The French Renovation

The piece of grass I optimistically call my 'top lawn' is beginning to look like a tee box. Look at those divots! Towards the end of the working day, Kevin invariably asks me if I'd like to 'hit a few balls'. He's re-created a circular patch of scrub that he calls 'the green'. It doesn't have a hole, as such, but it does have a flag. It's a par three hole (without a hole...). There's now a second green somewhere near the edge of the top field, but there's no flag there yet; he's asked me to make one at Sewing Club (seriously). Can you see the flag? There it is! When we bought this property, we didn't fully appreciate how onerous three hectares is, and because most of our energies are focused on renovating cottage #1, it doesn't receive the attention it needs... apart from the golfy bits. I call the land 'fields', but our French neighbour farmer calls it 'our park'. He's not bein...

Whenever we head West, we drive through a pretty village called Vigeois, which is dramatically bisected by the coursing flow of the Vezere, a large tributary of the Dordogne, which in turn is a tributary of the Garonne which empties via a canal into the Mediterranean Sea. As I have been informed by our French friends, Alain and Brigitte, the French have two separate words for a river; those that flow into the sea are les fleuves and all others are les rivieres. There are four main fleuves in France: the Seine, the Loire, the Rhone and the Garonne. France is resplendent with very many rivers.  Enough Geography. The point is, today we didn't just drive through. We stopped and explored. The first part of the river we attempted to walk by was blocked off, as they appear to be building a new weir or power station. The river bank was blanketed with little snowdrops! From the other side of the river, we spotted a man ambling in amongst the bui...

I spent a long time last summer painting the outside of cottage #1, and now look what the North wall has done to itself. All mossy and mouldy. Tut tut. I'm going to have to erect the scaffolding again, wire brush it (again), bleach it, and repaint it. I've still got so much to do for the first time, so I frown upon second times. Our outdoor lights now work (apart from the one that is just hang-y wires on the North wall). I know you spotted it. I find it quite cute that the PIR is imitating the whale-like beam's trusting smile. PIRs are a delight to test. We have, of course, spent time slowly approaching the house in the dark to see when the lights come on. So far, I've only noticed it come on once at night when it wasn't us. Probably a cat. A whole pod of whales supports our roof. I might draw little eyes on them. I spent a lot of time last week filling the gaps between the end beam and the wall and ceiling in the sitting room. I resorted to st...

We didn't have any television until fairly recently, so, when an interesting sports fixture was scheduled, we would hot-foot it down to  Le Richelieu in Tulle. It has become an unfortunate tradition that every team we support there loses, and that caused much consternation amongst the staff there when we were supporting France during the Euro 2016 football, so we were hoping that the curse had lifted when we went to watch England v France last week. By half time, we were feeling a bit edgy, so we left to watch the second half at home. England may have us to thank for their victory.  We've never met any other British people on our visits to Le Richelieu , but we're always impressed by the friendliness of the staff and customers, even under the pressure of a British team being the opponents. The locals like to talk to us incessantly in French; actually, more accurately, they like to talk to Kevin, who can't understand a word, so I stand as a poor translator at his s...