Karma !

Karma is the spiritual principle of cause and effect where the one’s actions and intent influence what happens to you as a result – the reward or punishment you may open yourself to by the nature of the deeds you do, good or bad. Most of us try to live good lives and do good in the world, and we don’t think about there being a reward for doing so – it is just part of people's natures. Conversely few people do bad or evil deeds with the expectation of being punished. But it is nice when something happens that gives us a little reward or ‘thank-you’ for some little act of ours.

Last April & May, Jeanne and I and a group of our friends helped our friend Carolyn in quite a minor way with her work helping French student nurses to speak English in their jobs. Knowing how difficult it has been for us to build our own confidence to speak French since we arrived here, most of us taking part went out of our way to be positive, encouraging and non-judgemental and most of the students seemed to enjoy the sessions. We thought of it as an opportunity to give something back to the society in which we had come to live.

In France the state does not provide an interpreter for when individuals bump into authority or need health or legal help, as often happens in the UK. Culturally the country is much more nationalistic and believes that if you come to live here, or even to holiday here, it is up to you to learn the language well enough to manage in whatever situation you find yourself in.

Jeanne and I have lived here full time for over four years and our French language has got to a reasonable level, but when an emergency happens many people, including us, lose some of our ability, me especially. About a month ago I had a very minor accident whilst cutting down part of a huge Leylandii hedge. It gave me a pain in the back and one leg, and seemed to get quickly worse. Despite a few weeks of physiotherapy I had a crisis a fortnight ago and ended up in ‘Urgences’ at the hospital in Saintes. (Same as A&E in the UK or ER in the US).

Jeanne was not allowed in with me until after I’d been examined, and much of the examination was conducted by questions in French! Of course, I forgot most of my French, but eventually I was admitted and I was given X-rays and painkillers. That night, one of the first nurses who looked after me was a man who had been in Carolyn’s English class, who we had helped a little with his English oral. He was amazingly helpful and considerate and only spoke to me in English.. Over the next ten days while I received a very speedy MRI scan, pain relief with morphine and other drugs and an injection into my spine, I met several more of the English cohort and they were all tremendous helping me, if not all as confident of their English as they’d like. But they all tried and I was delighted that they all made such an effort. This even spread to one of the staff who gave me my menu choices each day, who asked me for the English names of some of the dishes that she then wrote down in a little note book. Meanwhile I continued to try to use and extend my own French and whilst most of the nurses were happy just to use English it made me want to try all the harder with my own French. So I used Duolingo every day and practised with the nurses at every opportunity.

So, back to my point about karma, I am sure that if I and we hadn’t helped all the nurses the way we did last April/ May I would have had a much more difficult time over the last two weeks. We weren't thinking of anything like that at the time, but were just glad to help then. 

I’m back home now, the MRI scan showed a herniated disc between my sacral and lumbar vertebrae in my spine, inoperable, that should eventually get better but may need more injections and certainly needs more painkillers, and the right sort of gentle but increasing exercise. I am so grateful to all the staff at the Centre Hospitalier de Saintonge in Saintes, especially those who were happy to use their English on me, to Jeanne for putting up with the tremendous disruption to her and our lives and to Carolyn for the opportunity to do something to help the student nurses in the first place.

Awesome Autumn

Although autumn has been with us for several weeks, some of its symptoms are only just here. Trees have mostly only just shed their leaves, following beautiful colours, the weather is mostly still warm – in the twenties C for the last couple of weeks with night time temperatures still consistently above 10˚C and a forecast for them to continue to at least the middle of November, with just the occasional showery day.

 

Unfortunately, I have been suffering from excruciating sciatica for about 4 weeks, following a very minor fall in the garden whilst cutting down some of our huge old Cupressus Leylandii hedge plants. We wanted to open up the view from the back garden to see more of our own land from the house, and a patch of next door’s at the back, where we get a nice pastoral view of their sheep and chickens grazing, and a few wild rabbits emerging from the brambles occasionally. The Leylandii also shaded the garden a lot and takes a lot of nutrient form the soil, which is not brilliant anyway. So we’ll replace it at the back and left side with a better fence that we can still see through, but will stop the chickens and sheep from coming into our garden. Anyway I’ve been going to a physiotherapist three times a week and having lots of tablets and it’s slowly getting less severe. Hugely frustrating though, not being able to do much during the lovely weather we’ve been having.

Elsewhere in the garden and fields, the trees and two new hedges we planted are doing well, in that almost all of them have survived. The big water tanks feeding irrigation systems have helped a lot, but some of them are showing signs of chlorosis – yellowing of the leaves due to all the alkaline stone in the ground. 

Speaking of stone, Jeanne is becoming a dab hand at pointing, which she’s been doing to the remaining wall of the old grange, soon (?) to become a garden, while I’ve been out of action. Just need a bit more to strengthen the bottom (you point old stone walls with lime fom the top down) and then the tiles on the top levelling and setting in properly.

