Familiar haunts

Busy day on Thursday.  Via Facebook, I'd learned that someone was after a simple electronic keyboard, since her eight-year-old daughter was expressing an interest in learning the piano.  For years, one such has been languishing on the landing: I bought it second-hand some 30 years ago when I'd kidded myself that I could learn to play.  Well, we hooked it up to Martyn's computer speakers, and, on finding that it still worked, offered it to the woman who had posted on Facebook in exchange for a couple of bottles of Corbières.  It turned out that they live close to where we were heading on Thursday anyway, so we dropped it in on them on our way.  They presented us with no fewer than six bottles of vintage Corbières, which is generous given that the thing had only cost me £90 all those years ago.  It was a huge bonus to find a photo of a smiling Lucie at the keyboard on Facebook when we got home, her electrician father having hooked it up to some old computer speakers.  There's something hugely attractive about barter, isn't there?

Next stop was at the home of friends of friends, who recently moved south from Germany to take up residence in their holiday home, only for the husband to collapse mere weeks later with a bleed from a cerebral aneurysm.  He is in the best possible hands in the university hospital in Montpellier, but remains comatose.  She is holding it together, but struggling with the tiring journeys to and fro, and with the effort of dialogue with an unresponsive partner.  Time will tell.

From there to good old Le Somail for lunch with Chota, Patricia and Martin, who were on great form, and are now proprietors of a little acrylic sketch I did a while back from a photograph that Martin had taken of the sunrise over Sète.  It being the fifteenth anniversary of Martyn's and my first meeting, they had brought a bottle of Muscat de Frontignan as an anniversary present.  The Auberge du Somail was not, however, on form: cold, tough lamb chops.  Had I had the sense I was born with, I'd have settled for the starter course: an assiette Andalouse, comprising a spot of salad, green and black tapenade, some very garlicky red peppers, a generous dollop of jambon cru, sliced melon and a tomato salsa that we eschewed, fearing raw onion in the mix.  

The weather being fine, clear and still yesterday, we headed for our favourite ride in the mountains over to Limoux (though not before I'd rubbed down and sized the shower room ceiling).  This time we took some carrots with us in case we encountered the donkeys we sometimes see at our favourite viewpoint.  That precaution was of course sufficient to ensure that they didn't appear.  The views, however, were fabulous.  We were serenaded by a skylark as we admired the beautiful chain of snowy Pyrenees, and harangued by lambs and their mothers at a farm nearby.  We hope they make better côtelettes than we got at the Auberge du Somail on Thursday.  

Down in Limoux, we headed for a café that had been well reviewed by Le Petit Futé, took one look at it and its rough clientèle, and moved on.  We finished up at the Grand Café, which we'd pretty well decided not to use again after a couple of poor meals.  Martyn had a steak, which was evidently very good.  I had my usual pizza, enjoyed it, and writhed later.  

It was fine enough to sit out on the terrace when we got back, entertained by house martins, buzzards and redstarts.  It was a bit too chilly to sit and wait for the bats.

This grey, damp morning looked propitious for decorating, so the shower room ceiling is now papered, and Martyn has been round again with a pot of white paint.  That's very nearly all the DIY we need to do this time, save, perhaps, a bit of weeding.  Or perhaps not.

Rites of Spring

Château Smith being rather damp, the paint doesn't stick to the walls for long, and when we'd a foot of snow on the roof terrace, the damp got through a bit from above as well.  Martyn has slapped a lot of paint on the downstairs and shower room walls, and I've stripped the paper off the ceiling of the latter.  We have a couple of rolls of spare paper from when we did the second bedroom.  Stand by for the wailings of a reluctant DIY decorator.

On Monday morning I went and knocked on the door of a local handyman to ask whether he did phone lines.  He came round there and then, did a temporary fix to verify that he'd found the right pair, then returned to do a proper one.  30€.  With elegant symmetry, I then found that the iPad wasn't charging, and found that the lightning cable was damaged.  The phone shop at the supermarket up the road furnished a replacement, though at an eye-watering price.  Oh well.

Swallows

As I write, we're an hour and ten minutes out from Ashford, having stopped at Lille to change train crews.  A complimentary breakfast (croissant, OJ, yoghurt was served while we were in the tunnel.  The train is pretty thinly populated, and the hostess immediately offered to move us to better seats in a block of four with a table.  The train goes over 1200 km from London to Marseille, with stops at Ashford, Lyon and Avignon, where we get off.  The train is one of the 1993 sets, but has been quite nicely refitted since then.  The WC is amusingly decorated with fake tiles, and a winking Mona Lisa on the wall behind the loo...  [Later: the one in the next carriage was decorated with a picture of a cast iron Thomas Crapper cistern complete with 'pull and let go' handle, and a street sign reading Privy Lane WC1.]

