Since our last blog at the end of last year, a lot has
happened. Firstly my mother, Edna, died on Boxing Day at her care home in
Swanage. We were already in the UK for Christmas and New Year with our family
and extended our stay to register her death, arrange and carry out her
cremation in Poole. Lots of
administration to sort out but we got all the preliminaries done, though Jeanne
was seriously ill around the time Mother died. Jeanne recovered quickly with
the help of antibiotics but I took several weeks to get over a less serious
infection. Poor Dusty, our cat, had to stay far longer in the cattery than ever
before but seems to have forgiven us now. Our chickens had been boarded out
with friends (Thanks, Peter & Anna) so were fine.
We had to take more trips to the UK through the first few
months of the year, and right up to July, primarily to sort out administrative things about Mother’s
estate, but took the opportunities to see some family and friends. We held an
interment of mother’s ashes at the family grave in Sale in April and it was
nice to see family members there. The
admin still rumbles on, though we are managing it remotely at the moment, so
have been able to catch up on friends and family at and around our home,
together with several more jobs on the house. We’ve had a huge stone wall
in the hangar repointed by a French maçon, an old pig-house modified to become our firewood store, and various smaller tasks.
I've got back to work on the demolished grange, rebuilding walls and shaping it up. However, it was a wet spring with several warm spells, so the grass on our land
was growing too fast for us to keep on top of with all the trips away, and we ended up scything it and having
it baled for hay. We got 90 bales off it and I just managed to get them under
cover minutes before the most serious hail-storm we’ve ever seen. Many of the cars in the surrounding area were complety peppered by hailstones between golf-ball and tennis-ball size, but we were lucky and had just a couple of holes in one of the gutters. We’ve sold a
few hay-bales already as the very hot summer has meant a lot of farmers and people with ponies, goats and hens have had to feed hay
to their animals through summer as much of the grazing had died in the dry heat.
I expect it will command a premium price by winter.
We did manage to get to some screenings of operas and
ballets through the spring at our local cinemas and I’m looking forward to the
new season starting soon. In the meantime we’ve been able to get to a screening
of Elvis’s 1968 ‘comeback’ concert, an Andre Rieu concert from Maastricht, and the latest Mamma Mia film.
We’ve also managed a great holiday in Sicily, some exercise with a walking
group that we belong to, lots of work on the potager so vast amounts of potatoes,
tomatoes, onions and various other veges. And, of course, we’re still getting
lovely eggs from our free-range hens.
The weather continued to be very variable – the longest,
hottest, prolonged spell of good weather we’ve experienced here, with a few
less thunderstorms than most summers but a few really spectacular, damaging ones.
However it’s still good overall and very acceptable. It's cooled down a bit in the
last week or two so managing to get some more building /renovating work done
outside, in the gap before it becomes too cold for working with lime mortar!
Locally, our café-bar changed hands and reopens its café this week after a few modifications. They're putting fish and chips on for their British customers on Friday evenings and have installed a pizza oven. Not exactly fine dining but still a useful facility for the village, as is the boulangerie, which continues to thrive. Our XIIth century village church was renovated late last year and is now looking much improved. A gospel group held a concert there a few weeks ago and that had the church completely packed for possibly the first time for decades. The number of Brits in our village / commune has about doubled in the last year,which has both bad and good effects. We didn't come to France to live in Little England, but it's nice to have a few more English-speakers about, though we're doing well with our French neighbours. Several of the expats here are part timers and it remains to be seen what effect Brexit will have on their freedom to come and go as they currently please. Also, however, we need to register as 'permanent' residents in case Brexit actually happens without an acceptable deal, which would have an adverse impact on us and other immigrants as well as part time expats.However we'll worry about that if/when we need to!
