Verlor'ne Müh

Off we went to the market town this morning in search of matt acrylic varnish, only to find that the bookshop that did a limited range of artists' materials is no longer there.  The market was there, but Gaschard had sold out of eggs, so we'd to buy from someone to whose poultry we haven't been introduced.  Enfin bon.  I dropped into Fortnum's on the way back to the car to get some boiled ham for a sandwich, and found that they are stocking Berner Rösti.  Forget the sandwich: lunch was said Rösti with fried eggs: effective, as we always say, only as part of a calorie-controlled diet.

Pierre and Ludo

Pierre appeared yesterday, and has slapped on a bit more render on the end wall.  There's another layer to put on, and then he has to align it with the older render above, and then find a sand that will approximate in colour to the wash above the chopped out bit.   Poignant that he and Ludo, his bro-in-law (in that they married two sisters) were here painting it together less than a year ago.  We learned early this year from the travel blog of the parents of said two sisters that Ludo had suffered a severe stroke, from which he did not recover.  Aged 43.  Carpe diem.

The vehicle is puzzling.  There appear to be no opening windows aft of the front doors, which reinforces its credentials as a delivery van.  The suspension is so bouncy as to be nauseating: not a good combination with an airless interior, eh?  This is no voiture de tourisme, and I shall remember its model designation (NV200) so as to be able to turn it down if we're ever offered one again.  The compound A-post presents a blind spot that conceals pedestrians - thank goodness Martyn was watching as we pulled out of Fortnum's car park.  The maddening thing is that the engine is really good.  Throttle response is instant and vigorous, and it pulls from low revs without turbo lag.  After some pretty lacklustre diesels in the past (and a certain diesel Mégane comes readily to mind) Renault is now producing some very good motors again.  Shame their Nissan subsidiary puts them in such a shite chassis.

As we often say, France is world famous for its taste and style.  So why, pray, is the market full of rubbish like lime green sparkly net curtains, puce bras and visible clothes that would make a tart blush?  On the other hand, the displays of fresh produce are a delight to the eye, and the various traiteurs' offerings were as mouth-watering as ever.  The Vietnamese chicken roasters were doing their usual cheerful trade, and others' paëlla and encornets farcis looked pretty appetising as well.  The town itself is pretty scabby, however, and definitely hostile to pedestrians.  The footpath along the main drag from where we parked is on three levels, and the only one wide enough to walk on à deux is interrupted with tree planting holes.  Perhaps it ought to twin with the notoriously motorist-unfriendly Brighton in the hope that they might work out a happy medium.  To make things worse, the town is currently beset with road works that make our normal approach very slow.  We returned home yesterday south-about through the vines, and today took the NW approach via the ex-N113, from which there were quite good views of the snowy Pyrenees.  So I guess it's going to rain...

Wet weather programme

I had a crack at this on a small canvas a while back, so thought I'd try to improve on my first thoughts.  This one is 70-some by 50-some cms, and is headed for a new owner along the coast at Mèze.  I may titivate it a little before sending it off, but am conscious of Miss's injunction: 'Don't fiddle!'.  Having got into my stride, I may slap some colour on the other canvas I have in stock.  Need first to find a bit of inspiration, however.  My stocks of paints down here are a shade limited, and mostly of basic, student quality.  I guess that's about right for my level, but the opacity and strength of the pigments leave a lot to be desired cf. artists' paints.  Well, if the intended owner rejects it on those grounds, I'm sure I can find a bit of wall somewhere for it.

Birdsong

After apéritifs last night, we went and found a couple of Pierres at the hippy builders' bar further up the Prom.  Regular readers will be astonished to learn that the work on the west wall of the house is still not finished.  La semaine prochaine, we're told.  Don't hold yer breath.

As I type, we're being serenaded by a blue tit.  Don't think we've seen any hereabouts before: the predominant species are house martins, swifts and swallows.  But a nightingale accompanied my insomniac hours today, followed by a black redstart, I think, and a cuckoo. Of the wingless residents and visitors, we've seen painter Josef, Julia and Les, Ann and Chris and Mary and John, these last once resident and briefly visiting again.  Mary's eyesight no longer allows her to paint, and she passed a lot of paints to Les.  Since he paints in oils, he passed her acrylics on to me, including the only green I don't mix from primaries, green gold.

