One door closes …

Ste Flora

… and another shuts in your face, as my mother (who will probably deny it) used to say.

This isn’t about us. We’re doing OK, but our local English bookshop is closing its doors at the end of this year. It’s sad to see any business close but it does seem to be a sign of the times as there are ‘liquidation totale’ signs up in many windows in our local towns. Luckily the reading groups attached to the bookshop have elected to continue, so we will still be getting our reading matter.

Just around the corner from the bookshop, another shop, three times the size, has just opened. This shop is selling English (should really be British) produce, they are taking orders for Christmas turkeys and gammons, they have a supply of clotted cream, Marmite, curry sauces and Walkers crips.

Most of these things are available here if you hunt for them and are prepared to pay the inflated price. We have made do without most of them or found alternatives, but I confess I have ordered myself a Christmas gammon. I asked for the smallest they could supply as it is VERY expensive! As for Marmite, we brought 3 huge jars over a year ago and still have plenty to last us a while. Curry sauces – we make ‘em ourselves. Walker’s crisps? Far too salty. Clotted cream? I can’t remember the last time I had some of that. I’m sure I can live without it though.

It’s curtain time

St Sidoine

As Jon is progressing in the loft, I decided that I must put in some effort into preparing the soon-to-be-extended sitting room.

I’ve been looking for some curtains but not been very successful until I asked the question on a local website of where I could go looking for reasonably-priced fabrics.

A few suggestions were forthcoming but sadly one of them, which we went in search of last week, seemed to have disappeared. This was the day we also intended to buy our Velux windows.

We thought we were doing the right thing by checking the supplier’s website first . Yes, the did them in the style we wanted and yes, they had three in stock. When we arrived in the showroom we were told that, in fact, they only had one in stock but could order the other two for two weeks time.

Fine. We would take the three fittings though.

Nope. We stood in line for the collection point only to be told that the one window claimed to be in stock wasn’t, and of the three fittings, they only had one in stock.

Next week a friend is taking us to Brive in their estate car to collect the three windows and the remaining fittings. Meanwhile we are hoping and praying that the following two weeks remain dry so that our builder can come and fit them.

So, the trip north was unsuccessful on all accounts.

Yesterday I met a friend in town and we ‘did’ lunch. She then directed me to a little treasure trove of a shop just out of town.

This, fairly small, shop was laden with fabrics of every shade, weight and composition. Wow. My eyes lit up. We edged our way between bales and rolls of furnishing fabrics. Madame asked if she could help.

‘What I’m really looking for, Madame’ said I, ‘Is inspiration’.

What exactly is Madame looking for? Curtains? For the dining room or bedroom. No, the salon. Ah, and does Madame want something bright, dark, lightweight?

Madame said she was looking for something fairly plain but with a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’.

‘I’ll know it as soon as I see it’ I said, helpfully.

Madame directed my friend and I to a pile of creams, beiges and whites, where we spotted a few ‘possibles’. Suddenly I saw a flash of aubergine colour at the bottom of the pile. My alcoves are painted aubergine. This was hopeful.

My friend insisted we took the roll of fabric to the door to look at it in daylight. Good idea, I hadn’t thought of that.

Yes, even better, the colour is just exactly what I wanted (even if I didn’t know it when I walked into the shop). Cream with a splash of aubergine.

I’m looking forward to getting out my super sewing machine, bought two years ago and very low mileage, to get going on making the curtains this weekend.

Trying to buy ’stuff’

St Judith

After a glorious weekend, the weather has been ghastly today so we went shopping this morning to buy the rest of the edging for the garden paths. We are inundated every Tuesday or Wednesday with leaflets from the local supermarkets and hypermarkets letting us know what their special offers are for this week. The garden and agricultural shops let us know once a month and we were pleased to see that one of them was doing a special offer on the edging we have been using.

