Packing to go - countdown

Only 5 days to go, I am really looking forward to going back to Australia but not looking forward to leaving France!!!! I think if the weather here was awful, cold and raining I would find it easier to leave but its not, the weather is amazing, very warm and very sunny. The garden is looking superb thanks to our son in law Steve as he sharpened the tractor mower blades and took on the tasl of mowing the 'park' to bowling green perfection (slight exaggeration, but non the less, it looks most impressive).
No blog can go without a mole score and here it is Terry has now got the grand total of 4 moles
( he said 6!), all of which he has posed in different positions on the window sill for photographs, sad bugger, they all look the same to me. The last two moles have been killed in the last week after a couple of moleless months, has he lost his touch we ask, but no the moles were on the attack and become very illusive, undaunted, Terry and Steve out moled them and filled the holes with water!!
Sorry boring........
We had a fabulous 2 weeks with Kaliska, Steve, Ella, Chloe and Owen, an experience I don't think they will forget in hurry their French holiday.
Yes, the packing up has started but also a week on our own to socialise with some of the friends we have made in the area, to say good bye and wish them luck for the Winter, sorry had to get that in as we are looking forward to going back to the sunshine.

September update

Hope you enjoy the photos below, but just to explain, the first one is of a lightening storm around the house which lasted about an hour without rain, it was quite spectacular, quite common for this area we have been told.
The next few are samples of meat in various night food markets, the lambs around the fire was something we had not seen before and well worth a couple of photos, unfortunately, we didn't actually eat at this particular market and only went to support a friend who was dancing (Gasgoyne dancing) in a display so went to support her. Anyway the next photo is of duck carcass, we were encouraged to go to this night market last week by the wife of the mayor of this village. Apparently the evening is 'Europe' renowned and people come from all over Europe to attend this meal, well, we took Kaliska, Steve and the children, took our place in the line for the food and were given, melon, ham, roll and two pieces of duck carcass. Comments in our group ranged between, road kill to flat duck, dog bones etc etc, so very different, but a fun night with disco dancing in the village square overlooked by the ruins of an old eglise (church) probably 300 or 400 hundred years old.
The rest of the photos of our dear grandchildren having fun in our garden, they are catching yabbies (languistines see photo), climbing over the tree trunk over the pond, picking vegetables, swimming in the pool, playing on the rope/old tyre swing from the oak tree, etc etc etc, needless to say they are having a great time and also a great deal of freedom and open space.
We have started having French lessons with a group of ex pat English, apparently most of them are in their second year and this is the beginners class, apparently one of them told me they don't get much opportunity to speak French!!! doh
Talking of which I volunteered and helped out at the duck farm restaurant last week end, I was actually promoted to serve at the tables, bearing in mind the chef does not speak English and none of the clients spoke English, it was all quite embarrassing starting with me taking out the bread (after being introduced by the proprietor to the whole room, I think he was introducing me an Australian who is his neighbour and wished to learn French) anyway everyone was really friendly, back to bread, much of which I dropped on the floor, then I had to give out the foie gras, large dish for big table, small dish for small tables etc, guess who got that wrong, chef was very pleasant and acted promptly and gave extra to the large tables without doing a Gordon Ramsay at me. I decided to stay out in the kitchen and load the dishwasher much safer bet, anyway I seem to be understanding more French and learnt a couple of extra words.
That day continued to be memorable, when I got back Terry said that one of the horses in the next field had a huge piece of wood sticking out of it (probably panicked by the storm the night before). The horses belong to our neighbour who use the house for holidays, we did not have their phone number and bearing in mind a. we dont speak much French, b. it was a Sunday and c. we didn't have a clue what to do. So naturally we phoned the police, after explaining (in french) that a horse had a accident not with a car but a piece of wood (this is where my French stopped ?bleeding ?sticking out its side ?maybe in the lung. After about 10 fruitless minutes of trying to get the stupid women to understand we rang our friend at the duck farm and he called the Vet, and unfortunately the poor mare had to be put down.
Never a dull moment.

Abiento

Photos

End of August 2008

Very special newsflash!!!!!

Annie and Dominic are now proud parents of Abigail Chloe, born today 29^th August at 10.15pm, weighing in at 7lb 6oz. Everyone is very well and excited and very very tired, it has been a long day.