The countryside is pretty at this time of year.  We're too late for the mimosa, the tiny daffodils and dwarf irises.  But the trees are still a riot of different greens, and the roadsides are carpeted with flowers.  The broom is at its peak (sneeze, sniffle), and there are fields of aphyllanthes that almost look like ponds reflecting the sky.  Lovely thing.  The ciste cotonneux (cistus albidus) is in flower everywhere, as are hundreds of Judas trees, lilacs and purple irises.  Back at Forges-l'Evêque, the Judas tree grown in Hull from a seed from a garden in Lagrasse is alive but not blooming yet, and the cistus are going to be quite a while, given the savaging I gave them a few weeks ago.  Here in Another Place, we have little outdoor space, but the patch to the right of the door is is full of periwinkle, which has responded well to ruthless chopping back last year.  On the other side, in amongst the other weeds, the mint and sage are just about holding their own, but we have a rich collection of uninvited species, including wild veronica and a weed that was somewhat alarmingly known where I come from as sticky willy. 

We shook, rattled and rolled our way to Carcassonne this morning to get some amateur daubing bits, promising ourselves lunch at the airport, watching Mr O'Leary's buses coming and going.  The restaurant overlooking the field turned out to be closed, and the catering is now limited to a snack bar on the ground floor with no view.  The former operators of the restaurant are moving to a site in the unlovely Bouriette industrial estate nearby, and we've no information on the future of the first floor restaurant.  Shame.  Still, Plan B was lunch back here at the café de la Promenade, where the excellent Bertrand continues to preside over the kitchen.  Since the siesta is a mere 5-minute waddle thence, I indulged in a cassoulet.  Very well laced with cuisse de canard confite, belly pork and sausage, it should keep me nourished into the next decade.  So weeding this afternoon seems inadvisable.  It's a bit better than forecast today, but the outlook is not great.  The wet weather programme hereabouts is painting and railway modelling, so I've bought a big canvas and a big brush.  I don't promise to use either, but who knows?

Time for a rest

The interviewing season is over, the pre-departure gardening frenzy is over, and the journey is over.  The house seems to be hanging together, though I need hardly add that the rendering is still not finished.  I lack the energy for Pierre-chasing at the moment, and will start again next week.

Gatport Airwick was very busy this morning.  Perhaps it's not only we who are leaving the country for the remainder of the election campaign.  The flight was altogether very comfortable, given that we had a lot of cloud to climb and descend through.  The Easyjet aircraft seems to be Toulouse-based: the crew were French and the announcements likewise favoured the language of Voltaire.  Toulouse airport was altogether quieter than LGW, and progress through the pariahs' (non-Schengen) passport checks had a somewhat relaxed southern pace to it.  The ring-road, of course, was mayhem as usual, with various grades of kamikaze heading home for lunch.

It didn't help that I was driving a vehicle that takes a bit of getting used to.  Having been told to expect a SEAT Altea or similar, I was not wild about being presented with a Nissan delivery van with windows punched through the sides.  It goes well, thanks to one of Renault's turbo-diesel lumps.  Refined, however, it is not: it rolls like a 2CV (mild hyperbole...), and acquires a sick-making pitch and dip on some undulating stretches of the motorway.  On the poor surfaces of the lesser départementales of the Corbières, it rides even worse than my unlamented Alfa before I had it fitted with proper springs.  By comparison, the already firm-riding Altea feels like a Bentley.  We'll see how we feel about it in a day or two, but I don't rule out a trip back to Toulouse and a bit of table-thumping.  Fortunately, the clutch is viceless, and the gearchange is tolerable.  But if you can feel anything through the rim of the steering wheel, you're probably hallucinating.  It comes with most mod cons, however: cruise control, air conditioning and a trip computer, and the driving position is quite good - and lofty, of course.  But it refuses to change its own gears, which is tarsome.

Simple chicken dish for supper tonight, and an early night.

Value?

I was so knackered after yesterday's (mercifully this year's last) day's interviewing that I (a) left my laptop charger behind in the interview room (not for the first time), and (b), enticed by the £1.16.9 diesel price in Ditton on the way home, started filling up before I registered that the pump concerned only delivered the 10p/l dearer variety.  Bought £6.04 worth.  So, it was off to Sainsbury's this morning to complete the job.   

While there, I went into the supermarket and bought a couple of packets of the excellent Speldhurst sausages.  Enquired of cashier whether there was anything to come back on the loyalty points.  'Yes, £5!'  Said sausages coming to £5.20, it was a jingling cash transaction, accompanied by mild glee.  But then, grumpy old git mode took over as usual.  Question 1.  How many hundreds have we spent in order to get a fiver off a couple of packets of bangers?  Numerous.  Question 2. Four bob for a dozen bangers?  Maybe OK in 1959.

Recovering a sense of proportion (and resignation, I guess), I've fiddled a little in the garden today.  The spuds are growing very well, and are now earthed up, watered in, and located close to the watering machine, which just needs now to be set up.  The tall bags ought to yield more than our big pots, so it'll be interesting to compare their crops: two seed potatoes in each bag; three in each pot.  The rockets are living up to their name, the charlottes are reticent, and the maris peers somewhere in between.  I read somewhere that Sharp's Express is the best for growing in containers: anyone tried them?  In the decorative department, the cherries are starting to blossom, the daffodils are done, and the narcissi are starting to go over.  The aquilegias are full of buds, and the spiraeas are flowering. 