The offer started on 1 May so Jon jumped at the opportunity and went on Friday (shops being closed on 1 May for the public holiday), to collect as many as he could find. Unfortunately they had none. Whether they had just not yet stocked up, or whether they were ignoring what was advertised in their leaflet we just don’t know.

There’s another branch of the same shop in Cahors so we decided to pop down there this morning to collect what they might have in stock. Unfortunately this branch has the smallest parking area and it was not only full but four cars were trying to shuffle themselves to and fro into the tiniest spaces they could find.

We gave it a miss and pottered along to the nearest DIY (with a large car park) just to see if, on the off chance they were stocking the same thing. They were, so we piled 26 rolls of log edging onto a trolley. Of course some of them fell off but we managed to retrieve them without causing ourselves too much embarassement. While we were there we checked the stock of the floorboards we want for the loft. They have almost sold out and filled the space with something else, so we guess we won’t be able to get the boards there and it will mean us going further afield.

Once again we are faced with a familiar frustration – if you don’t buy what you see when you first see it, it won’t be available when you go back. Unfortuantely we can’t buy them when we see them as 55 square metres of floor boards will not fit into one Peugeot 106. So we want to plan a date when we can hire a van to make a trip specially for them.

Now we will have to do another recce to another DIY store to see if they have what we require and then organise the van quickly and go back for them the next day.

We’ve decided to forget about the loft for a week or so and concentrate on the garden paths instead. Naturally, whoever is against us has forseen this and it is now pouring with rain AGAIN, the garden is once more full of mud and we can’t get on with any tidying up.

AND I won’t be able to swim today!!!!

How much for delivery?

St Maxime

We’ve just had a lovely morning out. Mostly we managed to avoid the showers and enjoy the sunshine and the countryside waking up for the year. We shouldn’t be surprised that gardens and plants further south are budding forth much quicker but we are always jealous. Hedges of lilac, walls of wisteria and bright green lime trees brighten this long and cool spring.

We were remembering this time last year, we suddenly had a few sunny days and enjoyed the heat of the sun, then suddenly (as it did in the UK), the temperature soared and we had summer in April – which was lucky since we didn’t have summer in August, as you will remember.

We were out looking at flooring and walling for the loft conversion. Having looked at a few DIY/builders merchants locally, we couldn’t quite find what we wanted so we had to go further afield – a two hour drive to another well known French chain which did have what we want and we made a note of the order codes so that we could take a look on line once we had driven the two hours back again.

The drive really was amazing, through Quercy Blanc, past gallons and gallons of Cahors black wine in the making and on into fruit and prune country. Stunning views, no traffic and a very relaxed 4 hour round trip.

We then went on line to see what we could arrange.

We have a problem in the fact that we can’t carry much in either car. The Mehari will carry more but doesn’t travel very fast or very far, the 106 isn’t much use for more than shopping. We hoped that we would be able to get all the wood delivered but the cost of delivery is silly money, adding around 500 Euros to the cost of the materials.

Think again.

We’re now in the market for a trailer – it may cost as much as the delivery of these goods but at least we will have it forever. We considered it once before but dismissed it as not really worth the expense.

Which means I will spend next spring back and forth from the local amenity tip loading up with the free compost they supply. For this year we’ve bought bags of compost and ‘horse smoke’ (fumeur de cheval) to dig in.

If it ever dries out round here I will be digging like mad later this week.

Bunfight at the OK Leclerc

St Stanislas

There we were, standing in the checkout queue, minding our own business and checking that everything had a bar code – it’s always us, by the way, the people who have just one item, usually the last one left in the shop that doesn’t have a bar code on it – when there was a scuffle at the next aisle.

We looked up to see two ladies (I use the term loosely) glaring at each other across a trolley. Suddenly one grabbed a packet of cakes and hit the other around the head with them.

The packet burst and cakes scattered through the air and landed all over the checkout.

I remember thinking to myself what a good thing it was that the cakes were individually wrapped.

The checkout hostess looked on bemused and stood ready to make a run for it should things get any dirtier – after all, who knows it might have been that bag of mussels from the fish counter next!

