a house in france
28 October 2024
RUM WEATHER
26 October 2024
FRENCH VILLAGE LIFE
We called at the PreHisto for a coffee the other morning.
It was too cold even for us to sit outside.
25 October 2024
IS IT TIME?
The time has come, the walrus said. Or has it?
Summer has certainly been and gone, such as it was. Our week in Finistère seemed to last longer than a week, more like the days when we came to France to stay for just one week or two, on holiday. Generally, time flies by as we grapple with the complexities of life in France, getting everything in place in a language that we are not fluent in, although we do our best. A friend said this morning that after five years of living in France they finally feel they have everything sorted, the health, the money, the French way of going about things in an official capacity.
Only yesterday we spent hours on a mission to get a damaged car windscreen replaced. To be fair, much of what happened would have happened in the UK but the added complication of only understanding part of what people say makes it much more tortuous. But we do our best.
I feel I have come to a crossroads with the blog and have decided that rather than let it go, or abandon it, I will do snapshot posts for a while, instead of long winded posts, which are usually playing catch up!
So I include some of the best pictures from our week in Finistère and will start afresh some time soon! It was, after all, seven weeks since we were there!!
29 September 2024
A WEEK IN FINISTÈRE
Finistère is a department of Brittany and a part of France that we had never previously explored. We were hankering after a seaside break but finding a suitable gîte proved to be tricky as we had left it a bit late to look for one. Our principal requirements were a decent sized enclosed garden for Hugo and privacy, or at least not having to share space with other holidaymakers. We would not want a large and very bouncy dog to be a problem for other guests or vice versa!
We found a gîte not far from a little village called Guimaëc, which is just over 1km from the coast.
The day before we went we had intended to do our packing in the morning and take Yvonne to the cattery in the afternoon. Instead, we ended up taking a delivery of six stères of logs before 9.00 am and spent all morning stacking them. After lunch we coaxed Yvonne into her carrier using the little pot of tuna method.
A humorous display made from hay bales, announcing a wedding, spotted in a field near the gite.
We set off north on Saturday and the journey to Guimaëc was around six hours. Hugo always travels well and after just one short break to stretch our legs we arrived around 5pm. We have stayed in many gîtes over the years and some have been decidedly better than others. This one was spotlessly clean, had a large enclosed garden, good kitchen equipment, endless hot water and very comfortable beds. It lacked a bit of charm and was short of a few minor things but it was fine.
It was a farmhouse built probably early in the twentieth century alongside the original and much older farm buildings. The owner had inherited it from her grandfather and it hadn’t been a working farm for several decades.
Whilst the old buildings were low and cramped, this house was roomy and lofty. It felt more like a barn than a house but this might have a lot to do with the way it had been converted into a gîte. It had three double bedrooms upstairs, plus a sofa bed downstairs in the cavernous living room, so was able to cater for a large family on holiday.
With the formalities over, we drove down to the nearby cove to see the sea, returned to the gîte and cooked a pasta dinner, unpacked and settled in. In my unpacking I discovered that I had entirely forgotten to bring (amongst other things) any knickers, or a hairbrush. The first job the next day would have to be some shopping!
30 August 2024
GOING, GOING, GONE!
16 August 2024
STRANGE FARMING
A couple of weeks ago, a friend came round with his drone and took some aerial photos of our house. It was only after looking at those did I realise that we really do live in the middle of a very large field. It's all owned by a farmer in a nearby village. The tarmacked lane between the main road and the next village cuts through roughly the middle of it as it winds its way between farms and small hamlets and we live alongside that road.
We refer to the farmer as "our farmer" and we can differentiate between farmers by the colour of their tractors. Ours has the only blue one, the others are red or green.
We have been frustrated that for two whole years the bit of field that actually surrounds our house has not been cultivated at all. Last year our farmer dumped four huge dung heaps strategically around us, causing an annoying problem with flies, and grew a crop in the bit across the road but nothing else. This year, he did some weedkilling and sowed something over the road but then left it all. The crop, whatever it was meant to be, was soon swamped by weeds and our house has been surrounded by huge triffid like nasty weeds. Once the weather warmed up we were a bit concerned that they might be a fire risk.
Nick had already strimmed a border around our property then with an actual heatwave lasting several days forecast he went out and strimmed some more, hoping to create an effective fire break. The other farmers were up and harvesting from early in the morning, around six am, stopping at lunchtime because of the fire risk in the afternoon heat. It only takes one spark caused by a tractor striking a bit of flint in the earth to create a crisis. There has been no sign of the blue tractor for months.
Nick's strimming activities were not without consequence as he ended up with an absolutely hideous rash on his arms. The redness and blistering were caused we think by the six foot high hogweed that's one of the numerous plants that have flourished all around us due to the lack of actual farming.
Then, completely out of the blue, the blue tractor turned up a week ago and our farmer cut down all the weed-ridden crop in the field across the road and also a bizarre pattern of mowing around and behind our house. It crossed our minds that he too was concerned about a fire risk. He widened the clear path around the house that Nick had started and also cut around the abandoned neighbour's house.
Then, he turned up yesterday, on the major bank holiday known as the quinze aout, when all of France is partying (or so it seems) and baled it. It was half done while we were out during the day and we came home to find him hard at it, creating the usual puthers of dust, and he came back during the evening when we too were out partying and finished it. The field is now full of very neat brick shaped bales. I have to wonder what he can do with them as they are ninety percent nasty weeds rather than wheat.