Surprised at absence of comment on the election campaign?  Don't be.

A bit previous...

...but the beans are in.  I'm sure I started them too early, or so everyone tells me, but there's still time to start again if the first lot fails.  I've planted four yellow runners and the one borlotti that germinated, and seven dwarf franch beans.  The little raised bed, which already has a couple of rows of sturon onion sets and a few herbs in it, is looking well populated, with perhaps just enough room for a row of leeks when they're big enough to plant out.

We'd a pleasant drive down to Brighton today to assemble a new flat-pack for Barbara, and to replace a few light bulbs.  The latter job is a breeze for me, since I don't even have to get up on tiptoes, but a challenge for someone a shade less tall and living alone, who would have had to get up on a step ladder. The former ought also to have been easy, given my IKEA-assembling years as an expat.  I noticed early in the process that there were two gauges of washers in the pack, but didn't twig for a minute or two that the reason why the bolts weren't going in was that, logically enough, the pack also contained two gauges of Allen keys, and the one I was using was just spinning in the bolt head.  The penny having finally dropped, we were soon in business again, and Barbara now has a shocking pink modernist dressing table.  She treated us to lunch at a nearby hostelry that we have all used a lot over the years, though its name has changed a few times.  Currently Breeze: recommended.

The drive was painless, except for the slow progress, as always, through Brighton itself.  I've heard the city described as ostentatiously anti-motorist, which may account for some of the reported disenchantment with the Green city council.  Nevertheless, Brighton remains a focus for old car gatherings.  We encountered a fair few old Austin 7s today as they puttered their way down the A26.  All utterly immaculate, and with a range of different bodywork including an American-style roadster two seater with a rounded tail - and presumably a rumble seat.  One, indeed, was registered in the Swiss canton of Vaud, and I earnestly hope it came over on a trailer!  I was just saying the other day to a friend that the Romandie is almost anarchic compared with my stamping grounds in cantons Bern and Zürich.  As if to demonstrate the point, our VD-registered Austin 7 was driven briskly through a red traffic light.

Not the worst driving of the day: today's cactus goes to, or ideally up, a young man in a Y-plate metallic grey Polo with the front number plate on top of the dashboard, yet to be affixed to the exaggerated new plastic front bumper.  [The French call this 'tuning', by the way...].  As he followed us, he seemed to be groping around in the footwell for something, consequently driving into the kerb.  He then proceeded to swerve violently from side to side, and after we turned off (and stopped to watch), hurtled on round the bends at full throttle.  It's enough to turn me into a vigilante - but perhaps not till I've retired from the current hobby.

Spring is really getting a hold now.  The forest is a blaze of colour, from the pinks of buds that are still to burst to the acid and lime greens of the emerging foliage.  The roadsides are a riot of primroses and cowslips, and there's a pale pink thing everwhere that I've yet to put a name to.  The beautiful white wind anemones are in flower, and to judge by the foliage, the bluebells aren't far behind.  As for the less desirables, there are vast fields of oilseed rape, and up in the Ashdown Forest the broom is in flower.  So, having just about got rid of the cold, by dose is ruddig ad by eyes are stiggig.  I'm glad we've chosen not to drive south this coming week.  At this time of year, the drive is torture for those of us of the hay-fever persuasion, pollen filters notwithstanding.

Here in the garden (flowers department) the daffodils are over, and the tête-à-tête narcissi are also getting there.  The fritillaries are in full flower, the primroses just go on and on, and more and more polyanthus are in flower.  Roses are shooting away like mad; even Peace, which I'd just about given up for dead.  I've planted a box where the pyracatha used to lurk in wait for the passing unwary, and trimmed the one that I hope it will match in my lifetime.  We thus have a couple of pans of box cuttings to go with our inexhaustible patience.  The compost bin is full to bursting, and I'm glad we'll have left for the airport by the time the chaps come to collect our donations to the municipal composting process: there will doubtless be dirty looks again when they come to move the brown bin!

I've done so many return trips to the County Town lately that the car must have felt it strange to be taking a different route today.  The last in the current series of interviews, for me, at any rate, is tomorrow, and I won't be sorry.  At least today's prep was a bit less intensive: I saw three out of tomorrow's four in the first round.  That's not quite the end of the hobby before we go south: I have the half-yearly meeting on Wednesday night, leaving me the chance of about six hours' sleep before we head for the airport.  Lots of fresh air and sleep in Another Place, we hope.

Retirement revisited...

