Oops, arrived in New Zealand

Yes, I poked out of the sands of a beach on the south island and was NOT in China. Drank a fine Guinness Stout in a local pub and returned to my hole to turn right and head to China in a NEW Hole! Yes, another hole. I bissected the original pipe find and collaborated with the one coming from under my kitchen. A new spot. I took the 6 ft breaker bar and began the dig. We shall see if China reveals herself one day real soon now. We also read the notice given us by the Veolia man, it notes that we have ONE YEAR to complete this rerouting. Hmmmm.
___
Else, tore into the doorway wall this morning to see if the material used on the right side was also used on the left side, one never knows in these ruins. It appears it is of the same construction and so now I’ll de-nude BOTH walls and the ceiling over the opening as well. The MUR (Wall) through which the doorway proceeds is some 24 inches thick of waddle and daub as they call it…basically mud and rocks (typical olde construction method) and the openning to the dining room is coverred with a very fragile layer of 1/2″ thick unglazed tiles of varying sizes. Interesting… yes, delicate… yes, rustic… yes. What’s to “NO” about? Well poopsie…if I shatter, break, chip, any of these fine tiles I will get to glue them back together as nowhere on this earth will you find ANYTHING like these except possibly buried behind some grass hut in outer Mongolia or maybe Botswana.
___
Then I tore apart an old picture frame and remade it in a different size for a print we got when we were in Scotland some 15 years ago! It’s finally getting FRAMED in France! Amazing. Yhe whole IDEA of framing pictures in cut down frames from an early time period…seems nice, easy, cheap and ecological on some remote level. In reality it is a far more DIFFICULT thing to do as accuracy COUNTS and true 45 degree CUTS COUNT and I’m apparently not that capable as three of 4 joints are good…c- work, decent fit, small chips etc. and ONE joint is a friggin’ mess of out of angle cuts and chips the size of the frame itself. It’s NOT the saws I’m using either…it’s ME! I need more practice you say, sure I do…but there is little time left for practice, this IS the real world, measure twice = cut once (old adage) abd get on with it! I do…and I’ve cited the results. Shit! I have another sitting up in the grenier (attic) to tackle any day now that I want to feel inadequate.

Off to the Medicin…

#95 Off To The Medicin…
Yesterday afternoon came our friends A&R to sit at tea (an English Thing you know!) with a delicious pastry bought at the grouches boulangerie at the round-about. The grouch there is the young woman who it seems is far less happy with her chosen career than she should/needs to be. Every order taken with a surley groan and a look that says “You English/American/Hollandaise swine, bothering ME like this, Get your bread somewhere else!”. Nonetheless the breads and pastries from the place are superior so we all go and hope we get the nice middle aged woman instead. Such is our little world. There ARE several other choices, even the Proxie next door but that place gets the nod, surley or not.
We chatted away for a couple of hours about the weekend, the brocantes and the parties we attended. Such a Life we all lead together, like one big ex-pat family. Eventually I bothered “A” to tell us how to make a doctor’s appointment in French as we have never done that here in the last 6 years of visits. We are both running low on our meds and need valid prescriptions to take to the pharmacy to get them refilled. A promptly took the phone and made the call herself and got ME an appointment in two or three easy sentences! A-bloody-mazing! Little does the Medicin (doctor) know he’s getting BOTH of us for the same services…Kelly and I at the same time. We are joined at the hip. I will fill you in on the gory details when we get back.
GORY DETAILS: We walked thru the streets of Lignieres admiring all the old archetecture and all the newly painted shutters and doors. We arrived at an empty waiting room attached to the side of the Doctor’s Grande Maison Du Bourg (Big City House) we sat down in the waiting room for a few minutes admiring the artwork and archetecture of the room. Soon the door to the doctor’s office openned and he greeted us with a deep “Bonjour Mrdame (Miz-sur-dahm)”, in we went and he invited us to sit down. His office space was chuck full of both medical equipment and art, drawings, etchings and paintings and a bronze sculpture of a human chest on the mantle.
He asked us in French (Remembering we were referred to him BECAUSE he spoke English!) after i said we were American, ” What do you want?” or something to that effect. I explained I needed to get prescription refills for three drugs and produced the empty bottles for him. He quickly went to work checking the lables for dosage and soon called the pharmacist to aid in determining which could be had in France and what their names HERE were as well as any dosage differences. This took a bit of time, occassionally he would query us as to how often we took this or that one and what it was for. I always keep a list of my prescriptions and dosages with me in my wallet (good practice for travellers!) and gave him the sheet. He studied it and called once again to the pharmacist to enquire as to those drugs names etc. All in all a very efficient service done with a smile and friendliness that I didn’t expect. He then asked me to come to the exam table so he could take my blood pressure and listen to my heart. “Bon, Bon” he said as he looked at the resulting measurement and then he listened to my heart with a stethescope, “Bon” he said and I was through. Then it was Kelly’s turn. Same thing, he took her blood pressure but was not as happy with hers and told her so with a concerned look on his face. A few minutes later he had filled out a form on his computer and printed it, an invoice! 22 Euros each! Yea gads, such a bargain!
Only one thing, we only had 20’s and 10 Euro notes, Kelly gave him 50 and he couldn’t make change so gave back the 10 with a shrug. I told him I’d drop the other 4 Euros by later.
Then hand shakes and “Merci’s” to him and off we went to the pharmacy around the corner to get the new prescriptions filled. What an easy process this was and a very necessary one as well.
___
I watched “Cloverfield” the newish movie about a monster tearing apart NY City and scaring the holy-be-jezus outa lots of people running in the streets and metro. I found it interesting in the first 10 minutes, never thrilling and even less scary. In fact it was tedious, all the jerky camera motions, inadequate character development, under-seen monster led me to not give a shit whether anyone survived. Who cares? Give it up! Some psycho-thriller. Oh well…Hollywood.

