Wrapping up

The weather is turning a little and rain is forecast for the rest of the week. This is very much needed but means outside jobs are on hold now until after we come back from our 10 days in UK. Our last job before the rain was to finish wrapping the garage in its breathable membrane to protect the OSB.

As you can see all doors and windows are now in as well, so the garage is watertight and secure. The next job is to paint the floor (as once everything is in there it will never get done), render the concrete blocks at the bottom and batton and clad the outside. Then we should be able to move our boxes out of storage and the tools out of the house!

Springtime

This couple appeared in the front of the house yesterday. They are hoopoe and are common here around springtime. I had just attempted to mow our apology for a lawn and I guess there must have been a lot of insects around! The photos are pretty poor as I had to take them through the kitchen window before the birds flew off. I think they are nesting in our neighbours roof.

We also have a bird nesting in the tower and one trying to nest in the garage. Spring is here!

I planted my onions and potatoes last week. The vegie patch has been increased by a third in size and I reckon is now big enough to feed two people, although the soil will need a couple more years before it is properly workable.

Sheepgate (and other stories)

Spring is now here and we are up to 25 degrees during the day. Although the nights are clear they are not too cold and so we have forgotten about heating and are beginning to look out our summer clothes (not much different to the winter clothes but just have shorter sleeves!)

Last week Ian celebrated his half century, which required me to make a few mad cakes. Here are the results.

The tractor was all they had in the gift shop that was appropriate. It is made in China!

Cup cakes with chocolate and vanilla butter icing decorated with licorice allsorts

Gremlin the naughty cattle dog is slowly calming down at times. His main difficulties (or should I say our main difficulties) are his over exitement at anything remotely different. To that end we are trying to increase his disciplined exercise and I am trying to run with him (trying because I can't keep up) whereas Ian is trying to get him used to running after the mountain bike without attacking it. We have been having some success although he still runs off unpredictably after an interesting smell or a flapping duck, taking the bike or me with him.

Yesterday Ian took him round the field and I waited on the terrace for them to return. I glanced down towards Herman's field and noticed his sheep running around in all directions. After a while I could just about make out another animal with them. Closer inspection showed a red dog, causing havoc! I concluded the worse; that Gremlin had escaped from Ian and was having a good time on his own. I put on some shoes and made to go across the field, when I saw Ian and Gremlin trotting up together.  Further investigation revealed that Herman's dog had got out of his dog house and was rounding up  the sheep in Herman's absence (only not very gently!). A rescue party was launched consisting of me, Ian and a neighbour. When we arrived we heard the dog in the distance. After calling him a few times he sheepishly appeared (punn intended) and we were able to put him away. Now to look at the damage! There were sheep all over the place; several in the stream, some in different fields, many with big bite marks in their flesh. Ian and the neighbour set about trying to drag the wet sheep from the river and tend to the wounded. It took about and hour of pulling, coaxing, lugging, calling and falling in the stream to get them all accounted for. One lamb was dead and one sheep looked close to death. Herman returned at this point and surveyed the damage. We were amazed to see this morning that all the surviving sheep were still alive and grazing in their field.

Drought is anticipated this year. We walked around the lake with Gremlin this weekend. It should be full at this time of the year but it is less than half full.

As we were walking round the lake a couple warned us that further round there was an 'incident' and we might be turned back. They thought someone may have collapsed (maybe died) as there were Gendarme all around. When we got there it was mid-day and the incident had just been cleared in time for the Gendarme to go for lunch.

Today there was a funeral in the village. I don't know who it was but there were well over 100 people there. It is the third funeral in the village that we have seen and they all have been well attended!

Marching forward

March seems to be going by rather quickly. Our aim is to get the garage sealed and secure by mid April, when we are returning to UK for a week. With that in mind Ian has been putting in windows and doors. These are the latest pictures.

Back of garage 21st March

Double doors still needing fitting

End view; door still needing fitting

The roof is now completely finished, including cementing and pointing the ridge tiles. The large shutter doors still need installing and then the whole outside can be clad. I think I am going to call the garage the EBay garage as that is where much of the materials are from. The cladding is a type of fibro cement panel, popular in the United States. Ian saw it on EBay and had two pallets shipped from the UK. The windows are not EBay but special offer in our local DIY store and cost 70 euros each. The roll down doors, all the nails, the breathable membrane for the outside and all the tools required for the build (nail gun, stappler etc) were all EBay specials, and even with delivery have saved a considerable sum of money on the costs.