That makes us grandparents to four darling children, three of which are girls, poor Owen is somewhat outnumbered.

Well no excuse to write the blog today with such exciting news. We have had visitors for the last three weeks non stop including my brother and sister and their partners. It is the first time for Gill and Phil has come to see us in France and we had a fantastic two weeks, albeit a very busy two weeks, which included a couple of days in Pyrenees and a day in Biarritz, many day markets, a number of evening fetes and of course a few Aussie barbeques to meet the locals and other members of the family who live in France,

At last the weather has changed and we are experiencing fantastic sunny days, luckily the pool has been erected and very serviceable. In fact, we have just had a dip. We are now having 9 days without visitors so all hell has let loose in the DIY department, Terry has almost finished repainting the lounge and giving it some damp proofing and I have been in garden, but as they say all work makes Jack a dull man, so we have already had a day out on my uncles boat on D' Lot which was wonderful and very restful. This week end will be full on with lunches and fetes, so we wont be too over worked.

We are throughly enjoying the good life aspect of France and are gathering the fruits of our labour, ie the vegetable patch, the tomatoes are ripening at quite a speed, plenty of zuchinnis and french beans and hopefully our figs will be ready before we leave in four weeks time.

Its our 35th wedding annerversery on Monday, where has that time gone?? I am not sure what we will be doing, Terry asked me what I wanted to mark the occasion, to be honest, I feel so privilaged with our life that there is nothing else I could ask for, we arevery happy with healthy children and grandchildren, a house in France what a life!!!!!

For those of you who have requested it, below is the recipe to my 'famous' tarte:

Tarte a la Rhubarbe et Citron

(I have found this recipe very simple and have used frozen berries instead of rhubarb but make sure you really strain them well or mixture too watery) Bon Appetite

Preheat the oven to 375 (190 C) Gas 5

For 8 people (I think really 6!!)

Cooking time 25 mins

1 tart tin 28 x 3cm (11 x 11 ¼ in)

Shortcrust pastry

For Rhubarb Filling

400g (14oz) rhubarb washed, peeled and chopped into 2cm(3/4 in) pieces

100g (4oz) sugar

200ml water

Lemon Cream Filling

2 egg yolks

50g (2 oz) caster sugar

70mls double cream (I use Creme Fraise)

Finely grated zest of a lemon

Preparing the pastry case

Allow the dough to come to room temp. Butter the sides of the tart tin and base.

Roll the prepared dough out to fit up the sides of the flan dish. Rest for 2 -3 mins Place into tart dish and refrigerate for a min of half an hr.

Blind bake the pastry case – 10mins

Prepare the rhubarb filling

In a saucepan, bring to the boil the sugar and water, then add the chopped rhubarb and simmer for 2 mins, strain into a colander and reserve.

Preparing the lemon cream filling

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in bowl for 10 mins on high speed, until the volume has tripled.

Mix in the cream and lemon zest.

Cooking the tart

Distribute the rhubarb over the bottom of the tart, then spread with the lemon cream filling.

Cook in oven at the same temp for 25 – 30mins

Serving

Remove the tart from the oven and sprinkle with extra caster sugar.

Cool down for 1 hour from serving.

August photos

Terry, Pete and Wyn, dancing to the band






Spain

August 2008

This must be a very frustrating blog this year, we have been so busy as I mentioned in our last blog and the situation remains the same. Since my last blog we have been to Spain for a week and had more visitors, I have got a brief 2 hr time slot before the next arrive, I need to mention that our last visitors departed yesterday, so we had the day planned to catch up on a few jobs. As soon as Wyn and Pete (from Winterslow) left we had some St Maure friends arrive unexpectedly for a chat, when they left, Terry went into the garage to pick up where he left off with his laundry room project and I started tiding the house (as you do). Twenty minutes later Terry walked in the kitchen with blood pouring down his cheek from his right eye, apparently a stainless steel wire had flicked from somewhere straight into his eye, there was a medium sized hole in the white of his eye, so we had our first experience of French casualty and were very impressed with the 5 mins wait and the treatment. As the injury was the sclera (white of the eye) he only need twice a day eye washes and antibiotic drops. Hopefully that's Terry's yearly incident over and done with.

