As Kieran’s going to the Isle of Man with my brother to watch some motorbike races at the end of the month, he began the process of registering his bike in France over two months ago, so he can legally ride it in Britain. Between French bureaucracy (every bit as bad as it’s cracked up to be) and the French habit of closing things down for the whole of August while people go on holiday, it’s been an extremely fraught process. This time yesterday, having dismissed the ideas of a) him riding pillion on my brother’s bike (he looked horrified that I’d even suggested something so completely uncool), b) hiring a bike in the UK (too expensive) or even c)  sticking false plates on his bike (I put my foot down at that one), we really thought he’d have to cancel the whole trip. However, a clutching-at-straws trip to the garage this morning paid off; he now has his carte grise and French number plates, not to mention a huge smile, and it’s all legal.

When not on the phone or the computer trying to sort that out, he and Nick have been hard at work removing the old kitchen; we’ve moved into the arriere cuisine temporarily, while they install the new kitchen, which I hope will be ready for October as I want to start teaching here instead of going to other people’s homes to do classes, which costs a fortune in fuel (not reclaimable) and takes up hours of my time. The electrician is back from his holidays now, so he’s made a start on the next bit of wiring in the new house, so it’s all moving on.

We’ve long dreamed of going to the Jazz festival in Marciac; it’s reputed to be the biggest and best in Europe and is only half an hour’s drive from us. Yesterday we finally made it and we weren’t disappointed.

The whole central square of the town is taken over, covered with a huge chapiteau, a sort of pointy tent roof, at one end of which is a stage, facing row upon row of chairs; from 10.30 each morning, until about 7.30 in the evening, there is a series of bands playing, all differing styles of jazz and all free.

Around the edges of the chapiteau is a myriad of mini chapiteaux, parasols and various sun shades, beneath which are stalls selling everything from hats to Indian slippers, vinyl records to books of jazz fingering for guitar, food and drink of every description, clothes and jewellery. Along the length of the side streets radiating from the centre there are more stalls and shops; you get the impression that many of the garages, where the good folks of Marciac normally keep their cars, have been rented out for the duration of the festival and now house art galleries and shops selling jewellery, crafts and hand made guitars, amongst other things.

We sat in the shade to watch a few bands, ambled around, looking at the stalls, had dinner in one of the many restaurants which spill out onto the pavements, then took our seats under the chapiteau to wait for the concert listed for 9pm. As the evening wore on, bands started to play in many of the restaurants around the square. However, it seemed a little odd that the seats weren’t filling up very quickly; in fact, by 9.15, we were still among a very elite group of people sitting there, the piano was still covered up and there were no other instruments on the stage. I asked someone; this was A chapiteau, not THE chapiteau; the main event of the evening was taking place under the most enormous marquee I’ve ever seen, just out of town; it was ticket-only and all 6000 seats were sold. However, we could still see the show as in the bars and restaurant surrounding THE chapiteau there were several TV screens broadcasting it, so we watched Wynton Marsalis and his ensemble, which included all the usual jazz instruments, as well as sitar and tabla.

Our first trip to Jazz in Marciac certainly won’t be our last!

Chris has gone home; we hope he enjoyed his stay and learnt a lot while he was here. Maddy and Dom have also been and gone; we had a lovely few days with them, including a day in the hills, cycling up the col de Hourquette d’Ancizan. Since they left, the weather’s got even hotter; the weathermen seem to think the worst is now over, with temperatures peaking at 40ºC yesterday; not a good day for us to go to Condom, where we scuttled from one patch of shade to the next, trying to find some respite from the ferocity of the sun. Today’s 35ºC nearly had me reaching for a cardigan!

So now it’s back to work. Kieran has to re-register his motorbike over here; he has spent many weeks sorting out the paperwork and getting a certificate of conformity, so we headed off to Auch today, armed with every bit of paperwork anyone could possibly ask for and quite a lot of other stuff, just in case, in the hope of completing the task. But as is so often the case, it wasn’t that straightforward; what he’s got is only a partial certificate of conformity, due to the age of the bike, which has to be inspected again to complete the certificate. I phoned the various places to arrange this; to speed things up he can take the paperwork to Tarbes on Monday and meet with the technician, but when I asked if the technician could  inspect the bike there and then, the suggestion was met with horror – no, it takes three to four weeks for this! So we’re on tenterhooks now, as he has booked to go back to England in 3 weeks time.

