Homeward bound, and home

Last task before closing up the house was a trip along to the Mairie to get the necessary form with which to apply for the works permit for getting the side of the house sorted.  Nine pages of arcane administrative French.  There will definitely be tears.  Anyway, Builder Boy came back as promised, and has measured up: he’ll be emailing his estimate through, together with a recommendation for someone to waterproof the roof terrace.

Just as our old house is capable of springing surprises on us, so too is Annie’s.  We had a pleasant and easy drive up there. Arriving in rain, which gave way to a pleasant early evening, good enough for a glass or two of wine out on the terrace.  As I went to replenish wine glasses, however, I found the kitchen floor awash with water.  The shower room WC was overflowing from the bowl.  Water being water, the downstairs bathroom and shower room and the area at the foot of the stairs had become a small lake.  We set to with a squeegee and a couple of brooms and soon had it cleared out.  Next question, of course, is ‘why?’.  Up with the trap on top of the septic tank while someone went in and pulled the chain.  The merest trickle came through.  Annie is practiced with the rods, and after much effort finally improved things a little  next morning, though we reckon that the pipe between the house and the pit may have had it.  Annie’s butcher’s brother-in-law is supposedly the man for the job, so we left a message asking him to make contact.  We meanwhile looked at WC mechanisms, and could find no reason for the float valve staying open – maybe a bit of limescale somewhere – so that may need replacing.  The upstairs washroom WC needed the lot: the seat, the flush mechanism and float valve had given up their diverse ghosts.  I guess the lime scale precipitates and clogs up  the works when they’re left unused for a length of time; and certain visitors are heavy enough to split loo seats.  So our stay will largely have been made up of talking and fretting about plumbing, and doing a few bits of fettling the same.

Later: phone call from butcher’s brother-in-law: what’s the problem, where are you, are you there now, be there in five minutes!  Described the symptoms, showed him the works.  After a few whacks with a club hammer on the pipe where it enters the fosse septique, whoosh!  Blockage gorn!  ‘What do we owe you?’  Rien – rien du tout!  My wife’s the butcher’s wife’s sister, and I’ve done work for your neighbours Mr X and Mrs Y, so it’s all in the family, in a way.’  Just as one would expect from a septic tank fettler in the UK coming out for the first time to a new customer.  Yeah, right.  Even better, the admirable Monsieur Thoïba (who reckons that the pipe is probably OK) is a general builder, so an excellent contact.  Meanwhile, I sorted the upstairs WC, and just hope to goodness I got it all right!  Flushed with success, as it were, maybe I’ll have a go at the rather leisurely float valve in the shower room here at Forges-l’Evêque.

We got away at 07:00 on Easter Sunday, and met hardly any traffic on the way up to Bordeaux, though the down line was pretty busy.  It drizzled most of the way from Sigalens to Folkestone, though we had an hour or so of fine sunshine from where we crossed the Vienne all the way to Le Mans.  On the way south, we rather dread the vast and depressing Sologne.  On the way north from Annie’s we take a different route as far as Abbeville, and the dreich bits are the camembert country in lower Normandy (or at least in grey, damp weather), the grotty industrial side of Rouen (an otherwise very fine city) and the route up from there to Abbeville.  That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such displays of cowslips by the roadside, and that cheered me up somwehat.  Though the weather kept us down to 110 for a lot of the way, the light traffic meant that we made good time to the end of the tunnel, and were away about 20 minutes ahead of schedule – though not before exorbitant (€2.70) and over-milked tea in paper cups at the tunnel terminal, rubbing shoulders with the great British unwashed.  (Still, at least the man at the café answered my French politely with French.)  Thirteen hours’ travelling, 39 mpg, average speed 63 mph.  I’ll spare you the cost of the diesel, but be assured that we filled the tank before we left France!  But I have to say that, apart from a trip to the least demanding of the local supermarkets, I’m not good for much next day.

Back at base, our plant-minders have been doing a great job, and pots are back in their accustomed places from the north-facing window bay.  The garden is quite colourful: the last of the daffodils are still in flower, and since we went away flowering has started on all sorts of stuff – the magnolia Susan, spiraeas, fritillaries, polyanthus, rhododendron praecox, tulips, wallflowers and pansies.  So it’s beginning to look like our house again. 

Today I have sowed three colours of rudbeckias (don’t know if they’ll come true from seed), trailing sapphire lobelia for the summer baskets, cosmos (on a whim), antirrhinum, dwarf nicotiana and oriental poppies from Immy and Jon’s crimson plant.  A judicious mix of bought and saved seed: we’ll see how they all do.  I’ll make another visit to the seed box once I’ve replenished the compost supplies.  Tomorrow we’ll aim to go and get our tomato plants from their place of safety.

We enjoy our trips to France very much, but now that we’re both retired, it’s also a pleasure to come back home to see what the garden’s up to.