The laundry room has certainly become a slow project, at the beginning of the trip he really got on and achieved alot, but it has slowed down now and would you believe we are waiting for a French plumber, this is due to the acetylene (I think) that needs to be used, so hopefully in the next week we should be almost up and running.

We bought a large plastic demountable swimming pool last week in anticipation of some very hot weather (which I think happened while we was in Spain) anyway this pool is huge at 15 ft across in the old money, it took forever to fill up, the pool included a filter, pump and steps into it, so a substantial piece of equipment. I did have a swim in it a couple of days ago and could actually do 6 strokes of breast stroke. The reason I am writing this in the blog is that we have been very pleased with this acquisition alas .... we went out last night to some friends for dinner and when we got back the pool had emptied itself and is now flat on the grass, we think the heavy rain shower last evening filled the cover with water and the pressure of the water pushed the side of the pool that is lowest due to the uneven ground. So Terry's boys are coming today he will get them organised to move the pool to flatter part of the garden and start again and after all this effort we will pray for alot of sunshine. The boys are my brother and brother in law.

Talking of weather, not good this week, showers and sun (good grass growing weather, lucky me) but apparently improving.

The photos include one of boozy night last Saturday at Nerac, the four of us went to the community festival which was brilliant, everyone eats on large trestle tables in the village square, we sat next to some very interesting Dutch people (with yet another invitation to meet for drinks) anyway whilst we were eating various villages had bands playing some very upbeat music. The night was alot of fun, dancing and drinking, it started off that you bought a bottle of wine from the local restaurant (a rip off at 8 euros a bottle) then Terry and Pete helped themselves to wine from local producers stall, which was OK as we have got to know them quite well and seem to be always there buying 5 litre containers of wine. I suppose that was OK but later we went to listen to another band at the end of the evening and people had left half bottles of wine on the tables, Pete was the spotter and Terry was the lifter!! Anyway Wyn and I had to drag them to the car as they were staggering so badly and for a 20 minute drive, it probably took about 1 hr and half to get home as we had to stop at least 6 times for Terry to relieve himself of all the booze!!!!

As I mentioned last night we had dinner with some friends in their village house, in fact it is a couple from Washington USA and they do similar to us spending as much time as possible in France and they also invited a couple who are here for 4 months from Perth, it was an interesting night and of course knew mutual people (maybe because she is a midwife). This village house is in Nerac just above the river for those of you who know the area and we were amazed how noisy it was compared to our little bit of paradise. We heard cars, motor bikes, church bells, church bells, church bells and general noises what a comparison, I know what we prefer.

Our French has improved I think most of time and in fact Terry who hasn't had much in the way of lessons seems to have suddenly got the lingo, except funnily enough he has just got back from taking our bottle recycling to the village should I say daily trip ha ha ha, anyway he said he had bumped into the mayor of our village who was asking how much longer we had here (30^th Sept we leave cry cry) and all was very impressed at the French conversation until the mayor said good bye and Terry with a big smile said Bonjour (hello) he then realised what a twit he was so just kept shouting au revoir (goodbye) out of the car window just a little bit embarrassed.

I feel less guilty now I have got more or less up to date except to say we had a great time in Spain, very relaxing beach holiday, in fact we were on the nudist beach everyday, which made it slow to read a book with all the distractions after the first day it improved and we able to sleep and read quite easily, this is Helene and I as the boys were off fishing most of the time. We had fantastic food, lots of fresh fish and paella.

The photos include our vegetable patch, we are now eating our own organic courgettes, lettuce, tomatos, French beans and radishes.

Abiento

Portugal. View from our window

Third Blog

It has now been about 6 weeks since we arrived in France, which is amazing, I am not sure where the time has gone. I think mainly with socialising and of course we have just returned from a week in Portugal, more about that later. We are thoroughly enjoying our time in France with respect to all the fetes that are organised for each of the surrounding villages. In our local village SOS for example, there is a night market every Wednesday evening from mid July to the end of August, the great event happens in the local plaza (village square) and in the middle are tresle tables and chairs, then around the edge are all the local producers who sell their wares. The stalls include: wine, food stalls including, chicken and chips, another is escargots, another has local duck pate with salad, their is a boulangerie selling a type of pizza bread, another with tartes and cakes etc etc, so the idea is to go and select your meal from the stalls then sit down with locals and your friends and enjoy supper. Last Wednesday was particularly convivial as we were sitting with some ex pats friends and some French people, there was alot of banter which ended in everyone singing Edith Piaf songs to the local group of musicians. On Tuesday we met up with some friends and a similar evening was enjoyed with a medieval theme. Its hard to keep up with all the different activies happening around the place. However we do try.... We have also had various invites to barbeques, drinks and meals so for all said and done the socialising is taking up alot of time.