It has improved the view from our house no end but we hope he comes and finishes the job at the back of us as it now has a bizarre crop circle kind of pattern where he mowed some of the weeds down.
8 August 2024
SOAP
It came about because Nick recently explained why he prefers a bar of soap to liquid soap. Having been together for over thirty years I previously never knew the reason! I assumed it was because he thought it was more manly! He said he couldn’t get on with liquid soap because as soon as you run the tap the soap gets washed off.
"Does it?" I thought.
In our French house we have four sinks, or handwashing stations. One each in the kitchen, utility room, ensuite shower room (or actually the bedroom as the "ensuite" doesn’t really have much in the way of walls around it) and the family bathroom. Each sink has a bottle of liquid soap next to it and three of them also have a bar of soap. Two of them have two bars of soap, his and hers.
So why this obsession with soap and what about the thorny topic of soap dishes?
I feel compelled to expand and explain.
Personally I'm a fan of liquid soap. No more slimy bars of soap sitting in nasty puddles of gloop on the side of the sink, the stuff of nightmares from my childhood. The worst you might have to deal with is a grubby thumb print on the plunger!
Don’t even mention the wall mounted soap on a stick I first encountered in French restaurant toilets. Thankfully I haven’t seen one for a long while although it seems you can still buy them. I used to shudder at the sight of one that was three quarters used, full of deep ugly cracks, and where you really had to wash the soap first before you could wash your hands. Ugh.
These are some of my favourite English and French liquid soaps.
Now for the enormous variety of soap dishes available. It has taken me years to find one that actually works; that keeps your soap dry and out of a puddle of slimy gloop. Consequently I have quite a collection of them.
This is the least effective kind. The little bobbles in the bottom barely lift the soap above the water that runs off it and it soon goes soggy. Yuk. They do however make good trinket trays for your earrings!
I found the one on the right in a local French DIY shop several years ago. It’s brilliant at keeping the soap dry but you obviously have to wipe up the drips on the surface underneath it and give it a wash occasionally. It's made from plastic coated metal with rubber tips on the feet that stop it from skidding around. It’s by the sink in the utility room where Nick prefers his own knobbly soap bar.
Having found how good this soap dish is I went back for another one but they had all been sold and I have never seen one since.
The knobbly soap is an artisan kind of soap, very hard, full of bits of seeds to tackle hardworking gardener's hands and I have only found it on market stalls.
Next to the gardening soap I keep a bar of girly soap on a different kind of soap dish. The slots in the tray keep your soap more or less dry and the drips collect in the dish underneath, out of sight. The top separates from the bottom easily for cleaning of the dish.
This one was a much recommended internet purchase but I soon abandoned it to the box of spare soap dishes under the kitchen sink. It works well enough, just about, in keeping your soap dry and out of the puddle, doesn't skid around, but soon produces a slimy residue on the side of the sink.
The same goes for these two, found in French supermarkets. They keep the soap dryish and don't skid about on the side of the sink but a glurp of slime soon builds up in the dish and underneath. They're very cheap so as a budget solution not too bad.
Remember these? Yes, you can still buy them, mostly in old fashioned ironmongers or cut price homeware shops. The only good thing about them is that they are good for sticking your bar of soap to a sloping surface, but the soap is kept barely dry and the holder becomes disgusting rapidly. Yuk.
These are my current favourites. The rack is nice and deep and keeps the soap well out of the puddle and perfectly dry. The puddle can be poured out of the dish until you're ready to clean it. The rack clicks in and out so you can give it all a good scrub and the base has little rubber feet to keep it from skidding around. They are made by a company called Joseph Joseph and I got mine in Sainsbury's.
Last but not least, I finally succumbed and invested in two glass refillable liquid soap dispensers. Some of these can be very decorative (and pricey) but fiddly to use. Mine came from Ikea, are very functional and not expensive but wouldn’t work on anything other than a very flat worktop surface. They hold about twice as much liquid soap as a regular plastic bottle and are ideal for use with the cheaper bags of soap refills.
Now back to the original question. If the liquid soaps run straight off under the tap how do I find them so easy to use? I had to think about it and analyse how I perform a task that I do many times a day automatically. I put a good dollop of soap on one hand, turn on the tap to wet the other hand then rub my hands together to lather up before putting them both under the tap. Works every time. Simple!
~~~~~~~~~~~
I have written this post using my new laptop and photos taken with my new camera. It's been an interesting adventure. The camera is a tiny Canon Ixus and replaces my lovely pink Panasonic FX33 that was in my bag when it was stolen in Barcelona back in 2016, our annus horribilis. I have missed that camera so much and attempted to replace it by buying second hand ones on Ebay, none of which worked for very long. Consequently I have two other excellent cameras, one a compact(ish) Panasonic (a generous birthday gift from my brother) and the other a slightly smaller Sony (a birthday gift from Nick). They both take excellent pictures and I can't complain about them at all.
However, when my cousin and his wife came to stay he, as a photography enthusiast, brought two cameras, his "proper" camera, which he was constantly adjusting and checking, and his little Canon Ixus which he would occasionally just whip out of his pocket to snap a picture. It reminded me so much of my beloved FX33 that I decided to get one. I think the photos taken with my newer Panasonic or my Sony are probably better but I just love how small and light the Ixus is, the smooth feel of it and how easy it is to slip into a bag or pocket. It is of course a doddle to use. Horses for courses, as anyone who enjoys taking pictures will know. (And the same goes for soap!)