I think autumn is my favourite season here. The leaves are just starting to turn; shades of gold and red, often against a brilliant blue sky, herald cooler days, longer nights and much needed rainfall. The mornings are cool and often misty, the brume clearing by lunchtime, allowing the sun to lift the afternoon temperatures to figures only dreamed of in mid-summer in England. And best of all; after months of swelteringly hot nights, it’s now cool enough to sleep comfortably!

One thing we really miss here is a theatre; we used to go to most of the productions at the Harrogate Theatre. There’s a cinema in Nogaro, which shows an excellent range of films, including quite a few foreign ones in “version original”; you can come unstuck if the original language is Korean, but a lot are in English. The cinema doubles up as a theatre occasionally, though many of the productions up to now have looked somewhat erudite; but last Friday we went to see a trio playing Latin American and Spanish music. Two guitarists, who also sang, were joined by a guy playing a traditional Peruvian instrument, whose name I’ve forgotten, but which looked like a wooden box that he sat on. The front of it was covered in a skin or cloth and he played it like a drum. The music was fantastic; so vibrant and full of energy, that even though there were only about 60 people in the audience, quite a few of us were dancing in the aisles for most of the evening.

Yesterday Kieran was asked to take a look at a laptop belonging to a cycle club member. He repaired it and Jean-Paul took it home, only to phone half an hour later to say that it wouldn’t now connect to the internet. I took the phone call and, as Kieran doesn’t do phones in French, had to translate the conversation between them. Bearing in mind that I have only the most rudimentary grasp of computer-speak, even in English, this was no easy task; I hadn’t a clue what “wireless”, “network” or “yellow flashing light on the right hand side of the front edge of your computer” are in French and even when I tried, Jean-Paul seemed almost as clueless as me! So in desperation, I sent Kieran round to his house to sort out the problem; it wasn’t difficult; the network cable wasn’t plugged in!

So life goes on; Nick cemented the garage ridge tiles in place today and we’re hoping to make more progress tomorrow, before the next lot of rain arrives on Thursday, so watch this space; I should have some more photos to put up soon 🙂

Poor Hugo; nothing to eat or drink from 8o’clock last night. Poor Hugo; kept inside when he should have been out overnight. Poor Hugo; this morning, being put in that infernal box and taken for a ride in the car. Poor Hugo; he had no idea what was to come.

We collected him this afternoon, hungry and a bit sleepy, but otherwise no worse for wear, considering he’d just been deprived of his manhood.

Sorry Hugo!

Like all males, taking consolation in booze!

Mushroom picking is a national obsession in France at this time of year, each person’s favoured location for finding the much loved fungus a closely guarded secret. So imagine my surprise when, on a wander round the garden this morning, I found dozens of delicious looking mushrooms dotting the grass. They look like ordinary field mushrooms to me, but I’ll take a couple of them to the pharmacy tomorrow, just to make sure they are edible. I can’t eat them, but would hate to poison Nick and Kieran by serving up garlic poison toadstools!

Kieran arrived home from his stay in Harrogate this evening, delighted to be back in the warm and the dry, after a very cold, wet motorbike ride through England and northern France. The garage roof has passed his inspection and he’s keen to get moving on the removal of the grange floor, which Nick has put days of work into over the last week, enthusiastically assisted by Hermione. She doesn’t like the noise of the concrete breaker, and gets out of the way as fast as her clipped wings will allow her when that’s in use, but stands as close as possible to Nick all the time he’s digging with a spade; he reckons she’s depth testing the hole he’s dug so far.

Last Friday Nick finished tiling the garage roof, well almost! He still needs to cement the ridge tiles in place, but it’s watertight. Just a bit of wall to build above the lintels now, a new concrete floor to lay, then doors to build and fit and it’ll be ready to use.

Having worked so hard last week, we thought we’d have a weekend off. The weather was glorious on Saturday so we went for a wander around the Nogaro vide grenier; this was part car boot sale, part market, part brocante, with hot roast chestnuts and bourret for sale on every street corner. Bourret is a delicious, cloudy, fizzy, slightly alcoholic drink, taken from the early stages of wine production and is for sale everywhere around here at this time of year; it’s always served with roasted chestnuts. I found a mirror for the bathroom and Nick bought an old spoke shave, so it was a good trip.

