Spending the estate

The shed base and new path were finished last week, and they're paid for.  The shed/summerhouse/studio arrived at an indecent hour this morning on the back of a flatbed truck, and is stacked at the top of the garden ready for the guys who are coming to assemble it on Thursday.  The chap who delivered it told me he'd left Nottingham with it at 03:30 this morning, and had delivered two or three other sheds before coming to us at around 08:30!   The shed appears to be of quite decent quality - time will tell.  It too is sort of paid for c/o the Co-op VISA card.

We've done a bit of planting in the space we gain on the border side of the path - gazanias, pansies and some primulas that had been in a box on the steps.  The slugs were very interested in the gazanias, and slithered straight into the ambush I'd laid for them, to slither no further.  I spent much of the morning in the garden, dead-heading and weeding, and taking electric shears to an excessively exuberant spiraea.

The path makes cutting the grass a little easier - hurrah.  This was part of the plan, I admit.  I've adapted my mowing technique a little to avoid hurting the knee more than necessary: self-drive engaged uphill, and released for downhill cuts, so that I can take them at my pace rather than that of gravity-assisted Briggs and Stratton.  

As for the knee, I'm still no closer to surgery, since my blood pressure is now consistently high, and needs drugging down.  I loathe taking medicine, but if it'll get me closer to an ability to walk for pleasure again, it'll be more than worth it.  

The prescription was the least welcome of my birthday presents.  Martyn has bought me a very natty (and very necessary) new case for the iPad, and a pair of CDs of Janet Baker doing Schubert Lieder.  My Amazon account is nicely reinforced, so I shall stock up the kindle.  An M&S voucher has bought me a leg and a half of long cargo trousers, and today's post brought a parcel containing a nice little DAB radio, which now graces the bedside table.

The next chapter of estate reduction comes a little closer on Monday, when I'm hoping to take a look at a SEAT Ateca.  I've ordered one subject to satisfactory inspection and test drive, but doubt if they'll let me loose on the left-hand drive demonstrator that they are getting for just one day.  The model I've chosen won't start being built until October, so the earliest delivery will be in January.  Meanwhile, VW seems to be in no hurry to correct the fraudulent electronics.  The Tiguan did, however, sail through its MoT this week.  

Given the good results we got by sanding and oiling the outdoor table (we repatriated it from Lagrasse a fortnight ago), we tackled the conservatory table this morning.  I've given it a first thinned coat of Danish oil, and it looks far better.  When we bought it, it was coated with dull shed paint, which turned out to conceal an attractive grain, so the oil treatment should bring it up nicely.  At which point in the narrative, yr obed servt bears down on table wielding brush.

Home again

The piano festival was once again of high quality.  The Bartok piano and percussion piece was great fun - and James and Janneke, the pianists, were quite pleased to be opening the festival, rather than doing the grand finale as they had in previous years.  The cabaret evening was particularly enjoyable, with Yshani at the piano - but we are unashamedly partisan, of course.  A nice innovation was a session - piano à volonté - competent amateurs could book a short slot at the Steinway, including a number of young students from the conservatoires of Carcassonne and Narbonne.

I get a little fed up by the chronic disorganistion of the event, but fortunately the musicians managed to put up with it.  The highlight for us was the chance to host Yshani again: she is such good company.  We held hats for most of the concerts, but as there was nothing in the programme to say donations were invited, far less notices to that effect, we looked rather like random beggars as we stood at the exits from the square.  Once again I had to do a spot of policing of people who chattered away during performances, including one of the musicians.  All in all, I think that the programme was just a bit too long, running over six days, and including some events at 11:30 pm (we didn't go).

We spent a night at Puylaroque with Jan and Mark, and discovered that we haven't forgotten how to swim.  The pool was a rather pleasant 32 degrees!  Mark, retired builder is still building away like mad.  He has enlarged the terrace, and is building a porch and dining room where the original terrace used to be.  Next project: double garage, but he has decided to GSI to do the ground works.

Talking of which, we've got the builders in here at Forges-l'Evêque this week, putting down a base for a garden studio (OK: posh shed...) and a paved path up to it.  The shed itself is ordered and due to be put up before the end of the month.  We are using the landscapers who did such a good job of relaying the terrace and building the raised bed, and are impressed with their work so far.

As for the raised bed, onions, herbs and leeks are doing pretty well.  I thinned and re-planted the leeks today, and am hoping for the best, having not succeeded this far before.  The fuchsia cuttings have made really good little root systems, so will probably edge the new path when it's set.  One of the white Royal Mail potentillas (from cuttings I helped myself to from outside the Tonbridge sorting office years ago) was a casualty of the building work.  As the other's roots are full of pencil grass, it is going to have to come up, so I've taken cuttings.  The other cuttings I've taken are from a rather pretty rose pink penstemon.  My other horticultural efforts have been in the slash and burn department (except that one doesn't burn these days).  The grass got a cut on Monday, since it is to be fed and weeded tomorrow.  The builders have taken out another two leylandii trees from the back hedge, and I've started squaring up the one nearest the shed base.  I noticed this morning that the cherry tree was overhanging the footpath at the side, so I've filled a barrow with prunings and stuffed it somehow into the now overflowing composting bin, which, mercifully, will be emptied tomorrow.  We have to hide on the days when it's emptied...

