Winter's here.

The year is drawing towards its close already. Just Christmas to fit in first, which we’re looking forward to as an opportunity to see more of our family and friends. Although we accept that we’re well into winter, the weather has been a little worse than usual, with some hard frosts, rain and gales. However, we’ve suffered no damage, touch wood, and have managed to progress a few jobs around the house. Rhys even got our ethernet network up and running. (Cat 6 / gigabit ethernet, for those that are interested!) Turned out to be simpler than expected in the end which is fortunate as our WiFi is not very good - it can't get through all the thick stone walls. However we've also had to commission some outside help for building works that are too big for us to DIY.  The harvest from our veggie garden is pretty much all gone with just fruit and vegetables still in the freezer or as conserves in jars, that we’re making the most of.

The new pool cover is earning its keep, keeping the water much cleaner than before and maintaining the temperature higher too – not that we’ll be using in in December!  Overall the garden has suffered a bit from the weather, with the hens' field and the potager rather muddy from the rain, though oddly we've still not had enough rain to fill the stream at the bottom of the garden.

Jeanne enjoyed a trip to the UK in October and since then we’ve been planning our next joint trip, but the cost and difficulty of doing these trips is becoming very stretching. However, we’ll keep going while we can. One or two more distant friends have invited us to go stay with them, which we’d very much like to take up, and hope to do so before we get too decrepit. 

Rhys’ mother had to change care homes suddenly as the one she was in couldn’t “meet her needs” any longer and we had her moved to one which seems to be better able to cope, and she seems to be happier there, although it’s hard to tell.

The Brexit fracas continues to loom over us, with ever more appalling ineptitude and incompetence on both sides being displayed, and not a little outrageous incitement in some quarters of the media. Citizens’ rights are one of the items close to our hearts and the blatantly false words from both sides are extremely worrying. However, our native neighbours continue to be welcoming and supportive and we continue to be very happy here.

We enjoyed a few more visits from friends from the UK and hope to see them again before long, and have starting to take bookings for next year for more visitors here. We decided not to make having visitors here a professional activity, so we still invite friends (and family, of course) to stay without charge. Let us know if you’d like to come over to stay with us and and explore our beautiful region.  Dusty, our cat, continues to thrive though she is getting a bit overweight, and the hens are continuing to give us lovely eggs in plentiful numbers.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year.

Autumn Events

Autumn is now in full swing here. The last of the fruit is coming off the trees – our apples and pears already eaten but neighbours are still cropping theirs including some huge quinces. Our freezers are full of this season’s fruit and we’re considering getting another one, but don’t want to store so much that we can’t get through it until the next harvest. Dilemmas, eh! Our grape vines gave a very poor crop this year, as they have done for many of the commercial growers in this area, due to the late frost in spring, apparently. So the vendange was completed much more quickly than usual. In the fields most of the maize has gone, the sunflowers are harvesting now, the beets have yet to start and next year’s oil seed rape is about 6inches high already. The walnut tree has started to drop this years nuts so we'll have to find a place for several kilos of them as well.

We’ve had a bit of rain and lots of dew but our stream is still pretty dry. We’re only a couple of km from its source so we need very local rain to get it going, and it needs to fill the mill reservoir upstream before it comes through to us.  Lots of people have complained that it was a poor summer and although the weather was more changeable than usual the overall average temperatures were hotter than previously.  Our pool is still swimmable – just – but our use of it is reducing with the lower air temperatures now.

No more recent trips away, but starting to plan for both our next ones and we’ve continued with a trickle of visitors here, which has been lovely. More to come in a couple of weeks. But the opera season has started up and the Royal Opera House have put on a good if traditional programme for the months ahead. Rhys has been to two already and Jeanne to one so far. Die Zauberflöte was wonderful last month and La Bohème, that Jeanne saw this week, was too. Unfortunately we’re going to miss the ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on 23^rd October but there are plenty more to come. We’re also lucky to have opportunities to see the New York Metropolitan Opera, The Paris Opera and Ballet and the Bolshoi ballet all close to us here, via cinema screenings mostly of live performances as they happen, in brilliant high definition. One unexpected benefit of these performances is that they’re subtitled in French, which is helping my language skills somewhat! 

We also enjoyed a night out at a musical evening arranged by a friend that included a performance by a Saintonge ensemble of ancient music and a very good chorale group, which was very entertaining. People ask us what we do here all winter, but there’s always plenty going on, you just have to seek it out. One series of events on at its height at the moment is a large number of 70^th birthday parties going on. Lovely to go to but a reminder that we’re all getting on a bit!

Autumn approaches

Summer is almost over already, with a few autumnal mists on some early mornings, the evenings darkening noticeably earlier and the weather mostly a bit cooler. However, our stream is still more-or-less dried up as there hasn’t been much rain and there are water restrictions in place across most of the country. Our vegetables and fruit have been the best yet, this year. Our own sweet-corn was the best we’ve had – tasty, plump and lots of it. The plum fruit harvest followed the success of the cherries and also made lots of conserves or was frozen for use over the coming months. We’re still eating our potatoes and onions but our broad beans are over, our melons and squashes are about ready and the courgettes are just finishing. The only negative is that our hens have not been laying much through the summer - we may even have to buy eggs! Or more hens.

We’ve had rather changeable weather through the summer, with frequent heatwaves and a few cooler spells, and rather fewer thunderstorms than usual – only a couple of severe ones early on – but the pool has kept warm and useable throughout and is still comfortable for swimming.

Politics continue to be painful, though more so in the UK than here in France, where Macron has seen his initial high popularity slide as he hasn’t achieved very much yet, in most of the locals’ eyes, and has upset the unions with proposals to change employment law (which are badly needed). We despair about the UK political situation as Brexit continues to be handled badly on both sides and no benefit is visible, only deteriorating conditions all round, mostly impacting on us with the pound sterling’s collapse against the euro costing us dearly.

We’ve had a few more trips this year, Rhys has been to the UK twice to see family and friends. Visiting his mother has become more difficult as she’s now in a care home with dementia to add to her other troubles, but visits to see the ‘children’ and grandchildren have been wonderful. It’s also been lovely to see some friends who we usually don’t manage to fit in during our trips. Unfortunately, Jeanne was not able to go as well this last time but we are busy planning our next joint trip, so she’ll be able to catch up.

Jeanne on Montalbano's balcony

Our main holiday was in Sicily with local friends, which we enjoyed very much, and we were able to visit some of the sites of the Inspector Montalbano TV series, including his TV home, where we stayed for a couple of nights.   

After we returned we took another trip to stay with other friends near Agen – where the prunes come from. We had a lovely time with them including a boat trip on the river Lot and an open-air production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, updated in costume and ‘business’ but faithful to the bard’s words. 

And we’ve had a few nice visits from family and friends as well, with another two or three scheduled for the weeks ahead. But now that we’re into September Rhys is looking forward to the new Opera season just starting. Last year we were lucky to have operas and ballets from the Royal Opera, the Paris Opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera all ‘streaming’ in to our local cinemas at bargain prices for what are usually brilliant productions.We're hoping for the same again this season.