The garage is looking rather good now, to the extent that we were told by the local Maire that people are concerned that we are building gites, not a garage. I decided to make a joke of it (because it is a bit of a joke!) and told them that there was no doubt that the garage was going to be nicer than the house, but that was because Ian thinks his tools need a special place to live!

This week we have had our first real experience of French administration. Ian has been trying to register the car and I have been trying to exchange my drivers license for a French one. This has required three or four trips to various offices that are only open between 8.30 and 12.00 every day and very slow progress. One trip to the local town hall in Bergerac was the closest I have come to experiencing a visit to the DHSS in the UK. We are resolving to do as much as we can by post and email from now on, even  though everyone says you only get things done if you go in person!

The problem with exchanging the drivers licence is that as soon as you send it off if you are stopped by the Gendarme you can be fined for not having a licence. We struggled to find out the correct procedure in this case. The town hall suggested we asked the Gendarme and the Gendarme suggested that we asked the town hall! In the end we we to the village council and got a letter from them certifying that they had sent it all off to the appropriate people!

Ticked off

I didn't take this photo myself. It comes from here and is a deer tick. We have a lot of ticks here and they seem to like Gremlin a lot! Of course we are trying the flea and tick treatments, which seem to make no difference at all to the nasty little b*ggers, and in the end we have to remove them as we find them. They make me feel pretty itchy, especially as Ian found one just about to take hold of his leg the other day. Here they transmit nasty things like Lyme disease in humans and some nasty dog tick disease that has already killed two dogs this way..so we don't like them at all!

Garage gets a hat

More news on the garage building. Pleasant weather has continued and we now have a roof, minus only the ridge tiles. It was a three person and a tractor job, and once all the preparation had been done the placing of the tiles took two half days in total. Here are some pictures.

Extremes

Ian and I have been struggling to fight off a rather nasty cold for the last two weeks and are only just winning. I suppose that's one of the problems with having temperatures of minus 20 one week and plus 20 a few days later. We had a quiet weekend to try and recover, but this week Ian could sit still no more and started to work on the roof of the garage. Tomorrow the tiles go on, but in the meantime here are a couple of pictures.

Gosip and idle thoughts

No theme to todays posting.. just odd thoughts and observations on life here.

So here we are coming to the end of another month. The garage is slowly moving forward but weather has held us back a bit. The forecast now is looking more promising so hopefully we can crack on with it and move on to the next job! We still haven't got round to registering the car in France (as the process is fairly complex) and as the insurance runs out soon, and my UK drivers licence needs to be renewed and changed to a French one, then this job is taking on more importance.

Sunday here is the hunting day. Mostly there are one or two hunters out looking for rabbits or hare, but every month or so the whole hunt come out in force to hunt deer. It's a bit of a fiasco and looking at them out there last week I couldn't help remarking to Ian, that for the hunt organiser it must be a bit like organising a day trip for age concern, since the average age of most of the hunting contingent is well past retirement. They are usually driven to their stations in a 4x4 as they are too frail to walk there and mostly they use the gun barrel as a mobility aid. I guess that over the next few years with the old brigade dying off, so will the hunt. There are younger members but most of them suffer from the 21st century disease of too little time and too much work. I have mixed feelings. Having been anti-hunting for years I won't miss the spectacle, but at least here they eat what they kill and respect the wildlife around them, wanting to preserve natural environments so that there are plenty of things for them to shoot. Without the hunt, people would put down poison and adopt other more nasty and dangerous forms of pest control to keep the deer, rabbits and hare, etc from taking over.

Looking at the older population around here, it did strike me that it is very like "last of the summer wine." The older generation still get out and about and get themselves into mischief. One dropped dead last week after shovelling snow. He was well over 80 and I couldn't help but think what a nice way to go! The local accent and patois is also widely used amongst this group. They have names like Combo, Old Scapan and Peter Orange. Old Scapan is a hunter in his 80s who has a wife 20 years his junior. He still drives his tractor around. Peter Orange lives with his wife but they argue a lot and he has made it known that he is looking for another, much younger one. I have yet to identify the Nora Batty character but there are several candidates.

On a completely different note, the first of the three babies expected to be born in the village this year arrived recently. Well, at least I assume it did as the pregnant lady no longer looks pregnant!