Curious week...

...but not without its pleasant episodes.  We had apéritifs at the Coopers' in Mèze on Tuesday, before heading out to lunch at a local hostelry.  Would you ever have thought of cod crumble? If not, do so, and if you can cook it with the perfection we encountered at L'Oscarine (no web site yet), you're in line for a couple of toques.  We got to meet for the first time Patricia and Martin's granddaughters Eléonore and Tessa, who are home in France after a couple of years in Djibouti, where their parents have been teaching.  Next stop: Perpignan, which is about as exotic as it gets in metropolitan France!

If it were not tragic, it would make for great farce.  The leading lights all scrambling back from their dishonest campaign rhetoric, J0hns0n showing all the signs of thinking 'Oh shit: surely they can't have voted to leave?'.  Given that his motivation for leading the campaign was to wrest the leadership from a weak, lacklustre PM, his withdrawal from the leadership contest when he realised there was a difficult job to do shows just what he is made of.  Wind and piss - at best.  As for G0v3, the most that can be said of him is that he has spared us J0hns0n.  Across the floor, the leader seems just as set on dismantling his party, which used to be mine.  Regulars will recall my musings on the philosophy essay title 'Why do we value a democracy?', to which our tutor group responded more or less unanimously: 'search me, guv!'.  Mr Freedland's article in today's Grauniad is unusually but appropriately outspoken. As I said on forwarding it to my MP, borrowing a common line used by senior judicial wingers, 'I agree, and there is nothing I can usefully add'

Well, to restore a sense of proportion, I should report that the countryside is looking wonderful at the moment.  The wild flowers by the roadside are lovely - travellers' joy, scabious, dianthus and many other beautiful subjects that I have yet to look up (where did I leave the book?).  I got us lost yesterday on the way to lunch in Leucate, hence a detour through Embres et Castelmaure, and we were rewarded with a fine display of morning glory climbing up a wall and twining across the telephone wire.

As I write, an army of volunteers is setting up the Halle for the piano festival.  Not a lot I can do given my current crippledom.  The most enormous percussion section is being set up: I thought the Bartok piece only involved two pianos and timpani!  Watch this space.  Tomorrow, we become theatrical landlords for a few nights, and shall be collecting the delightful Yshani from the airport, as well as the front of house man, Martin, from the railway station.  The next few days ought to lift the depression a bit, eh?

Back from Aquitaine

Thursday

Brexit seems to me to be the choice, by and large, of the stupid or the political self-seeking.  I'm finding waiting for the referendum result almost more than I can bear.  At least we're doing so in pleasant and welcoming surroundings, at Annie's in the Gironde.  We motored up this morning in a record three hours and five minutes from door to door.  

The reason for the trip was to bring Annie our TV set, since the Sky satellite footprint no longer covers us with enough strength to be read in Lagrasse by our smallish dish.  (We actually find that we don't miss it since we can get French TV on the iPad if need be, as well, of course, as Radio 4.)  Annie was also a bit short of comfortable chairs, so we have re-homed a couple of Cintique chairs, bought second-hand by the parents back in the 1950s or 60s, and reupholstered in bomb-proof uncut moquette.   We still have another four more recent Cintiques, but the oldest ones are the best of the bunch since they have a bit of upholstery on the arms.  

Friday

I'm not too proud to say that I spent much of the day close to, and sometimes in, tears.  The crushing stupidity of so many 'leave' voters and of their complete inability to divorce their bigotry from real EU issues is one of the perils of democracy,  I suppose, and I have been finding it almost unbearably frustrating.  I grant you, there are 'leave' voters who have come to the decision for reasons that satisfy their logic, and I guess that's a reason to value democracy.  What I cannot forgive is the band of demagogic, opportunist politicians who are dragging us back to 1933 Germany.

An evening with lovely and hospitable friends of Annie's helped to restore the equilibrium, even if the hospitality somewhat ruled out a good night's sleep!  

Saturday

Doubtful weather forecast, but we headed out from Annie's on minor roads this morning, taking a look on the way at the much fortified Lectoure, then Fleurance and the fine market hall in Cologne [sic].  We hadn't visited the Gers much, if at all, and were impressed by the huge horizons and rich architecture, agriculture and the efforts that the Communes make to add elegant floral colour to the roadside.  Lagrasse: please note. 
We paused to buy sandwiches at a Lidl close to the spot near Toulouse airport where we sometimes pause for an alfresco lunch.  Well, the Lidl clientèle ahead of of us was seriously drugged, the sandwiches were mediocre and indigestible, and the crisps over-salted. 