Having received the DWP bumf, I've launched numerous enquiries as to my social security status in other countries.  Only to read that, if one has worked abroad for a UK company, the correct answer to 'Have you worked abroad?' is 'No'.  So, the application is in.  Having received my P60 yesterday, it is clear that the state pension won't pay the tax on my occupational pension, and the former too will be taxed.  Oh well.  It could be an interesting project to fill my copious free time.

Two days of wannabeak interviews this week, two more to come.  At least the driving was easier this week, since the schools are out.  I think next year will be my last in this rôle, and interesting as it is, it is quite tiring if you're doing it right, so I shall not be heartbroken at stepping down.

Martyn has cleaned out the pond, thus roughly doubling its capacity.  Neville the Newt spent the night in a dusused washing-up bowl on the bench table on the terrace, suitably sheltered, and has now been reintroduced to a refilled pond.

Susan and primroses

Elsewhere in the garden, we no longer have a pyracantha (firethorn) at the front 'gate', so that removes one litigation risk: the thorns are vicious, as can be seen from the scars on my right forearm.  I've identified the box I'll transplant to replace it, and just need to summon up the energy.

It's good to see the trees coming into leaf.  The remaining tree at the top of the garden (we had two taken out last back end) is leafing up, and the consequently less hemmed-in flowering cherry looks as if it may break into blossom pretty soon, as does the Bramley.  The 'Susan' magnolia is flowering, and the Judas tree is coming into leaf.  Good to see that we still have some primroses at the top of the garden.  They are blooming fit to bust in other parts of the garden, and have even self-sown into the footpath outside.

On my drive down to Fortnums just now, it was good to see the verges full of primroses, celandines and wind anemones, and to see the trees coming into leaf.  My favourite time of year.

On-off spring

Sorry to have been silent for so long.  It's the wannabeak interviewing season, so if I haven't been actually interviewing, I've been driving the forty-mile round trip, or sitting reading cvs and references.  Six days' interviewing last month, and four more to come this.  Add a couple of days at the hobby itself, plus hours poring over the latest utterances from the Ministry, and I start to feel as if my life ain't my own.  Still, at least, having resigned from the Hobby Club, I no longer have that to worry about.

Consequently, the few fine days (when I've actually been at home!) have provided a welcome spot of fresh air and modest exercise.  I've done a few hours' worth of slash and burn in the garden, an incidental benefit of which is to bring some colourful primulas out into the open from where they'd been smothered by penstemons.  The snowdrops and crocuses have come and gone, but the daffodils and narcissi are still providing lots of colour.  The cornus cuttings I brought from Smith Towers eight years ago seem finally to be getting into their stride here.  Extraordinary, considering what a thug the parent plant was.  Anyway, they've had their annual haircut, and are shooting away well.  Next fine day we get, I'll be out with the shears, shaping up some leggy hebes and the box 'gate post'.  I'm tempted to hoik out the pyracantha at the other side of the drive-in and start another box in its place.  They might just about match before I turn my toes up.

The leeks and beans are germinating like mad in the conservatory: I think I may have been a bit quick off the mark with the latter: we'll see.  The seeds we saved from the delicious yellow runner beans grown last year from Annie's seeds are germinating well, as are the dwarf french beans from Fortnums.  Onion sets are shooting away, but we await the first signs of potato foliage above the surface of the compost, and of the first sowing of lettuce.  Must take stock of flower seeds and get them started. 

The robins and dunnocks have learned to feed from the hanging container of suet balls, and Cock Robin is looking a bit emaciated, much of his energy being devoted to courtship feeding of Mrs R.  We had four goldfinches in the garden just now: we see them rarely, but on doing so, tend to dash out to buy a nijer seed feeder - which they proceed systematically to ignore.  Insomniac early mornings are punctuated by dialogue between the local tawny owls, often quite close to the house.  I did just manage to see one once, but not lately. 

I had my long-awaited letter from the Department of Work and Pensions the other day.  On attempting to claim on line, I found that I had to apply for a username and password, which will eventually arrive on paper.  One thing I'm asked to have ready is my social security number in each of the countries I worked in abroad.  I have one for Switz, but not for the other countries (though I have dug out a tax number for Germany - not that, having spent all of five months there, my entitlement will amount to a row of beans).  In any case, I continued to pay National Insurance contributions while I was abroad, so it's hard to know what use the information will be to the DWP. 

It might, on the other hand, get me some modest income from the other countries.  I signed away my rights to a Belgian pension second time round, but am asking former colleagues to check whether anything is on file for my longer first stint there.  A spot of pension from France would come in handy, though I doubt if it would pay the property taxes in Another Place.  If the only benefit is the renewal of contacts with former colleagues in the various countries, then that's already reward enough.