The women shouted at each other and then one left.

The lady in front of us turned to explain what had been happening. Had we not been so engrossed in the bar codes, we would have seen it all for ourselves. One had left her trolley momentarily, just back from the line, to slip off to the cheese counter for a packet of something exceptionally smelly. Meanwhile, the other, wanting to join the queue and not seeing the owner of the abandoned trolley, joined the line. The other ‘this young one’, the raconteur continued, came back to the trolley and tried to ram her way in front of the older shopper. Obviously things didn’t finish there and as the first finished her shopping, the second rammed her trolley again and accused the first of queue jumping.

The gentleman in the queue behind them nodded and an amused smile twitched the corners of his mouth as the checkout hostesses discussed what had happened.

‘You wouldn’t see a couple of men behaving like that’ our checkout lady said, laughing.

She’s obviously never shopped in Asda then.

Out with the old

St Timothée

Happy Saint’s Day, Tim!!

We were up early (for us) before 9am and out of the house by 9.45 to make a sortie to our local DIY store. Jon needed a day off from crawling around on his knees sanding things, so we went to buy all the bits and pieces we need to finish decorating the bedroom-that-will-be-the-lounge.

Two DIY stores later we had found the correct colour paint, more sand paper and a new sander (all of 6, yes 6 Euros and just in case the old one broke with the effort). We came back minus the wax for the floor but, hell, if we only came back with one missing item that was still a record.

On the way home we chose the ‘pretty route’. Empty minor roads all the way and views to die for.

In the summer this route passes through vineyards as far as the eye can see, vines heaving with grapes ready to make the next years’ black Cahors wine. Last time we passed through (just before Christmas) the vines were all looking very sorry having been stripped of the 2007 harvest and left to mope a while.

Today though, most of the acres were stripped back to just one shoot in preparation for the new year’s growth. How they managed to prune these acres and acres of vines in a few short weeks is incredible.

We have never yet passsed through when people have been working in the yards. It reminds me the story of the Brownies doing the housework when no-one else was looking.

I wonder how I could ge me one of those?

Eventful day

St Marcel

Yesterday we bundled Figgy and Misty into the car and took them, shouting obscenities at us all the way, to the vet.

They don’t know yet that they are going on a little holiday themselves to a very nice cattery some 40 minutes from here, but they were totally unimpressed at the car ride to the vets, not even half the distance.

Once there they settled down in their carriers in the waiting room and not a peep, even when a big Boxer dog wanted to make friends. We were quite surprised when he walked in accompanied by his two mates the cat and the rat, but they seemed to be a happy family.

They went ahead of us and we were joined in the waiting room by a very skinny greyhound instead. Poor things, they always look so terribly undernourished, don’t they?

The vet was a very, very nice man and said all the right things about our babies.

‘They are very beautiful’ Well that’s enough to make me his best friend for life anyway but then he said:

‘Your French is very good’

I smiled and simpered. That’s the second time in three days that someone has said that to me – what a boost to the confidence. Although I’ve studied French to quite a high level I don’t get enough practice what with our non-communicating neighbours and only usually chatting in shops and the post office, and I’m extremely shy about speaking French for some unknown reason.

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions but maybe I should make a mid-January one to get out more, speak to more French people. Basically, just, go for it!

We decided to take a drive out in the afternoon, intending to visit one of the local summer ‘hot spots’ and see how closed it is in January but on the way it started raining so we just carried on and did a tour of the Northern reaches of the Lot department. The far north east of the region is quite different from here (sorry, no photos since the weather was just appalling), it is green and hilly (very hilly in places) . We followed a gushing river for mile after mile, climbing higher and higher until we came to a huge lake. We really must explore this in the summer, if we can stand the traffic!

