We are still plugging away in our barns (or rather gites as they have now become). This has been a bits and bobs sort of a week whilst we await the arrival of our skirtings and bathroom tiles (tomorrow). Roger has done lots of boxing in and made various little hatches and covers whilst I’ve been filling and touching up. We’ve also finished the window sills …

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the ‘tomettes’ that I cleaned up a couple of weeks back and between us we have finished all our window sills with them. We think it gives the place a bit more of a rustic look – and we are pleased to be able to use materials we found lying around in one of the barns!

So the jobs list is shortening a quite a rate of knots. Here in France they love to count down to any event with J (jour, day) minus the number of days to go. Hence the second round of the elections are J-10 – and by the same token we have decided to get our gites ready to go by latest 31st May. Hence, today is J-35 and counting!

Speaking of the election, it remains very close, with Hollande and Sarko in the second round and a point and a half separating them in the first. The big winner of the first round, I’m sad to say, was Le Pen who came in much better than the polls had been predicting at 17% of the vote. This was actually better than her father achieved in 2002 when he got through to the second round. It says a lot about people’s’ fears at the current moment that they should turn to the extremes of politics – and a lot about the lack of inspiration from the mainstream candidates. It also means that the 2 surviving candidates will have to appeal to the Le Pen voters, without damaging their more mainstream support. Hollande probably still has it by a head, but ‘rien n’est joue’ as they say in these parts…

So after many months, we are almost at the first round of the presidential elections. There are 10 candidates, covering the whole spectrum of political allegiances. Whilst there are only 2 with any chance of winning, the performance of some of the other candidates is critical. Sarko and Hollande are virtually neck and neck in the polls, with around 27/28% each, followed by the extreme right (Le Pen), the extreme left (Melenchon) and the middle (Bayrou). The important thing is how the votes of these 3 (in the 10-15% range) are distributed in the second round. At the moment it would seem that Hollande will gain a comfortable victory with 55-58% in the second round…

There are still lots of unknowns – a potential abstention rate of 30%, as well as much indecision. So the victory can still be anybody’s, thought the fairly bland and dull M. Hollande would seem to be leading by a short head. 

Campaigning officially ends at midnight tonight and no more opinion polls will be allowed until after Sunday’s vote.

Possibly the most interesting feature of a relatively tedious campaign has been the emergence of the far left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon. He’s come from nowhere to be vying for 3rd place with Marine Le Pen. It was assumed that a hard leftie could never do very well in the presidentials, but M. M is proving that untrue. He’s fiery, charismatic and knows how to get a crowd going. In this day of stage managed middle of the road campaigning it has been quite a breath of fresh air! 

After stupidly locking myself in one of the new rooms in one of the gites I have been determined not to make any more silly mistakes. It didn’t last long. Today I have been building new shower cubicles. All was going well, in fact there has been considerable progress, in that the water has all been connected and the taps and loos are all in working order. Instead of having to nip outside for natural relief, it has been a pleasure to have proper facilities at hand. There I was enjoying the plastering and the project was advancing smoothly. But again a call of nature intervened. No problem, we have a loo in the same room. In mid stream and far away in my thoughts, a downward glance revealed an open sewer pipe. Bugger, Bugger, Bugger, I had forgotten that this loo has been disconnected so that I could do some plasterboarding around it. The error was underlined by the inexorable advance of the tidal wave approaching my feet. Much cussing and mopping consumed the following minutes. When peeing always check that the loo is connected!!

We have recently come across a new garden product called Strulch. It is like mulch, but made from straw and enhanced with some sort of minerals. Here’s a handful..

As we are in the process of creating a few new garden areas we are keen to cover the ground with something that will suppress the weeds and help the ground to retain moisture. It would seem that Strulch will do that for us – and it looks good …

 

 

 

 

Watch this space…

Meanwhile, the window cleaners have been in…

We’ve got an awful lot of windows, so it has been quite handy to have the cheap British labour over to shine and polish. I have to say, as you walk by both gites are absolutely gleaming!

As our 2 year project to convert our barns into holiday gites nears its completion, we are pleased to announce that our website is up and running. As we’re still in finishing off mode, we still don’t have pictures of the interior – they’ll be coming soon – but there’s lots of pretty pictures of the exterior and the surrounding area. Here’s Le Verger gite:

www.la-belardiere.com

The gites will be ready from June, and to kick things off, we’re offering a massive 20% discount on holidays booked before mid-May…see the website for details!