We were more successful in our other task in Auch; that of getting Kieran a social security number and registering him as an auto-entrepreneur, so that he has some health cover, since it now looks likely that he’ll be staying longer than originally anticipated. The poor woman in the RSI office must dread idiots like us turning up, with very limited knowledge of how the system works, or even of the vocabulary used! However, she explained everything (I’m not claiming to have understood it all, but that’s not her fault!) and even gave us a space in her office to fill in the forms in situ, so we could ask about what we couldn’t understand on the forms. Two hours later – Kieran now officially exists here 🙂 English people we meet so often complain about the rudeness and unhelpfulness of French civil servants; I hope I’m not tempting fate, but we’ve met with nothing but courtesy and helpfulness up to now.

The back wall of the abri is now finished and looks really good; straight and level. It’s quite an achievement for Chris, working under Nick’s supervision and a very hot sun.

I’ve done some more balcony painting, but the enormity of the task is just setting in; it’s going to take me weeks! At the moment, I can only work outside in the mornings as it’s just too hot after lunch; it’s now 8.30pm and still 34ºC, far too hot for wellies, but as it seems we’ve got garden fleas, which love me (forty plus bites on my feet and ankles!) I have to don wellies every time I go into the garden. Très élégant with my summer dresses!

Joel turned up to finish a few bits on Friday afternoon. Looking up at the partly painted roof of the balcony, he asked Nick if he’s not nervous being that high up the ladders. “No, not at all;” replied Nick, “Jackie does the painting.” To say Joel was stunned is something of an understatement; he’ll learn!

Work on the wall of the abri is going well; Nick’s decided to incorporate a door from one of the old wine cuves into it, on the inside; hence the window-looking gap. I don’t know how much more they’ll get done this week though; it’s been in the mid-30’s for the last couple of weeks, but this week is forecast to get hot, so I think maybe it’s time to start on some inside jobs until the heatwave’s over.

Take one newly qualified graduate, feed on a rich diet of duck breast, foie gras, home-grown veg, cheese, tiramisu and home-made ice cream. Marinate in beer, red wine and armagnac and bake under a hot sun for at least eight hours a day while allowing him to learn such useful skills as plasterboarding ceilings, digger-driving, use of a cement mixer, bricklaying and pouring a concrete floor. Result? A lovely base to the abri; tomorrow he starts building the walls.

While that’s been going on, Joel and his lads have also been busy. They arrived last week with the wood for the balcony, all in kit form; the main structure of the balcony is now in place and the roof above it is complete. The rest of it, ie the joists and floor of the actual balcony and the balustrade, are up to us to do. I started painting the underside of the roof today; it’s going to be quite a big job.

By the time we got home at 2 o’clock on Sunday morning, it felt as though we’d been away for a week. My day started early (4am), when I couldn’t sleep any longer due to songs, harmonies and chords rampaging nervously around my head in preparation for the gig we were to play at the Hinx festival, where I was to do a couple of duets with Nellie, our singer; one of the songs we only played for the first time last Tuesday!

Hinx is a small town with a huge festival; there were children’s entertainers, a funfair, and a live band playing for line dancing, amid a myriad of other entertainments. We were to play in the beer festival area; they certainly had an impressive selection of beers, served by bar staff wearing pretend kilts, bright green socks, festival T-shirts and an amazing array of headgear.

We were one of three bands who played half hour shifts in rotation from midday through to midnight; when we’d done everything we know, we started again at the top, running through our repertoire one and a half times by the end of the day. We play mostly Celtic traditional music, with a few bits of folk from elsewhere thrown in; of the other bands, one plays Breton music and one is a group of Frenchmen playing Scottish bagpipes – God only knows why anyone would actually choose to play what is, after all, not so much a musical instrument as an instrument of torture, but each to his own!