#94 Sundai School in Chezal Benoit

#94
Not just ANY Sunday either! Chezal – Benoit (Che-sahl – Ben-Wha) was having it’s annual Brocante (junk sale) and mental health summit. You see Chezal – Benoiy is the home of a Mental Hospital and the sellers occupy the town right up to it’s gate. Too, many of the patients are present adding their own color and grunts to the event. L came to the Ruin at 9 am and while she made the huge green salad for the party we were attending afterwards at A&R’s, Kelly and I scrambled to both wake up from the party the afternoon and early evening of Saturday (yes we do these things serially it seems) (where 5 of us drank 7 bottles of the finest below 2 Euros sparkling wine and wine). I made Spinach Canneloni and it was very, very good if I do say so myself. Followed some hours later by a Pasta Povera with garlic, capers. It always works, a very simple dish that I’ve described in my blog before. That was Saturday’s food scene, Sunday afternoons at our friends A&R’s was an Asian-styled food fest. A and R had preped vegies galore, carrots, radishes, green and red bell peppers, onions, lemons and had various bottled sauces and condiments. I was put in charge by the Master Chef herself who provided me with the valued kitchen support I needed to create an asian feast. It was great creative fun and there was more than enough food at the end for A&R to have leftovers for two meals at least! I came up with Oyster Sauce Beef, Musselman Curry, Vietnamese Lemon Pork, Red Pepper Chicken, Chop Suey (YES!), and a couple of other ad hoc dishes thrown in for good measure. All over rice, thai rice noodles. Much wine was drank, as usual. The French couple from up the road (Chicken Farm) chatted amiably with all of us, in French of course…but we seemed to rise to the occassion. I had a bit of trouble understanding which isn’t unusual as the speed at which the French speak is, at times, intimidating. They also brought along their own product…goat cheeses from their heard of Goats, it was, without doubt, the FINEST goat cheese I have EVER enjoyed! The Ash coverred round loaf was spectacularly good. Wonderful light texture and a lemony aftertaste that just faded to the next bite. Anyway, we all enjoyed ourselves emmensly in A&R’s sunroom under ever darkening skies and eventually the late afternoon pouring rains. Here’s the link to the YouTube movie of the Brocante we enjoyed in the morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT6Ztt_Iz1o
What a lovely day, rain or not. Great fun with great people, tons of chat and laughs galore, Life hardly could be better than this.

Off to China…

I have begun The Search. Pipes, drains for the precious water system, Blackwater (shit) and Rainwater (fresh almost) exist somewhere in the olde courtyard. The Veolia inspector person indicated they ran adjacent to the new ancient kitchen. Sure. And, of course, the ONLY fault in our entire dye inspected system was MY connection of the olde kitchen’s sink to the rainwater downpipe from the roof. Seemed convienent. Damn. So I have begun The Dig. I have “sign”, an old rusted bottle cap at 12 inches and a fragment of a plate found about 16″ under the surface. But no sign of an actual PIPE carrying actual shit. I have three tools for this project, 4 if you count me. A 6 foot breaker bar, a square tipped shovel and a gardening hoe-type tool. I chose a spot between the kitchen and where the effulent comes out of the showerroom and disappears into the ground at some oblique angle. Who knows? This could take a while especially at the rate that I dig.