In the meantime…back to the painting….

A couple of days ago Boudie started holding her paw and limping. No problem, I thought, I’ll get the Doc to have a look. She was reluctant to let us near her paw – poor thing, we thought, it must be very sore. Anyway, Roger managed to have a cursory look and seemingly she had a very swollen pad which had developed a hard shell-like crust. The verdict from the medical expert: a bit of antiseptic and rest and we’ll have another look later in the day. Being the dutiful nurse, I got out the antiseptic spray and tried to apply it on the inflammation. 

A few minutes later there was a noise outside and Boudie, being the attentive watch dog that she is, leapt from her bed and hurtled across the kitchen floor. In doing so, the half walnut shell that had got lodged around one of her pads fell off…reckon it’s a good job you’ve retired from the medical field Dr Rog!!

7 months ago our great friend Eileen died suddenly and unexpectedly. She loved coming to France to La Belardiere and we wanted to do something to honour her memory, especially when her husband Mike gave us the Euros she had left from her June trip to see us. We decided to create a little garden at the end of the swimming pool in her memory – Eileen’s garden. The cheap British labour turned up yesterday so we got them straight to work digging and planting…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everything is a bit small at the moment, but it is a very sunny spot and we hope to soon have a bank of colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think she would have approved…

We are now in the phase of les finitions’ as our local friends keep telling us. The only thing is that these ‘finitions’ are very numerous! I did a jobs list yesterday – the finishing straight is a very long one…

We are on to things like skirting boards, tiling (lots), cleaning, touching up, boxing in…and cleaning tomettes.

Tomettes are old handmade terre cuite floor tiles. We had loads of them in one of our barns and wanted to use materials from the farm as much as possible. There weren’t enough for the floors, so we have decided to put them in the window sills. We bought some stuff to clean them up from a specialist a little while ago, but I found that jet washing was much more effective. The ones on the left have been cleaned, those on the right haven’t. Next job is to seal them and then Roger can get on with making the windows look rustic… another job on his list!

I always wanted a Porsche. But then I had to get new teeth screwed in and the Porsche went for a burton. Anyway I am too old for all that racing about now so we bought a Renault. What a beauty. I can fit 3metres of wood in her, the dog can look out the back and she is cheap as chips to run. A few days ago I bought 50metres of metal fencing panels, a metal door, twenty fence posts and fixings. Then a big picnic table and sixteen chairs. How to get it all home? No problem with the Renault and the trailer-do that in the Krautbelter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cure. No, nothing to do with music, but a scheme found in France which would not be believed in UK. If you have had an illness here, it is possible to be sent away to a health resort, completely free of charge, for three weeks recuperation. There all kinds of pleasant things happen, like massage, ultra warm swimming pools and lots of relaxation. All you need to do is ask the doctor. Imagine that! A good friend has recently returned from her cure and I must say she looks in fine shape.

Spring is finally here. The hot weather is just about still with us, but I never feel it is really springtime until I have seen the swallow and heard the cuckoo. The former has been belting out its bisyllabic greeting all last week, but I only saw the swallow today. What a lovely sight, and a timely reminder to get the early spuds in, which we have done today.

The clocks changed this weekend, so it seemed appropriate for the dog to change too! We have 2 dogs – a very hairy winter one, here with a very hairy husband…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and a little slim thing, as below, almost shorn!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As it has been in the mid-20s for a few days, poor Boudie was sweltered, but once the hair comes off she is like a spring lamb jumping around the garden! The other hairy member of the household (the ol’ fella) promised me that he would have his locks cropped once the first swallow or cuckoo arrived. Well, I can report that the latter has arrived, so we may well have to get the cutting table out again tomorrow!

This morning we embarked upon our first parquet floor. Actually it is not real wood, but ‘stratifie’, or laminate – though we are very impressed with how wood-like it looks. We had watched the Youtube videos on how to put it together and as usual as we got going it didn’t appear quite as easy as the video makes it look! However I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it turned out to be once we got a little more practiced. Here is the finished article (skirting boards still to go of course…).