Picking up the narrative after lunch, I find myself wondering why we ever do the journey any other way.  The ride through the Burgundy countryside is really pleasant, and the fact that lunch was really rather good reinforces the feeling.  The staff on board are friendly and helpful: on my declining wine because I'd to drive later, the hostess pressed a baby bottle on me for later.

[Saturday]. The hire car is a Jeep Renegade.  I've never tried an Ami 6, so this is definitely the ugliest vehicle I've ever driven.  The clutch is viceless, but it has two gears too many and 'sneeze-factor' steering that makes it difficult to keep to a straight line.  The A9 was pretty horrid, but we got home safely enough.  All is well, except that strong winds have ripped the telephone wiring out of the box beneath the bedroom window, thus cutting service to the ground and first floors.  The router has therefore had to go up into the studio, which leads to rather hit-and-miss wifie on the ground floor.  Mobile reception inside the house is also hopeless, so our communications are a bit limited.  I'll ask around in the village this morning to see if there's a reliable techy nearby.

Having been well (if indigestibly) fed on the train, we were left with three rounds of sandwiches.  Supper was therefore toasted sandwiches - leftover chicken and Nürnberg sausages - with supermarket frozen rösti.  Sensible eating begins today.  Maybe.

We've been up to the market town this morning to get a fresh bottle of gas for the heater, only to find that the one we couldn't connect satisfactorily last year hooked up easily enough and lit.  Oh well, we have a spare now.  The wild flowers by the roadside ares gorgeous at this time of year: poppies, startling lime green euphorbias, aphyllante de Montpellier, broom, irises, judas trees and countless others.  Quite a full colour palette.

As we returned from the village market this morning we were greeted by neighbour Jean-Hugues, with 'Ah, les hirondelles sont de retour!'.  We've been called worse.

Gardening

Since we begin our spring migration on Friday, it was time to get some planting done.  It's not just the planting of course: there was a lot of weeding to do to get space for the perennials.  A pre-departure planting panic a couple of years ago saw us planting a lot of penstemon cuttings in a bed that had been dug over and improved by the landscapers.  The penstemons grew so well that I had to set about them this morning with electric hedge clippers before I could get down to pruning out the old wood.  The result is that the bed looks rather bare, the invasive grass is much in evidence, but the roses have some breathing space.

The last of the charlottes are now planted out in old compost sacks, so we'll hope for good results.  It'll be interesting to compare the yield with those grown in proper growing sacks.  The onions are starting to show a bit of green, but there's no sign yet of germination from the leek seeds, nor from the basil - though, in the latter case the seed is ancient, so that's a bit of a long shot. And someone has eaten the dill plant, dammit.

The Fires

The local rag today reports that the vicar is resigning.  Readers between the lines may enjoy speculating on the quote from the bishop.  We are trimming our antennae - not that we have so much as darkened the door of his church, one should add.  Scandal in the leafy outskirts of Disgustedville?  Surely not.  Watch this space.

Having gained much of a day today after the collapse of a trial that ought not to have been prosecuted, I've had a moment to add a teaser to  the Historia web site.  Kate has finished writing Fire and Phoenix on the subject of the Great Fire of London 350 years ago this year, and it sounds very promising.

Regulars will be glad to read that Sainsburys are at it again.  200 tea bags: £2.50.  400 of the same tea bags: £8.  Still, Sainsburys have the last laugh: neither of us announced to the other our plan to go and buy tea, so we have a stock of 1000 tea bags in the cupboard...

Sunset at Rockholm, Kovalam

I'm in danger, I suppose of becoming typecast, since much of my recent output has been of sunrise and sunset seascapes.  Miss having set a project topic about India, I'd dug out my photo albums, and couldn't resist banging out this 45-minute sketch.  Kovalam is near what we Brits call Trivandrum where, incidentally, my cousin Anne was born.  Like so many places at the southern end of the sub-continent, its present name runs to many syllables, and I can't remember all of them.  I spent a week or so there during a three-week holiday over Christmas and New Year 1988/89.  The beach tendency were in their element.  My room had a big shady balcony where, after a swim in the warm Arabian Sea at crack of dawn, I sat and read Midnight's Children, supervised for much of the time by a solitary house crow.  That's what probably kept me sane towards the end of a two-year stint in a job I hated.  The trip had started life as a cricket tour for the Berne cricket club, but absent sufficient players, degenerated into a holiday, with friends such as yr obed servt being invited to fill pre-booked rooms.  My first and probably last visit to India, it was a terrific experience, and I've enjoyed going back through the photographs 27 years later.  It was an abiding influence on the way I look on the world, but a rather predominant memory is of several episodes of digestive urgency, and consequently of returning with, as the late Vic so elegantly put it, an arse like a well-sucked blood orange.