___
The front window painting exercize is going forward while I lurch dirt into the pile in the courtyard. Kelly is scraping away, it’s looking better as she goes. She is also painting the coffee table black that I have set up in the courtyard on metal sawhorses. She says she is in her Black Phase, guess so.
___
No Lean came out of the kitchen to examine the courtyard with me in it. She ringed the area sniffing here and there and chewing whatever vomit-grass she could locate. That promises a little wet surprise somewhere real-soon-now. Nice…cats.
___
The language lesson yesterday at A&R’s went off pretty well, embarrassment was at it’s height as no one there other than A herself can say much in Francaise at all. We all listened attentively at Don as he gave some language theory and explained verb endings to his languid class. Remember, these are all native English speakers, it is 6pm nearing dinner time and their brains are challenged by French no matter what. Mine certainly is. We yawned a bit, listened intently and had a generally swell time. Next time we are at the teacher’s house. He wouldn’t accept our payment either so we decided to pool the monies and do something wonderful with it when this exercize has reached some natural ending. Buy the teacher a nice bottle of scotch and a straw was one suggestion.

Une Petite Francaise SVP

That’s all it really takes, a LITTLE French. Be polite, address all persons as vous, si vous plait is good all the time. CA VA! (How are you – to those with whom you have a standing friendship andhave been properly told that now we can be familiar) To which one replies Ca Va! back (I’m ok). Well today is Tuesday and our friend Don who is a retired language teacher is taking on our little groups need for French tutorage par groupe, oh lord, help him! After 6 years of visiting this lovely, genteel land our grasp of it’s language is abouton the level of a 2 year old (or less!). It’s NOT for lack of trying, we have many CD’s, this course and that course, have taken courses at the local tourist board til we drove them mad, and commuted one a week to Berkeley to bang French into our heads. Little sticks but what does is in the present tense almost always, NOTHING comes naturally. So today we will begin yet again to learn a bit of French for the sakes of the oh so friendly French folk in and about our village and environs. Sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsfV-ZL4rUo&NR=1
___
The black paint job is through for now, now we must scrape off the over-painting on the glass of a million panels, oh boy. So I do a panel or two, scrape, scrape, brush, scrape and I soon tire of this and wander off and Kelly grabs the scraper and razor blade and goes to work on it. This will take a while. I want to get on with the cloth hanging but it takes laying out and pattern matching before it can be hung. It will be one very dramatic entrance to the old girl, the pattern is Japanesey black on a subtle gold in big swirly things that dance along edge to edge almost. The curtains are going to be a lighter gold with a little texture in them, the whole effect should be stunning…perhaps too stunning. No matter, as soon as this scraping activity is done we will have at it.
___
I brought over my oil painting “bits” (a UK word meaning…things), brushes, media, linseed oil, tubes of paints, the whole bloody mess. When will I paint? I dunno, I never know…If I get inspiration I’m often unmotivated and if I’m unmotivated my inspiration fades and I’m back at square one again. It’s the opposite of procrastination where you should do something but you put it off. This takes less effort. Nonetheless the stuff is here, I have canvasses and we’ll see what time does.
___
Back to the scrapings,
H

Pork!

Pork IS The Meat! Pork chops, bacon, gammon, Pork Roti, sausages of nearly endless variety. Pork is the King of Meats! We wanderred off to A&R’s Sunday afternoon to drink 5 bottles of cheap bubbly wine (at least what I brought was!) and assist in the preparation and cooking of a quantity of pork belly meat. I know of this thru study of wild hogs and the butcherie of pork. Yes! A sharp thin bladed knife 6″ – 8″, slip it under the tough pork skin on the back, proceed to pull thru the meat pressing down as you go under the skin, the shoe leather comes off leaving the precious white pork fat. Remove it entirely, do NOT throw this away! You can render this for the fat in a skillet over a medium fire and use the resultant for bisquits, fring or sauteing of meats, fish. Great stuff pork fat. The we cut the belly across the grain of meat to make steaks 1″ thick and 8″ long. Small bones remained which was fine. Salt, pepper and lemon juice then wrapped in aluminum foil and placed over the BBQ fire at about 350 degrees. The packages each contained about 3 such steaks and took about 1.5 hrs to pre-cook. Remove from the fire, unwrap and now drench with the following sweet/sour BBQ sauce.
___
Sweet and Sour BBQ Sauce

Catsup, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Puree 2 cups
4 cloves of garlic minced
White Wine vinegar 1/2 cup
1/2 cup sugar, marmalade, brown sugar or molasses, jam (you can be very creative here!)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Teaspoon black pepper
1 – 4 hot peppers finely chopped, watch it!