On the way home we stopped in a supermarket for some vegetables and a loaf of bread. At the checkouts we were overcome by the smell of … well, I can’t put it any nicer … stale urine. We looked around to see where it was coming from and at the next till was a lady wearing the most revoltingly dirty anorak. The staff and customers, fortunately there were only a few, were all surreptitiously covering their noses with their hands, scarves or whatever else we could find. The checkout ‘hostess’ moved from her till as soon as was humanly possible to another part of the shop. When we went back to our car we were amazed to see the malodorous offender clamber into a huge new 4×4 vehicle.

It made me wonder:

1. Why did none of us say anything, either to each other or to the offender?
2. How on earth did she not know how revolting she smelt?
3. Would the manager of Sainsbury’s have been called to request, politely of course, that she might leave the store and come back after she had taken a bath and burned the offensive anorak?
4. Does anybody ever speak to her?
5. How come someone with a lovely vehicle (which was very clean, by the way) not care about herself enough to pong so?

Maybe I’m doing the lady an injustice. Maybe she had just that afternoon fallen into a pile of horse pooh and wee-soaked straw. Maybe she has a serious illness where she can’t smell anything or see the stains on her coat.

Is it me?

Sales and trollies

Ste Alix

Misty likes to get as close as she can to me when I’m writing the blog!!! If she was any closer she would be sitting on the keyboard.

I am always saying how things are much slower over here. We used to get so irritated standing in the check out queue at Sainsbury’s near Guildford but now we just accept that on certain days and at certain times queues are inevitable.

The sales started in France today. The timing of sales in France is set by the government (bless them). There are only two sales periods in France, one in winter and one in summer, each lasting about 4 – 5 weeks. So there is none of the discounting all year round to compete with your neighbour’s shop that happens in the UK where someone always seems to have a sale. We popped into our local furniture and electrical store to buy a new printer/scanner. There was nothing wrong with our printer but we did need a scanner and picked up a bargain in the sales. The queue was long at the checkout and it was interesting to browse what everyone else is buying. The young couple in front of us had picked up some bright pink voile curtains and something I couldn’t quite make out, also in shocking pink – it looked like a very long fringe!

That was nothing though compared to the trollies in the hypermarket.

The sales had started in there too and bedding and towels were going down a storm. We had only popped in for some bread, milk and potatoes which gave us much more time to browse other people’s trollies while we were in the slowest queue (why do we always manage to pick that one?).

The couple who had bought the shocking pink items in the previous shop were there buying disposable nappies and bathtowels. The elderly lady behind them had her obligatory brown barrel of the cheapest wine, a dozen bottles of water and a bag of leeks while the lady directly behind us had her week’s shopping, the trolley piled high with vegetables, dairy goods, tinned goods and meat.

It was the couple in front of us who really intrigued us. He was about our age and she was very much younger, from their conversation (yes I’m a dreadful eavesdropper as well as a trolley peeper) they were not a ‘couple’ but worked together.

Onto the conveyor belt they piled box after box of long-life, ready prepared convenience meals, all ready for the microwave. Boeuf bourgignon, gratin dauphinoise, chicken in pesto sauce, the boxes piled higher and higher. They must have completely emptied the shelves. Following these were syrups of every colour – the French have syrups instead of our orange or lemon squash, there were bright red ones, bright green ones and a blue one (?). Tins of sardines followed on behind, three bottles of sunflower oil, several tins of pâté, a dozen packets of butter and, finally, 48 toilet rolls of the cheap and ghastly pink type so loved by the French.

I’ve never seen a trolley like it. The French are very proud of their cooking skills and, although convenience foods are widely available, I have never seen people buy more than the odd one or two, obviously preferring to use fresh ingredients on a daily basis. We ourselves are very proud of the fact that we haven’t had a ‘ready meal’ since we left the UK.

Who, we wondered, were going to be the unfortunate recipients of these epicurean (?) delights? Hopefully not a school. Staff in a works canteen would surely refuse point blank to eat them.

Sadly we were never to find out but we were amazed when the gentleman handed a card to the checkout lady, she typed in some numbers and they both walked out without handing over a penny.