 

The wall I’ve been building next to the new gates (which you can just see on the right of this picture) came to a stop, of course, so I’m getting very frustrated losing all the great weather when it  should have been moving on.  We'll be making nice beds for the corner on the right to match the left, but the cost of the Italian Cypresses has rocketed since we put the ones in on the left of the drive.

 The hens are continuing to thrive, presenting us with lovely eggs every day, and Dusty doesn’t like the darker evenings, but is coming in on her own once it gets dark. We had a fair crop of grapes, some of which is now juice and the rest is fermenting into wine, and another huge crop of walnuts, so the squirrels will be happy with those we don’t collect.  Around us the wine vendange – for cognac – was completed and the farmers went back to harvesting arable crops so we’ve had massive combine harvester in the lanes and tractors pulling trailers full of sunflower seeds and corn (maize) to the co-operatives. That’s more or less finished and they’re all busy ploughing, harrowing and sowing seed on their fields at present.

We just had a small success with our insurances – we changed the car and house ones to the people who do our health insurance, and have saved over 500 euros for our trouble – good news at this time of the year when everyone’s broke with all the taxes coming out.  Another was that my old car got through its Controle Technique – equivalent of the MOT test – a couple of weeks ago, so good for another two years, hopefully.

We’re ready to light the fire each night but haven’t had to much yet, and Pierre the stone mason says he expects have the fireplace and chimney in the dining room renovated by mid to late November, so we’re banking on there being some more good weather then – needs to be warm and dry for a couple of days while it’s out of action.

All the events for locals in autumn and winter are starting up now, so we’re booked in for a musical night out next weekend, a seminar in a couple of weeks, another musical evening in December and a weekend in Paris before Christmas, so far.  It’s all go here all the time!

Best wishes everyone.

Sunny Summery Summary

We missed doing a posting earlier this season, apart from Wendy’s slightly sad little piece, so here’s a summary of the whole of summer!

This year’s summer has been hot and sunny, consistently up in the 30s C, and we’ve enjoyed it both at home and away on our first proper summer holiday for many years. 

We went off to Italy in mid June to spend a week with Jennie, Ian and Dylan at a resort complex in northern Sardinia, and took a few days to get there and a week or so to get home, travelling about quite a bit and experiencing Italian driving!   We had a lovely holiday, staying at Florence, Pisa, Sorrento and the Amalfi coast and Rimini, amongst others over the three weeks.

Jeanne’s sister Christine and her husband Jay were looking after the house and menagerie for us while we were away, so some watering and weeding had been done, which was a help.  They stayed for a few days afterwards to extend their holiday with us.  We’ve also had lovely visits from Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth; from Jennie, Ian and Dylan and from David, and our pool's been very well used.

A hot-air balloon festival took place at the beginning of August and we got a ringside seat from a nearby restaurant in the evening as several passed overhead at rooftop height.

Summer here is filled with spectacles all around us and we also went to a show with horses and fire at a Roman amphitheatre with some friends.  Most recently we went to Chateau Marquis de Vauban in Blaye and had a great day there, with a trip in a calèche around the citadel and town, a super lunch and wine tasting and tour of the chateau and winery.  Blaye is the northern-most part of the Bordeaux wine producing area and a very good appellation.  Lots of other social occasions going on as well, together with the usual chores. No time to be bored (or at least no rest for the wicked)!

Most of our 300 new trees and hedge plants are surviving despite the hot dry weather – we’ve only lost a handful, thanks to irrigation from big water tanks filled from the well.

The pillars for the new gates have now been up for a few weeks but the gates themselves only recently arrived, and are waiting for our builder to come to fit them.  In the meantime Rhys has started building a wall next to the gateway ‘cheek’ walls to enclose what will become the grange garden. It’s about two feet high so far and uses stone from the old grange itself – big heavy ‘dressed’ pieces for the bottom course, more rustic higher up.  It will take a while and it won't be hurried, fitting it in between other jobs and its heavy work!

We’ve also had two Ash trees cut down, one at the back of the back garden and one in the former sheep field, so they’re giving us plenty to do cutting them up and storing the wood for firewood.  We’ve got about three or four winters’ worth now so won’t have to buy any for a while.  Ashes grow like weeds here – very fast growing and seedlings sprouting up all over the place which we have to keep removing, but we’re changing the balance with our planted oaks, beeches, birches, etc., and there are a few self-seeded walnut seedlings about the land this year, probably courtesy of the resident red squirrel who forgot where it had buried its nuts! Unfortunately they're not in the right place, so a winter job will be to move them to better locations.

In the meantime, proof that the stream at the bottom of our land is reasonably healthy - this crayfish came up to the house from it this week. Presumably looking for deeper water as the stream is very shallow at this time of year, though not quite dried up.  Too small to eat so back to nature.

We’ve just said farewell to more visitors - Peter, and Claire and George, but still looking forward to more in a few weeks though still plenty of space for more.  So back to the grindstone for a little while!

Best wishes everyone, and hope to see you before too long!