we’ve been thanks to my GPS watch, we know the distance (km or miles) we now the number of steps – ever increasing, we know wether we’ve set records, achieved goals we know – everything!

And to help us in our understanding the creators of all these gadgets have provided us with a useful array of sounds and vibrations. A language for fitness as it were.

And that’s how it’s been this morning an unspecific claxon mated with a vibration, a ‘claxation’ indicates you’re half way to the target your gizmo has set you even if you were unaware of the fact, and then as you approach home, maybe you can see it in the distance a radiant light emminating, the greatest sound of all – ‘tiddlypong’.

Congratulations you have achieved the target.

I’ve started to notice something about the local architecture, and that is : turrets.

This is a major problem for me as our house does not have any and looking about me I’m noticing that any self respecting house holder of merit should have at least a small turret on the property. Two is obviously better – equally spaced.

The range of turrets however seems to be inexhaustible, I noted one today that appeared not to be attached to the house ( ok château) at all, it looked to erupt from the grounds like a missile from a silo or less threateningly like a French minerete, something that could be used to call in the estate workers.
Even the dove cotes are little individual turrets set out in a field!

Anyway I’ve not got one and I’m suffering ‘turret envy’.

Well, my envy could be satiated by buying a house with turrets but frankly we can’t afford it, not even one with a small turret feature and we rather like where we are ha you very much. So there’s nothing for it but to build. This has its own problems the most important being I’ve never built a turret before and manuals seem a bit thin on the ground – ‘ Turret building for dumies ‘ and the like.
So far the best advice I’ve had is to start by making a small wall – this seems a little perfunctory after all I’m looking to make a statement, establish a position, build a bloody great tower. That said starting with elimentary bricklaying might be the sensible way forward but who amongst us likes sensible argument.

I think my taste for turrets has been further tickled by our visit to stonehouse gardens where they had done just what’s in my mind – started with a wall and just kept going as if there were no tomorrow and what a fabulous outcome.

Pass the cement would you …

and the truffle. Sorry I meant trowel !

There’s always a place for celebration here. Last night it was the tenth anniversary of Monsieur and Madam coming to run the village shop. We guessed that flowers in the French style would not offend and were really happy when we were proved correct by the wall of bouquets at the Maison Communale.
One piece of advice – be on time. There was already a gathering when we arrived and that turned into a crowd, which as the only speech of the night finished was spilling out onto the village street.
Another point – everybody shows up. So, after the conversation with the Mayor’s wife and the Mayor (he’s newly returned from discovering English beer), we spoke or tried to speak to a few of the throng, and that’s another thing – if you’re going to live here then suck it up and learn the language!

It’s the weekend so unlike the U.K. where nothing would stop the show other than the wrong leaves or strange snow, there’s nothing happening on the harvesting front, although that’s not to say there’s nothing happening in the vineyards. It’s hunting season and for those of us with dogs it means careful where you go – not all the woods are for walking in and that tranquil Sunday stroll amid the still to be collected (this week according to the Mayor) red grapes is punctuated by gunfire from all directions and the occasional gun dog zipping through the vines. Mr. Cedric and I met one of the older hunters this morning and I’d like to tell you I understood all of the conversation but, old bloke, Girondin accent and the low mumble that seems common with the older end means that the gist is he hadn’t seen anything when I passed him, although the loud crack of his shot gun a few minutes later says I was his lucky omen. The only way we’ll find out how they all did is at the hunters ball in a month or so – tickets available from the Mairie or Monsieur and Madam at the shop.

We’ve got used to strolling the ‘red route’ with Mr. Cedric. The whole thing is a little over 10 km but there’s a section that goes past our gate around the vineyards to the local winery and back to our gate – we have to make the last section up a bit to get it to a manageable 3.5km, and it sums up in my mind everything that I have learned to date:
• The place is staggeringly beautiful. The view from the Vaure amid the cyclamens – I’ll say no more.
• Animals are looked upon in a totally different way.
• Health and safety does not exist (see my roofer).
• Hugh Infernal-Witterystall could forage forever – walnuts, figs, peaches falling from every other tree and rotting on the floor.
• The growing of grapes and the making of wine in this country will never be understood except by someone from this country – see Michel – although you won’t understand a word.