As the temperature rose, once again, to the mid-30’s we were very glad to be in the relative cool of the shade next to the bar, with easy access to all the liquid refreshment we could want. Jacques, who runs the band, has an ex-theatre mixing desk, not really suitable for live music and although he has a few volunteers very willing to have a go, none of them actually has a clue how to use it. Fortunately, Adrian and Julie were coming to listen to us; what Ade doesn’t know about sound systems ain’t worth knowing, so between our first and second sets, he transformed the sound from a base-heavy, fuzzy noise to a properly balanced sound where each instrument and voice could be heard. The reproduction on the videos isn’t great, but it will give you an idea of the sort of stuff we do, I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kL3rv-3OIk

A week ago, I discovered that there’d been a mouse, or maybe more than one, in the food “stock” box in the arrière cuisine; it had eaten it’s way into rice cakes, muesli and raisins amongst other things. The hens had a feast, I cleaned out the box and re-filled it, this time sealing it with a tray, weighted down, on the top. The following day I went to get something out of the box, to find nibbled bags of sugar, beans, boudoir biscuits and prunes; I think the hens must be in league with the mice! Another treat for the hens, another good clean and I found a large box with a proper lid, which I filled and sealed. Just for good measure, I put a piece of white chocolate in a mousetrap nearby and set it. Yesterday the chocolate was gone and so was the mouse; another mouse trap, set very finely, this morning, no chocolate and the trap had been upended, but no mouse……. Hmm, where’s Hugo when you need him?

Chris never having seen the Tour de France, he and Nick just had to take him into the Pyrenees yesterday to watch a stage. They left the car a little way from the Hourquette d’Ancizan and cycled up the hill until they reached a suitable vantage point, from where they could catch all sorts of freebies, from polka dot print hats to cakes, keyrings to fridge magnets, thrown to spectators from the publicity caravan as it passed by. Later, as the riders flew by, Chris was delighted to be able to spot Chris Froome in his leader’s yellow jersey, and to marvel at the speed at which they shot up the first category climb.

Once the race had passed, they headed back to Ian and Alison’s bunk barn in the foothills below Arreau, where numerous cyclists were staying for the Tour week. Back before anyone else, they let themselves in as the place is never locked and assured the Irish woman who was hoping to stay there that night that she’d be welcome, then fed cake and flapjack that they’d taken as part of their picnic to returning hungry cyclists, before helping to make dinner, to which, naturally, they were invited. They got home in the wee small hours of this morning, having had a brilliant day.

Today was back to work; Chris fancied trying his hand at driving the digger and dug a very respectable trench for the foundations of the abri (shelter) that we’re going to build on the side of the cabanon. Tomorrow he’ll have a go at making concrete in the cement mixer; all new  and different experiences for a lad who, just a week ago, graduated in Philosophy from Cambridge.

A couple of weeks ago, the band played at the music festival in Lannux, a tiny village with big ideas. We started in the church, where we accompanied Cathrin, our harpist; we were followed by a superb choir. Everybody then headed down the road to the salle des fetes for the serious business of eating, drinking and making more music. There was a display of African dancing and a band played during the meal, then, because it was France’s national fete de musique, when anyone can play/sing any music they like without having to pay royalties, several villagers got up to perform a variety of stuff, mostly very lighthearted and received very enthusiastically by the crowd. It was then our half hour slot, followed by a blues-rock band and a “proper” rock band as the night wore on into morning.

Since then, the weather has changed and summer’s now arrived in a big way; 35ºC in the shade today for the fete at Magnan. Nick and Chris did the mountain bike ride this morning, Chris looked the part in gear borrowed from Nick; then we joined the rest of the village for lunch, held in the air conditioned salle des fetes as it was too hot to be outside. Chris has taken to South West cuisine like a natural, tucking into several plates of duck hearts and chips; not bad for someone who was vegetarian until a short while ago!

The maire of Magnan, one of my students, looked a lot happier and more relaxed than last Wednesday, when he had an English lesson. His wife was away for a few days, so he had to feed the dogs, cats, chickens, water the garden, look after himself and organise the final details of the fete. He’d recently found that a helper who should have arranged insurance cover hadn’t done so, and during the lesson had a phone call from the caterer to say that the ovens in the salle des fetes weren’t working. He sorted that lot out, but still had to mow the 15km mountain bike course and make 200 individual servings of tiramisu, amongst a miriad of other tasks. He’d obviously accomplished all of it as everything ran like clockwork today. Monday, he says, he will be playing golf; well-deserved, I say!

Back at the ranch, work goes on; we discovered that the lads had put all the wall insulation in place the wrong way round, so it all had to be turned round so the paper side faces in; we live and learn!