Garden and stuff

After a long day yesterday in a traffic court, it was a pleasure to wake up to a fine day when I could get out and about in shorts.  My main motivation for such apparel was a reluctance to have my long-suffering physiotherapist deal with yet another patient clad in undies, but the weather was fine enough for me to stay in shorts for the rest of the day. I had been getting quite depressed at the slow progress with the creaky knee, particularly since some of the exercises she prescribed last time were impossible to do while observing her instruction to avoid pain.  Saturday's London trip was something of a trial.  Well, she tells me I'm progressing, and has given me yet more exercises, telling me to double up on the ones I can manage.  She's plainly conspiring with me to put off the evil hour.  I suspect some degree of placebo effect, but after the usual morning exercise routine and some more at the consultation, it's feeling rather better.

It's a lovely spring day, so we have done some spring cleaning in the garage, and have a bootful of old rubbish and paints to take to the tip tomorrow.  I've started most the the charlottes in their bags out on the terrace, arranged round the raised bed where the onion sets are starting.  I've planted out the sweet williams where we can see them from the back of the house.  We'll need to get the rest of the perennials out in the next week or so before we head south.  I think a lot may finish up beside the top terrace.  The soil is rather poor up there, but that's maybe a reason to quarry out some compost to help it along.  The grass is getting a bit less soggy, so there's a chance I might be able to give it a rather fiercer cut in the coming week.  The magnolia Susan is coming into flower, as is the white spiraea.  The viburnum is growing as if it suspects it has a future.  Its future is in fact in the municipal compost bin.

Now we have the windows open more often, it's a comfort that EasyJet, BA et al are starting to fix their A320s to eliminate the dreadful whine that unmodified airframes inflict on those of us who live beneath the west-bound approach to Gatwick.  The part that has to be fitted looks like it would cost about 7/6d from your local sheet metal worker, and is astonishingly effective.  I gather it helps in such cases to have a well-regarded and persuasive MP.  Not that I could possibly reveal whether or not we voted for him.

Flora

In the garden, the fritillaries, magnolia Susan and rhododendron praecox are flowering.  The daffodils are going over, but some little narcissi are doing well in their pots.  The composting bin was emptied on Thursday, well filled with boughs and foliage of leylandii.  I have been doing a bit of clearing out overhead of the cold frames, since they don't seem too successful.  One lost its glazing during one of our recent storms, but I have cobbled it back together.  However rickety they have become, they are good over-wintering places for half-hardy fuchsias, which are shooting away nicely.  The composting bin is full again: I have brutalised the conifer at the side of  the house where it overhangs the footpath.  I took the opportunity of having the machine to hand to tidy up the box hedge I planted a few years ago in place of the rather silly little wicket fence left by the Previous Administration.  A mixture of home-grown cuttings and half-price plants fron Fortnum's, it has grown well - for box...  The penstemons, potentillas and iris sibirica look better of their trim.  If the grass dries out enough to be mown before next Thursday week, I'm damned if I know what to do with the clippings.

We've been hardening off the perennials that we started in the sitooterie last back end.  The've been potted on twice now, so are installed on the (now rather tired) picnic bench on the terrace.  The onion sets are putting down roots (as I discovered after a squirrel or someone had hoiked one out the other day.  We'd enriched the raised bed with some muck and decent topsoil, so are hoping for the best.  We've sown leeks and basil, but there's no sign of germination yet.  The potatoes are ready to go out in their growing sacks, so I'll probably make a start on them on Tuesday after physio.

As for celui-ci, I'm not sure it's doing any good.  I've been at it for for close on six months now, and for about three months since I saw the sawbones.  If there has been progress, it's not enough.  But I have so much to be grateful for: I must have walked about a mile in aggregate yesterday (no, not wading through sand and gravel...), which is much more than many can manage.

Yesterday's leg work was to attend a performance of Dvorak, Brahms and Mendelssohn choral works at Christchurch, Spitalfields, given by the Islington Choral Society and a neighbouring orchestra.  Very enjoyable, and a nice chance for a brief chat with Kate (soprano) and John (bass), who had supplied us with comps.  We being of a certain age, a 'super off-peak' return from our nearby country branch line station to London cost the princely sum of £6.00 per man, but Management had to pay for his bus rides, being a mere stripling.  Supper before the concert in Spitalfields market was draughty, not cheap, and highly flatogenic, given the amount of cabbage accompanying my pie and mash.  I exiled myself to the snoring refuge overnight... 

Sad news

Sad news today from Costa Rica: Danny Carranza has died, some six months after diagnosis of a metastatic cancer.  He and our friend Phil Copeland had been partners for over ten years, and he had seemed to be coping well with chemotherapy, until he took a sudden turn for the worse a couple of days ago.  The photo was taken just less than ten years ago when they visited us in Tonbridge, and we hauled them up to Ightham Mote in dreich October weather.  Danny was a keen bird watcher, and we had to keep stopping to let him get photographs of pheasants, which he had never seen before.  Another of his interests was orchids, and I remember sending him (doubtless quite unlawfully) some seeds from wild orchids that popped up occasionally in the garden.  Never heard whether he managed to germinate them: they are notoriously difficult.  A gentle soul, Danny: he will be much missed.