Combine all and mix thouroughly.

Dredge your pork steaks in the sauce, both sides and place on the medium BBQ fire. Cook, turning every few minutes til browned and the sauce carmellized. DO NOT BURN!

Remove the meat from the grill and allow to rest 10 minutes before serving.

This recipe s also good with chicken breasts, lamb chops, pork chops.

Brocantes = Rusty Tools

How can there be so many rusted old tools? Where the hell do people find them? They MUST think they have value BUT in reality they take not a little bit of “brushing up” before any of them could be utilized for anything useful. I mean garden rakes that the handles are so eaten by beetles that the thing weighs nothing! Hammers that were used before WW2 by a 300 lb ANIMAL beaten to a mushroom and then the broken handle repaired by black tape from a WW2 GI. How? No part of these things can be used. I LOVED watching three men trying to get an ancient lawnmower’s engine to run, no !@#@#@! chance, the last time this thing actually ran to mow grass/weeds was just after Citroen created the Duex Chaveau! We went to two such junk ales this morning, ringing about the rows of knick-knacks, rusted tools, baby clothes and such without spending a dime. We have become jaded, perhaps we bought ALL the GOOD STUFF over the years and this is the REST. May it all rot in a landfill somewhere. We ran into our friends A & R and shared a cuppa coffee and a stick of bread with ham and butter (what passes for breakfast hereabouts ) and examine their FINDS. Not a bad take, the REST of the GOOD STUFF! Never fails, timing is everything! They were there first. We are headed to their place and lick our wounds with a pig BBQ and wine later this afternoon. We departed #1 brocante to travel across the township of St. Amand to the Medieval section for another try at scoring some great thing. No luck, it wasn’t there either! We did pick up some duck shaped aluminum candy molds for the hell of it. What for? I dunno, but they are cute and CUTE counts sometimes. In France there’s a LOT of cute stuff, not useful…but cute. On the way home we stopped y the little house (our first abode in France) and I removed my oil painting supplies from the grenier (attic) and picked up a few empty flower pots for my growing collection of plants-that-will-soon-be-dead. The home to relaxfor a while amaid the squalor of the ruin, peice together the tile wall covering into the dining room and write thi blog entry. Now off to our friends to fill out the rest of the day with laughter and good food.

Another Day in a Lazy Paradise

Yawn…up at 6am, I looked out the window of the comp room where I slept last night to see a grey and cloudy sky. Oh well, off to the computer to read the emails, if any, and see what the weather sensors have detected overnight. It is a passion of mine, the weather is, I study the situation day by day trying to sort out the forecast for the next WHILE. Kelly’s knees are far more accurate than any local forecast we get from the TV.
Mine , however, are more personal and I have INSIDE information, don’t I? Today was not sunny, overcast and grey as could be all afternoon. We worked around the house this morning then in need of paint, nails and a few other hardware items we left at about 1:30pm bound for St. Amand’s Brico Marche. I needed potting soil, some exterior wood glue and some wall fasteners, Kelly needed paint. We found our items and found each other and proceeded to the checkout cashier. As it turned out she had inadvertly bought MAT paint so after the discovery at the car returned to the store to trade in the 2.5 liter carton of MAT for the more desirable Semi-gloss. She also bought the black glossy she wanted to finish the mullions of the waiting room exterior.
The whole works is spectacular.