That said, we made it safely home, and have since patrolled the village, gathering up a poster to stick in the window, not to mention a couple of millefeuilles for pudding.
So I suppose a degree of civilisation persists.  But I'm still glad I'm old.

Bulletin from the Auvergne

By some miracle, the grass was just dry enough to cut yesterday, even after a number of wet days, so that’ll make hacking it down again fractionally easier when we return next month. 

We were booked on a shuttle at 07:20, so were at Folkestone by 06:30, after a pleasant ride along the country lanes as far as Ashford.  Sightings included countless magpies, rabbits, two green woodpeckers and a goldfinch.  Later sightings included beer-swigging Poles (at 07:00), presumably on their way to the match in Marseille on Tuesday night.  The van in front of us on the shuttle housed four men and three women.  Friendships may be made or broken between this morning and when they finally return, I suspect.  The car behind us had four hulking blokes in it.  Another interesting vehicle on the shuttle was a 1920s open Bugatti racer.  I don't think I've ever heard a straight-eight engine before: it sounded rather busy!   (On a previous trip we shared a train with a 1920s Le Mans Bentley.)   

Queues for passport checks were longer than I've ever seen them.  It's a rare event for the French border police to do other than wave one through from behind a closed window.  This time they seemed to check thoroughly - though not to the extent of limiting their discussion of the football.  Well, we arrived 20 minutes early, and left three quarters of an hour late, so have had enough of the tunnel terminal to last us a few lifetimes.  It had not helped, of course, that the train ahead of hours had been cancelled - though the logic of our train being delayed on that account somehow escapes me.

The journey south was largely uneventful, though slightly different from our usual  With all the strikes in France, one of which had led to fuel supply disruption, we set off from the UK with a full tank, and didnt't stop as usual at Marquise to fill up.  A later complication was that the aire where we normally swap seats just before Paris was closed, as was the car park after the last péage.  As there's nowhere else to pull over without leaving the motorway (and getting lost), Martyn got stuck with the Paris shift.  There is something about the A15/A86 route that brings out the worst in Parisian driving.  Martyn's unflappable driving got us safely through to other side, and I took over when we stopped to top up the tank at Vélizy.

There was more motor sport on the A71 south of Vierzon.  A BMW M5 zoomed past us, followed by a heavily breathed-on Mégane and a BMW hairdressers' soft-top two seater.  Hot on their heels was a gendarme on a motorbike, and it was with some grim satisfaction that we saw the lot of them pulled over a few miles further down.  Much notice they took.  The gendarmes no doubt detained them for a quarter of an hour or so, but it wasn't long before they all zoomed past us again.  We'd been travelling at the speed limit, so they must have been driving a fair bit over it again.  

The A10 north of Orléans still shows signs of the after-effects of flooding.  There are pipelines and pumping engines over a stretch of a few miles, and the inside lane is coned off.  At least it has re-opened, and lightish Sunday traffic wasn't unduly hindered by the lane closure.  Friday nights may be somewhat different...

Early supper at the Buffalo Grill the other side of the motorway: adequate.  We've learned from experience not to eat at the usual flophouse.  Less far to drive tomorrow: it usually takes about four hours for the last stretch.  And so to bed.

What the devil is the world coming to?

Speechless.

The English Summer

Warm sunshine one minute, thunderstorms the next.  Still, we've been out in the fresh air a lot, so the garden's looking pretty good for once.  We're having most of our meals out on the terrace, or if, as yesterday, we need the big table, we have all the door open.  The warm days seem to encourage the cistus to flower, and both the pulverulens and purpureus are putting on superb displays.  The roses are also getting into their stride: we have lots of reds and pinks in bloom, and the yellow climber has been doing quite well too.  The ceanothus is going over after flowering really very well.  I actually want it to finish flowering so I can prune it: it has turned into something of a thug, smothering everything in its path.  Talking of thugs, we have practically filled the bin with brambles from the easily ignored bed at the side of the house, behind the conservatory, and we have't finished.  Another candidate for slash and burn is the bed behind the bench at the top of the garden.  It is host to a climbing hydrangea, but also to yet more brambles, a lot of willow seedlings and a rather exuberant pyracantha.

I posted our referendum votes on the way to the hobby on Tuesday, since we shall be in Another Place on polling day.  I'm thoroughly sick of  the media coverage and lies of the parties.  None of the campaigning was ever going to shake me from my voting intention, so it's all a waste of breath and air time so far as I'm concerned.  I know there are a lot of undecided voters, but it seems to me that the campaigning is more than likely to persuade them not to vote at all.  Well, we'll know the result today fortnight.