Thaw

At last the snow has cleared and we can see the field again. Temperatures are up to seasonal normal and life is slowly getting back to normal. Burst pipes are being mended, freezers re-stocked and mail is now being delivered.
We managed quite well despite the fact that we live in an unfinished house with no central heating and only a 3kw temporary electric supply. Ian even managed to continue on with the garage on some days, although on others keeping warm was a full time job.

Here are the latest pictures.



Next stage is the roof.

A few photos of the snow (and no sign of it going any day soon!)

The view from the terrace

Looking up the road

The stinking pool that Gremlin loves

A VERY cold dawn (-13.9 on our thermometer)

Gremlin thinks it is great!

Coldest winter since 1985

9.45 at night and the temperature guage reads minus 9 degrees, which means that the real temperate is more like minus 12 degrees. The cold spell continues and the snow is still around and now unlikely to go until next week. By now most of us have given up trying to work as it is a full time job keeping warm. The farmer came round this morning with his snow chains on the car and checked we were okay. It was too cold for him to work in the vines and after he left us he rescued our neighbours who got stuck on the way to town.

Yesterday one of the other farmers attempted to clear the communal roads with a snow plough on his tractor. We managed to drive into town yesterday and did some shopping and we have enough provisions to last for a while (as do most people!),

Our elderly neighbour, Madame Delgrano, invited us over for coffee this afternoon. She had made a tarte au pomme and served that with coffee and Sangria. I think we helped her to feel less isolated this afternoon.

I will be glad when it warms up.

Brrrrrrrrrrrr

The sky is deceptively sunny. It looks balmy but the temperature didn't get above freezing today and was minus 8 degrees this morning and overnight. We unpacked the thick duvet and I looked out my thermals! When I took Gremlin for his walk this morning I was wearing thermals, three fleeces, a windproof jacket, two hats, two pairs of gloves and thick socks, and when the wind blew I was freezing! The culprit of this severe winter spell is high pressure over Russia and a Northerly wind!

This didn't stop Ian from getting on with the garage. The frame is now almost finished and the next job will be boarding and putting on the rafters for the roof.

3rd Feb 2012

Zero tolerance

After a good session at the dog class last week where Gremlin misbehaved again and Ian and I were put in our places for not being strict enough, we have started to adopt a zero tolerance approach to Gremlin. That means he doesn't get anything unless he does as he is told first time. We are trying our best to be good pack leaders. It does seem to be working although I am cautious as Gremlin does seem to have a habit of working out our latest tactic pretty quickly and then either ignoring it completely or finding a way to disobey!!

Moving forward

The work on the garage is progessing, in between rainy days and a few other chores. Here are some pictures taken yesterday.

The garage

Monday arrived and it was the day to start the garage, assisted by our neighbour. Ian had painstakingly drawn up the plans again and again, calculated the materials required, ordered them and had them delivered, lost a few nights sleep to worries about certain aspects of the design. The design was finalised on Monday and by Tuesday the planning was over  and it was time to start building.

11th November 2011



Back in November Ian finished off the concrete base by putting in a row of blocks to support the timber frame and finishing off the positions of the drainpipes, water and electricity.

day 1- sun



Monday was cold and sunny. The first job was to erect the old tent to protect workers and tools form the rain and to set up the work benches. Wood was measured and cut.

cutting and measuring

Cutting and measuring continued until the shadows lengthened and daylight faded! Much tea was needed to keep up motivation and morale. The A frames were constructed.

Yesterday I was in Bordeaux so I didn't see the progress. In Bordeaux it was cold and foggy all day but according to reports was lovely here and so progress was made. Today is day five and when I looked out of the window I saw this.

13th January 2012

It's funny how suddenly my view has changed forever and something has appeared where once there was a muddy field.

erecting the A frames

Erecting the frames has required the digger arm to lift them in place and from what I could see a bit of cursing and swearing to get things into place and secure. When all 4 frames are in place it will be time to do the end bits (I think they have a more technical name).

Great expectations

No New Year resolutions about blogging more or less, or changing the blog layout. All I am hoping to do is to continue and not to get too bogged down in the day to day of living that I forget to record it. After all, it was recording the day to day of living that was my first intention when I started the blog ?? years ago (I can't remember without stopping to look) rather than write a novel or use it as a therapeutic ranting tool. So I will plod on, just as we are plodding on stoically with our housebuilding.