Lazy Day – The Water Man Cometh

Here we are in the middle of France on a rainy Thursday. I fooled around with Google Maps making a map of our exact whereabouts in the countryside of France. Here’s my current result: (Use arrow keys to move right to France…where we are)

View Larger Map
Not very exciting looking or indicative of where this is relative to things that might be exciting, like Paris (200 Miles North), Limoges (60 miles South), Lake Geneva (120 miles East) and the
Atlantic Ocean beaches (90 Miles West). You can pan out with the slider gizmo to see the rest of France pretty much and place us somewhere in the middle to get an idea of our location. Use the zoom in/out tool to see Lignieres more closely. In the meantime I’ll fool around with it a bit more and see what I can do.
___
About 3pm the front door bell rang. I panicked when I couldn’t open the door so went to the hallway and peered thru the window and there stood a young man in a all blue uniform. At first I thought “oh he’s from the fire dept come to collect AGAIN the fee for the hornet removal last summer”, Kelly was napping upstairs so I was left to my own devices, I signaled with hand signals I needed a minute to get the keys. I ran around like a chicken with it’s head cut off and found my keys on the table next to the door. I opened the door to see a Veolia Eau man with his tablet PC standing there, he introduced himself as Jacque XXXXXX YYYYY and told me in a very quick French that he was there to examine our pipes. Well not to be undone by this I welcomed him in and he quickly stated that he had to determine where our drain system was. This was done by hand gestures and speaking French at twice the normal rate and louder as well. Nothing helped me…as I failed to understand a thing the gentleman said from this point on.
We trapsed about the front of the house and finally he found the man-hole cover and exposed the drains. What this all actually MEANT was not apparent to me at all. He chatted away to a deaf ear as far as I was concerned. Oh the language problem. Eventually he brought out three bottles each filled with red, blue or yellow dye with which he was going to test our water system for what connection it was dumping into as the sewer system here is divided into 3 parts, a black water (toilet) system and a grey (shower, kitchen) system and a rain water system. Once I got to the rear gate to let him in I discovered IT was locked as well! Damnit! So back into the house while he yelled over the gate for me to open it, to get the keys and get it open for him. That accomplished he began his inspection and documentation of our system. He poured the dyes in each rooms water drain system and quickly returned to the man-hole cover to check the water for the dye. Over and over again, in the old kitchen, the new kitchen and each bathroom (we have two toilets). Afterwords he said that he would report back via the online link and we would get a letter describing the deficiencies (the kitchen drain was tied to the fresh water system from the roof). He entered all the data, gave me a look at the schematic of the drains and the problem drain and said we would, after it was corrected, go to the mairie to have them call out Veolia to recheck the system for correction. Then it was all goodbyes and he drove off. Another great day in Paradise. We await the letter.

The Donkey Faire

Monday 12 May, 2008
Today is the BIG DAY! The donkeys are coming, the donkeys are coming! I was up early to witness the arrivals, donkeys from everywhere in France in one’s, twos, tens, tied to rails in the Champ du Foire (Fair Field). Beautiful, noisy and a cause to celebrate Asses of the 4 legged variety. Our hope this year was that the weather would be nice instead of the storminess of last years version. Up early, at dawn, for no good reason (part of ageing) I looked out the comp rm window and the skies were clear. Whoopee! Even before dawn the trucks were lining up to deliver thier braying hoards onto the Champ (shaw-mp). I grabbed my trusty Nikon Coolpix S10 and set it to movie and left the house bound to see the beginnings of todays Big Event in Lignieres. The movies are in two parts, each about 5 minutes in length. Just click the links below.

The Donkey Faire Continued:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbBHfJCNu2U

Too big to upload? Who knows, I’ve tried three times now to no avail so just click the link and watch it on YouTube. Sorry.

After the 2nd video (about 11:30) I returned to the house to prepare for our late afternoon lunch for 10. My grand idea for this gathering was to have the group make thie own sandwiches. Well…that’s how I set the table up, you know…plates of onion rings, tomato slices, pre-cut bagettes, lettuce leaves etc. and a big salad. This was to be made easier by the addition of leftovers from the meal the night before at A&R’s place. Easy to do, fun outdoor-sy at our now long table with the additional length furnished by my library table which I just completed. Sure. Wine by the bottle was soon flowing among the gathered group and conversations went off like firecrackers in every direction. I thought I made to announcement re:making your own sandwiches, but the second the plate of meats (chicken and pork) were deliverred to te table the group swarmed on them like hungry wolves. What sandwiches? Oh well, best laid plans and all of that. Much wine was drunk, the Vouvray Sparkling was especially delicious and made for a festive occassion. The party moved indoors with the coming of the late afternoon rain and we raided the bar closet for samples of the many bottles. Great fun was had by all as usual, Our Little Supper Club.