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.
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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.
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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.

#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.

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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Back to the scrapings,
H

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.
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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.

A Beautiful Warm Sunday In The Berry

Blog Entry Sunday May 4th, 2008
Sun in the morning, warm soothing sun, even the cats notice. Two days in a row now, a record. We had scheduled to go to a neighboring villages brocante with Raj and Nannette. They came over at 9:30, we shared coffee and happy chatter and off we went to see what gems we could find among the piles and piles of rusted junk and plastic crap that a few hundred souls are attempting to foist off to the public. The ride was without incident, we parked outside the town center in a huge feild with a topping of very wet grass and wildflowers, very soppy this. We walked each aisle, gawking at the offerings, old keys, rusted tools, baby rattles, plates, kitchen implements etc. The warmth of the sun made the day festive and kept everyone moving along.
Along with all the vendors there was a rather expansive display of old and classic cars, SIMCA, Pougeot, a Pontiac Firebird for god’s sakes, an 80’s Cadillac, a bright red and PERFECT Ferrari Testarossa 512 and many others. It was great fun looking at them all lined up adjacent to the village church as it rang it’s bells every hour. I spent some time taking pictures as I do and bent over staring at the interiors. What this said to me was that the French LOVE their cars as much as we do. A gathering of ancient tractors lined one street, 20 of them I counted, Old Massey Furgusons, Fords, Fiats, Pougeots and others I’ve never heard of before. All running, chug-a-chug-chug, wonderful sounds of deisels and gas engines of very old designs still running after all these years. While walking along we ran into first one then many of our friends enjoying the sun and the bussling atmosphere of the brocante. Later we gathered at the bar tent for a few beers and laughs. Another hour later off we went to head home satisfied that we had filtered the place of any object worth our time and fast evaporating money. To the field we walked to see yet another acquantance with his front tires buried in the sloppy soft mud, uh oh. In the distance we heard one of the ancient tractors fire up and slip into gear. Soon one rounded the bend and drove into the field, an old hit-and-miss two cylinder gas beast belching black smoke and eager for the challenge. HA! Hooked up in a few minutes it readily pulled the offended modern auto out of it’s hole and soon it was on it’s way home. The driver of the tractor refused payment offered by the cars owner and just smiled and waved as he chugged along returning to the line up back in the village, a job well done!

The Day We Got DSL!

It happened about 9:05 this morning, I was just up, barely awake past staggering stage but before coffee. Into the comp rm I went to check on the weather program…and much to my surprise (It HAS been 6 weeks you know) the Network Magic program popped up with a “Internet Connected” message! I looked at the LiveBox and saw the normal blinking lights, no joy, just another bity of noise to confound and confuse. The message faded then came on again a minute later, I looked again at the LiveBox and the DSL light was ON! Not Blinking…ON! Wowee! Then it went off…huh?
So I tried Internet Explorer and l’viola! There it was…Orange.fr! Hot shit! Got it! I walked into the bedroom to announce to Kelly the great news and back again it was still alive and well. I sat down to see every @#$$#@ application on my machine doing downloads to update the now seruiously out of date (5 weeks) software. Sooo cool this is, we are back online again! Upon examination we have a 20MB/sec ADSL-2connection, bloody quick compared to our old 8 MB one and the even slower 1.5 one in California.
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We drove to Bourges and Mondail Tissues to get the required cloth for the entry hallway, it’s curtains and the curtains for the waiting room. We chose three wonderful designs and got the required yardage for each and wandered off to the Carrefour store to fill my list of needed groceries for next week.

Covering the walls…

Blog Entry Wednesday 30 April, 2008
Rainy and cool, windy too…shit weather, mucky. There’s a music event downtown at L’Halle this afternoon, we will go with an umbrella. It’s the annual fete du Bain Douche (our event location in town about three blocks away), many musical acts that come from far and wide, well…not so wide I guess, France mainly and maybe they visited some other place before or might have even come from there for all I know but…you get the picture. Not pricey, generally under 20E a seat or less, always some freebee performances held at various locations about the village which always attract a crowd. It starts today and runs through the weekend. We have plans to attend all the free ones as we spent PLENTY at the Pretemps Du Bourges a couple of weeks ago.

This is my Lignieres_Weather Cam image just a few minutes ago, typical morning traffic as the commuters rush off to coffee…oops work. Looks out the TV/Computer Room window towards the
northwest. Ah Lunch hour is but 4 hrs from now then 2 hrs off to think about the rest of the day. Hmmm.
3 pm, still no DSL with the clock winding down on the France Telecom workday. Nothing ever is as promised with FT. What a way to run a business. It is now 9:58pm, many resets and attempts to configure the long lost DSL service brings nothing but the blinking INTERNET light. I saw an ad today in the old Connexion newspaper for an all English DSL service for 29 bucks a month, maybe I’ll give them a call tomorrow.
We spent much of today working on the old waiting room, new fabric on the walls except for over the fireplace which we will do tomorrow. Then I begin the build of the bookcase.
Kats: Interlopers in the form of ferals, also known as terrorists, or insurrectionists are using the courtyard for secret meetings and attempts to enlist one or the other of or Kats in their own causes. So far Furry has been singled out for rough treatment as she fails to attend their meetings and doesn’t supply food or drink to the cadre which now includes Long Tail, Sammy, Blackie and at least two others whose names we don’t know. The Barn is their hideout at least we know that much. Their goal? The take over of all kibble supplies, both Kat and Dawg with the long term goal of trading the Dawg food for Kat food and cooperative Dawgs. That’s all I know now, more to come.