New Years eve was a brief and pleasant interlude from the work, but we are now back on course, trying to finish indoor jobs while it rains outside and then work towards the major project, which is building the garage. This is due to start next week, all being well with the weather. The weather has been wet but really mild. We have so far only had a couple of mild frosts and it is already January. Will this mean a late cold spell this year or is this it for winter?

One of the jobs that Ian did was to finish off the wall in between our bedroom and bathroom. This involved plumbing in the sink and shower before we could close off the wall.  For ages all we have seen is the back of the wall, and to brighten it up over Christmas we stapled all our cards there and when the time came to finally seal off the wall for good we decided to leave them there, together with all the Christmas letters people send! One day someone will have a good time trying to work out what they were all about! Maybe they will find this site and this picture!

Tomorrow I am back to Bordeaux for the day and then next week I am doing some marking for my on-line course while Ian and the neighbour battle with the garage!

On a completely different note, there must be something in the air or water as next year will see the arrival of three new babies in the village, all with a kilometre of here. The latest to announce their news were our friends, who are expecting in July. It looks like 2012 will see some changes!

Happy Christmas (and what on an earth happened to 2011!)

It's Christmas Eve and all is quiet! Well not really but I decided that I really must try and make a quietish few minutes to update my blog just in case anyone wants to read it after receiving my Christmas card. As you can see from the more limited number of entries this year I have rather got out the habit of regular posting. As usual there is much I could say but somehow the urgency or the need to say it passes as I get absorbed in the many and varied things that make up my life. I think that has been the biggest change since making the move here; and that is that although we do have a routine, each day is different.

So we have been here over a year. You would think that would be long enough to get settled and feel part of the furniture, but no, I feel like we have only just arrived. We still have both vehicles on UK number plates, my French is a little better but we still watch mainly UK TV (although we do actually have a French TV arial but realised that there is just as much cr*p on French TV as there is in the UK). However I can now spend a whole day in the company of French people, listening to and speaking some French, without getting the headache from hell.

In order to improve my French and maybe to see if I can get some work as an Occupational Therapist, I have been spending one day a week at the local nursing home as a volunteer come student. Sometimes I am not sure that I want to bother, but what it has done is to help me feel more part of French life rather than the ex-pat community. I have also done some occasional work in Bordeaux, helping occupational therapy students evaluate research papers in English. It has been a very steep learning curve and I am not sure that I have really got the hand of it, but spending the odd day in Bordeaux is a nice change from the country from time to time.

Apart from these activities most of our time has been taken up with trying to make progress on the house. We have worked hard but these things take time, and we are still semi-camping in two rooms. However we now have the basics of  a swimming pool, the foundations for the garage, a half a front garden, a drive and are making progress with the plumbing and electrics. Next job is to build the garage so we can decant our things there and then finish off the final floor in the house.

The other thing I have done this year is get a dog. It was something I always wanted to do but could never even think about when I lived and worked in the UK. So, now we have a Gremlin, a 7 month old Australian Cattle dog, who as I write is chewing his tail to pieces in an attempt to alleviate the frustration of flea bites, a short attention span, exitability and rageing hormones! I am now a member of the Club Canine de Bergerac, where Gremlin continues to embarrass me by being a b*gger with me but behaving himself when anyone else takes his lead!

So now I am off to prepare a shrimp pasta thingy and drink some wine to celebrate our second Christmas in France.

Happy Christmas to you all.
 get relief from hi

Building the yellow brick road

I noticed today that the vines are suddenly bare; almost overnight the yellow leaves fell to the ground. Winter is approaching. It gets light at about 8.00 and is dark by 5.45 in the evening, so less than 12 hours of daylight. However, the temperatures have still been mild enough to sit on the terrace in a T-shirt during the day. As dawn breaks, if it has been clear, a morning mist emerges, edging up the land from the river. Most mornings it clears up, but some days it lingers almost all day, making it feel cold.