That’s the sort of shopping I would like to do – but for my own choice of consumables, thank you.

Honey, we’re home

St Ambroise

We’re finally home after what can only be described as a whirlwind trip to the UK. 2000 miles in total, an average of 5 hours a day in the car, a different bed every night, a couple of hours with family here and there and a shopping afternoon in Guildford is all we managed.

We saw far too many motorways and too much weather (mostly rain) but at least we missed the high winds the days we were on the ferry.

It is sooooo lovely to get back to our own bed.

We’ve only been out of the UK for 10 months but were surprised at how we had changed. The shops were far too hot, noisy and crowded (even making allowances for Christmas shopping). There was too much traffic on the roads and everywhere was noisy. We did love the fact that no-one was smoking in restaurants and pubs (not that we were in them very much) but noticed that all the pubs now have a little tent affair outside to accommodate those who did want to smoke. I suppose that this will just make smokers even more likely to catch bronchitis or pneumonia in the cold and damp – not quite sure how this is going to help the health service!

Having had every intention of finishing our Christmas shopping, we didn’t succeed. One turn around HMV and we had had enough, couldn’t think straight and didn’t buy anything – Waterstone’s was just as bad. I used to love Waterstone’s, I’d spend my lunchtimes ‘just browsing’ (usually not leaving empty-handed) but we were surprised that the three (yes, two in Guildford) we visited had different books on display and we could never find the same book twice – therefore, trying to take advantage of 3 for 2 offers was difficult.

Waterstone’s #1 – Jon was alone, didn’t have enough time to make any purchase but spotted 6 or more books that he wanted to buy.

Waterstone’s # 2 – I found one book, Jon found another but only one of the first 6 books.

Waterstone’s # 3 – Bought 3 for 2 – (only one of the original 6) and next month’s book group selection which was full price.

We also managed to find some books in charity shops. Charity shops in the north of England are (surprise, surprise) so much cheaper than those in the south. In fact, for many books it is cheaper to buy them second hand on Amazon and pay the shipping to France than to buy them in a charity shop. Oxfam’s second hand bookshop in Guildford was most disappointing – not only did they have a very poor selection (we didn’t buy anything there) but they were badly arranged and overpriced.

Oh, well, back home to France and just awaiting the credit card bill which I know will be quite painful. I made the mistake of joking with a lady in one shop that Mastercard must be quite concerned that I hadn’t used the card in a year and it was getting quite a hammering. In the next shop the transaction was ‘denied’. Just a little moment of panic that we didn’t have any more cash or a cash card and may not be able to do any more shopping but luckily it was just a blip and the card worked next time (and the time after and …….. well, you get my drift).

And now there is just the pile of washing to deal with ……………. Actually, lovely Jon is doing all that while I sort out a home for all these new books!

One day, two worlds

St Sidoine
Yesterday’s weather: bright, sunny, cold.

We’ve had wet stuff falling out of the sky on and off today. We’ve not seen any of that sort of thing for weeks so it came as a bit of a shock. The cats found it a bit surprising too and after their usual disappearance through the kitchen door first thing this morning, they drank from their usual flower bowl, sniffed around to make sure there had been no intruders and headed straight back indoors.

We went out to market and the cats decided to stay home making themselves comfy, one on the sofa the other on the bed obviously also taking advantage of the fact that we weren’t here to throw the wet, muddy one off the bed. More washing for the pile!

On our way to town the world looked lovely; the sun was shining and the trees were golden brown. We stopped at the post office to collect a parcel that the postman (known as Mr Smiley because he never does) didn’t leave the other day even though we were home all day, then we took the ‘pretty’ route, the back roads down to town. The rain held off while we were shopping and we took advantage to have a quick lunch in town too.

On the way home the hills and trees looked entirely different with black clouds hovering over them; the trees that were golden looked sludgy brown and gray and the air just seemed so much colder. The rain is back again and I’m sure I can hear a cat scratching to be let in again.