Between all this we have actually had some time in our garden which are now calling our parkland, as it is so peaceful and relaxing just watching the wild life. This week we noticed a rather large heron watching its prey in a little pond (frogs) so the intrepid hunter (Terry) runs inside and comes out with his shotgun (air rifle) and quietly stalks the heron to shoot it and yes it flew away. He seems to be having more success with his moles, the grand tally is now 3 dead and a possible 4^th (only possible because he is not sure if it actually killed it as the explosive device went off and there were no more mole holes in that area).

Portugal, or should I say stranded in Portugal, our friends from the UK drove down and picked us up and we drove down to Portugal over a couple of days to meet up with some other friends who own a villa in Portugal. When arriving in Portugal the first disaster was the hotel, it was awful and liken by the others in the group to a prison, probably due to the single beds which were as hard as bricks, then the bathroom was so small we couldn't swing a cat in it let alone one person, the view made up for it as we were overlooking the ocean. Back to disasters, then our friend back ended a Belgium car and caused alot of damage to his car, so much so it could not be driven due to a damaged intercooler, so will need to be transported back to the UK. Our friend ended up having a hissy fit and booked a flight back to the UK for him and his wife, this left Terry and I having to arrange transport back to France, believe it not this was not an easy task and we ended up having to book a flight to London, spend two nights with Helene and Dudley then back to France and hiring a car on the Sunday, a very expensive exercise. Terry did manage to have a game of golf in Portugal and I have a number of hours lazing in the sun taking in the rays so all was not lost entirely.

Just to let everyone know that we are still having various disasters here at Capet, today was flooded kitchen due to dishwasher malfunction. Terry is progressing nicely with his renovation project, the laundry room in the garage, so far we have a tiled floor, plaster boarded walls and now worktops, so progressing nicely.

I am adding some photos of the markets and Portugal,

Abiento

Photos what are they about?

The photos are of our veggie patch the after one week, watch this space for regular photos (yawn)
A couple of photos of Terry and Rick mowing the lawn (at least Rick is)
Terry in Andorra and Carol at Barbasite a local view!!

Sorry forgot to mention we had a night in Andorra last week very pretty scenary.

If you cant see the photos just click on image.

Cheers

Photos

Second update/end of June

Slack you might call it but I would say busy busy busy, doing what you might ask? Socialising I reply!!! It has been two and half weeks since we arrived in France and in that two weeks we have had our dear friends from Australia, an Aussie barbeque for 20 odd people, a number of meals out with different people and I have had a return visit back to the UK for a family Golden Wedding Anniversary 'do' in Somerset. I had a fantastic time catching up with cousins, aunts and uncles and friends.

We are now experiencing proper South West France weather, very hot and sunny, which is great but we are used to a very dry heat in Aus and this is rather humid so working in the garden will have to stop midday and as per the French tradition we are going to have to have an afternoon siesta (or for most of us a granny nap). How very civilised! Now I am sure there has been some dramas since we have been here and we won't disappoint those sad people who actually want to read my ramblings. Our first drama mentioned in my blog was the electric gates, they actually came out and repaired the electrical fault, (caused by lightening)however, since coming out, now one gate closes while the other one opens, all very confusing and I really don't think my limited French will stretch to explaining this very strange phenomena, thank goodness for our English speaking French friends who we will ask to make the call. The next drama has been all our gardening machinery (say it quickly and all in one breath does not sound too bad). Let me explain we have a wonderful French man called Dennis and he owns a garden machinery repair shop, we are seriously considering offering to buy shares into his business, as surely this will be much cheaper or even better get him to set up in our garage, it will save the almost daily trip into Mezin with one or other piece of equipment, Mezin is about 15mins each way. Anyway as soon as we got here the tractor mower broke down after two mows so good ole Dennis came in his van and trailer picked it up and gave it a service, when he dropped it off we asked him to take the strimmer as that had packed up, at the same time he delivered back the chain saw, which broke down at the end of last year. We went to pick up the strimmer from Mezin and he said it worked perfectly and did not need any repairs. We duly took it home with Terry looking forward to a couple of hours of strimming and low and behold the bloody thing was not working, I must say the words coming out of Terry's mouth was unrepeatable and I don't think it helped when he started kicking it and actually tried to throw it across the garden. So back it went, Dennis is now rubbing his hands together with glee (stupid Australians back .. keeping me in business) and he dismantled it and got it working, back Terry came and actually managed to strim for an hour and surprise, surprise it broke down again, so no prizes to guess where it is now and will be picked up tomorrow. (By the way Dennis is a very patient and helpful man that does not charge us every time we go in).