We have been focussing on finishing the driveway. It sounds like a luxury but the downside of having an unfinished drive is that as soon as it rains the ground turns to muck and sludge and we tread it all into the house. Worse still, it sticks to all our shoes and if you don't remove it whilst wet, attempts to chip it off when dry usually end up removing the sole of the shoe as well. The other problem is that if we need to have anything delivered, without a solid driveway it can only be delivered to the edge of the land.

before

So last week Ian marked out the drive and we put down some geotextile. Monday morning a large lorry arrived full of yellow gravel, hence the yellow brick road. Yellow gravel is important because the white stuff disintegrates and gets sticky, whereas the yellow stuff packs down nicely.

We eventually needed 4 lorry loads as the drive is about 100 metres in total; and rather than the two days Ian had estimated it took more than a week to finally get it all down and spread out. This was mostly due to the fact that the lorry couldn't drive down there without getting stuck and so we had to have it delivered to the car park and then Ian had to transport it down to where it was needed in a dumper truck. The result was very pleasing and I now feel a little more ready to brave the winter knowing I might be able to keep at least one pair of shoes free from mud.

stuck lorry being towed out by tractor

After

The other job we have been doing is planting some fruit trees in the front garden. 24th November is the day they should be planted, so on Saturday we to a tree show in the Lot et Garonne, where we were spoilt for choice with varieties of apples, pears, apricots etc. In the end we bought 6 tress and 6 fruit bushes. Planting them required the digger and buckets of horse manure and lots of hard work, but we eventually managed.

A year ago

All of a sudden the warm Autumn days and crisp nights have given way to the grey and damp days of November. Not that it is cold yet, and we haven't needed to use much heating at all, but we have suddenly had about a months rain in three days and everywhere is looking rather soggy. We are back to treading mud in through the entire house every time we go outside and regretting that we have not got round to finishing the drive yet.
Ian is now focussing on doing some electrics as the temperature is ideal in the loft for running wires and lifting insulation. He is installing something called a VMC or ventilation mechanique controlee. This is standard in all French new homes and is a whole house ventilation system that works by extracting humid air from the bathrooms and kitchen and drawing air through the rest of the house, thus hopefully preventing the problem of condensation that is common in modern sealed houses!

Just to proove it isn't always sunny here!

I realised last week that it was a year ago that I gave up my full time job. Have I missed it? Well, I miss the security of the regular paycheck, although when I had it, I never really appreciated it. I haven't missed the regular, boring routine and the internal politics at all. I suppose to some extent I have struggled with losing some of my professional identity, but as I become more settled here and my life here gets fuller, it becomes less and less important.

The dog whisperer

Thursday saw us heading North to the Corrèze, about a two hour drive from our house. The purpose was to meet some other cattle-dog and kelpie owners and give Gremlin his first try out with sheep. We found the farm using sat.nav., perched on a hillside surrounded by fields and other farms. The Correze is one of the least densely populated departements in France and the farm consisted of an old stone cottage, lived in by the grandmother, a slightly bigger house belonging to the mother and father and big farmhouse, that seemed to be occupied by various siblings and their families. We were greeted by a barking cattle dog and a yard full of border collies.

We were the first to arrive, shortly followed by Pascal (the dog whisperer), Gremlin's breeder and her Dutch friend, and an English woman from Brittainy who had driven for 9 hours in a small car with her teenage daughter and 7 dogs!

As I said earlier, the idea was to see if Gremlin and the other dogs had a natural herding instinct, and to see some of the other dogs. I was immediately struck by how much bigger Gremlin was compared to the other cattle dogs. Each dog got a chance to meet the sheep, starting by running round the ring while the owner and Pascal were inside. When Pascal felt the dog was ready he let him in and then watched what he did with the sheep, encouraging him to be interested in them. I say Pascal is a dog whisperer but he would never call himself that. He just has a natural instinct with dogs and watching him communicate with them and work with them was amazing to see. He frowned at my use of treats and said 'the way to train a dog is with the leash'; producing a 2 metre piece of fine line and demostrating how he used this to get the dogs to follow him. His 'hobby' is to rescue border collies from frustrated owners and dog pounds and train them up to be sheep dogs, selling them on at the end for no doubt less money than he spent on them.

So was gremlin any good with sheep? Well, the first time in the 'ring' he ran round like a mad thing, chased the other dogs, and then as soon as the sheep moved he got scared and jumped out of the ring! He got another chance when he was a bit calmer and then proceeded to be mostly interested in eating sheep poo rather than herding sheep. The breeder thought that all was not lost and he may improve as he ages. She managed to take this picture of him looking half interested!

Gremlin, sheep and Ian