The French Renovation

When you open the door of your refrigerator, a light comes on, but the change to the temperature in there is negligible. This morning, we awoke to the still chill of minus 8 degrees Celsius; the sun slowly rose in a clear sky, but the change in temperature has been negligible... as far as my fingers are concerned. We are now experiencing the hot peak of the day, 3 degrees Celsius, but cold is cold. And my fingers are icicles. This pervasive iciness slows the renovation process. Constant stops for steaming mugs of tea, cupped in thinsulate d hands, are essential. Jobs outdoors are only for the extremely tough, and we don't have any of that type here at the moment. I did manage to load and wheelbarrow several piles of tiles from one inappropriate spot to another yesterday, but this was possibly to convince myself that I was doing something, rather than actually doing something that needed doing. Our fellow renovating friends (legends), Sue and Steve, have again left us feeling in...

Look at it! It knows it's beautiful; vainly, it displays its own image on its box. This 9-inch long, Correzian, artisanal item of confection is possibly the most delicious thing that has ever passed my lips; it offers a curious and wonderful mixture of textures and tastes. We have friends who know the creator, and when they visited us, this came with them! At the other end of the culinary scale, I am slowly working towards the bottom of our pile of apples by making, over and over again, Mary Berry's apple and almond cake. I must have made over fifty, and they're always slightly different; this one has the ridges from the cooling rack on it. Not cool. In attempting to replicate the gentle colour of cafe au lait on one of the kitchen walls, I used a special paint that is suitable for any surface, not because I wanted to use it on a tricky surface, but because it was exactly the colour I hankered after. It didn't go on well. It's a great smutty sme...

We're frozen. All renovation jobs are rendered nigh impossible when you can't feel your hands, so progress since we returned to France four days ago has been   s   l   o   w. There's another reason for our lack of progress, but more about that later...  What's this? I can only imagine that a tiny Elsa has been 'frozen-fractal-ing' in our freezer... We bought a cute log burner with a back boiler while we were in England for Christmas. It's sitting in icy stillness in our sitting room, waiting to be brought to life. We need to install a flue and connect radiators. The radiators we wanted are in England. Don't worry, we'll work it out. Meanwhile, we have three electric blow heaters. That may sound quite luxurious, but we can only have one on at once, and it needs to be switched off if we want to boil the kettle, or heat the water, or cook. This is because we currently only have a 3kw supply from EDF. That's what they start you on. We've a...

As we approach winter, I'm trying to imagine how it could grow any colder! It's very often warmer outside than it is in cottage #1 at the moment. The metre-thick stone walls keep the chill in, like an ice house of old. Great in the summer months, but challenging once the sun takes its position lower in the sky.  We still have a huge amount of work to do to renovate these ruined old farm buildings. I can't believe that we're still working on cottage #1. We seriously imagined that we'd be finished by this winter and that we'd be enjoying the luxury of a warm comfy base while venturing out to work on the piggery and pottery. We are certainly not on track to be welcoming guests next Spring... We need to pull out all of the stops and get cracking! Starting with some heating. For now, here are some photos to show both the beauty and the beasts of our farm... While searching for a paint roller in the lower section of the top barn, I realised that a bit of ...

This is the broken-off piece of the 'butterfly'.  We've been waiting since the 2nd of November for a replacement part to arrive from Clacton-on-Sea.  Every hour of every day, we checked the post box. Today, it arrived.  Kevin has carefully put it in place, and the car appears to work. Suddenly, we feel alive and free and happy! Our forced isolation on our increasingly icy mountain has been a lesson in understanding the hardships of those who lived up here in the past. We had clean water. We had electricity. We had the internet. We had some food. We had PG Tips tea bags, 300 of them. We were (are) privileged. But... I'm sorry to report that we did, at some points, begin to feel that we were in some way suffering. No, we weren't. What we were missing was cheese. And wine. And not being able to post letters. Neighbours and friends have kindly kept us stocked up with essentials such as milk and eggs, and this morning, friends came and drove us to t...