Mole score – 1 down

Honestly, it hasn't been that bad, we are really enjoying the lifestyle. Today for example, we met up with my aunt and her partner (Philippe) and went to a village community meal, this involved the Baside village called Vianne, a stunning old place with an almost medieval setting. For 13 euros a head we had a selection of food from about 10 countries and then we seat down at long tables and chatted with the other village people (all French) luckily Philippe who is French helped with the translations. It is quite amazing how much easier it is to understand what people are saying without actually speaking the language. Saying that with all the natural immersion into the French culture we are picking up quite alot of French and people are very helpful as we are making the effort to communicate.

We have also been battling with our communications, telephone and internet, but I think we are about 80% sorted out so won't go into that annoying and frustrating drama, which once again was caused by lightning last week, in fact the pharmacy in our local village SOS was struck by lightning which caused a fire at the pharmacy and the house next door. In all happens in sleepy France.

I am sure that will wet everyone's appetite until the next instalment (if you are still awake that is).

Abiento

June 2008 First Week

Well it's that time of the year again and we are back in our little area of paradise. We spent 6 days socialising in the UK with our friends, other than the continuous gluttony we had a great time. Of course I hit Marks and Spencers and to my delight I only had to double the pound instead of tripling it thanks to the strong Australian dollar, needless to say I had to make a couple of visits!!!

We arrived at Capet via a supermarket and garden centre (explain later in blog), the garden was looking 100% improved to our arrival last year, except for some reason every flower bed sported metre high purple poppies (today I explained to the gardener that even though he thought they were very pretty they are in fact weeds). I have removed them swiftly before they started to seed and take over, the grass had been cut in a fashion but due to the incessant rain over the last few weeks it has been difficult to cut.

The other little problem is that the electric gates are not working, we had visions of climbing over the gate with our suit cases but luckily one side would open. I tried to ring the company that fitted them, all in my best abbreviated French and the man at the end of the telephone was not at all forthcoming and kept prattling on about electrique, I said I know they are electric but not working, in absolute desperation we rang our English friend who then rang them and apparently I had rang the wrong number and had been speaking the man who fitted our television!!!!! Bugger. Thanks to Julie the electric gate people are coming out on Monday, apparently due to the number of electric storms in the this part of France there are a large number of people with gates that do not open.

We have got our first visitors the day after we arrived, Dei and Rick are our goods friends from Australia who are travelling from Portugal through to Amsterdam and dropped in to spend four or five days with us. Today we went to our local Auberge for the plats de jour 11.50 euro 5 course lunch (including house wine and coffee!!) and when we went through the door, all our friends were there so we felt like royalty going from table to table chatting, its great to be back. (I hasten to add that they were all English so the chatting was easy).

We have been busy in the garden planting out our veggies, tomatoes, courgettes (zucchinis for the Brits) and lettuces, we figure that due to the fact we are here for four months we should reap the benefits of the home grown produce and of course we love pottering around in the garden. I am sure everyone is sitting on tenderhooks wanting to know how the moles are fairing, well in fact there seems to be only about dozen moles holes, but enough to keep Terry occupied with planning his attack with the explosives. He was hoping to have a competition with a local friend but Richard seems to have eradicated his mole problem at the moment.

Well this is the first instalment and hoping first of many now we have got our internet on at the house and if anyone wants to call the phone number is: 0011335040557012 from Australia and from the UK it is 00338442323945 as from tomorrow Saturday 14^th June.