You must understand that, as market towns go, Nogaro doesn’t rate in the top 5%. There are two markets a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays; there are three stalls on Wednesdays and a huge seven (on a good day) on Saturdays. However, there are a couple of good veg stalls on Saturdays, so, rather than buy in the supermarket, I shop at the market; the only problem being carrying the goods back to the car. So I have had to not just think, but do the unthinkable and am now the owner of not a tartan, but a bright pink pull-along shopping trolley! Just how old lady and Grannified is that?!

On Saturday afternoon, I worked at the communal garden. Christian, who helped set it up, has sent me some photos taken in the early days when they’d just started up, so they’re included in this post. I was sent home with loads of strawberry runners and instructions to plant them that day as it was the most auspicious day according to the lunar calendar, which everyone around here seems to use. There wasn’t time, however, on Saturday, so I decided to do the planting on Sunday; but it was wet, so wet that, by the time I’d finished digging over the plot of ground to put them in, the water was trickling down my jeans and puddling inside my wellies. Being a fair-weather sort of gardener, I gave up, came inside and lit a fire; I planted them today and hope the moon doesn’t mind too much.

Why is it that when you ask a cyclist “how far is it?”, you can guarantee the reply will either be “not far”, or a totally unrealistically low figure? Or is it just men in general, perhaps?

On Wednesday afternoons the cycle club goes out for a ride, the same route that will be done the following Sunday, but at a slower pace. It was a lovely day, with plenty of cloud cover to stop it being too hot, so I talked Nick into having a break from roofing and go for a ride. I’m not fit at the moment and Nick wanted to get back to do more of the roof, so we decided to do about 40km; another club member was doing a short ride too, which he said would be 50km. I was feeling OK, so we stuck with Christian, but had already covered 56km when he announced that it was only 10km back to Nogaro; by the time we got home, we’d done 69km, and at a reasonable average speed too! Which leads me to wonder whether there are differing measurements for cyclists’ and other road users’ kilometres!

But no pain, no gain; it was nothing for Nick, but I was nearly on my knees coming up the last hill, so it must have done me some good 🙂

Nick has made good progress on the roof today, around the ride. We need to get more tiles tomorrow, but it should soon be finished.

It was still pitch black when Kieran left, at 7o’clock on Saturday morning; he’s gone back to England for 10 days, to see friends and, I suspect, to have a rest. 35 hours and 987miles later, he arrived at Alex’s.

He told us we can have a break too while he’s away, once we’ve finished doing the hangar (have to start calling it the garage) roof, dug the grange floor out to 50cm depth and re-sealed the shower -again! Yes, the shower’s leaking again and it looks as though we’ll have to dismantle the whole thing and build a wooden, frame-type structure under the basin to stop it flexing. Nick didn’t seem too impressed at the idea.

Still, he’s getting on with the garage roof; the back is done and the front has lats in place now and is ready to tile tomorrow, with tiles that we exchanged for breeze blocks with Adrian.

I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs while all this progress has been progressing. We tried the solar fruit dryer; it was OK, if rather slow, while the sun shone, but it did have certain problems, for instance, you had to bring all the fruit in at night and find space for it in the fridge since it took 3 days to dry a batch of figs. It was also considered a very desirable location for the many ants that live in the garden – not ideal. We tried standing the legs in water, but then the sun disappeared for several days. I borrowed an electric dryer from a neighbour; I wasn’t keen on the design as you had to slice things thinly before putting them in; no chance of drying whole figs, so I bought one online. It has removable shelves to accommodate larger pieces of fruits and veg and seems quite good. So far I’ve dried a batch of halved figs (the whole ones are still drying) and have put in a load of cherry tomatoes. It may sound ungrateful, but I think I’ll be quite glad when the tomato season is over; I weighed the first 50kg of tomatoes our little potager produced, but we must have had at least another 20kg since then and I’m sick of picking them! There’s no room in the freezer for anything else at all and the shelves are groaning under the weight of bottled produce; hence the dryer, to produce our own un-sun-dried tomatoes and figs.

Just a few photos, taken on a walk I went on last Sunday. The weather was perfect, the company good and I won a bottle of wine in the tombola included in the entry fee!

Having spent many hours doing the preparatory work, Nick and Kieran were today ready to start putting the chevrons onto the hangar roof. The weather was perfect; warm, with not a breath of wind, so they made a good start this morning. By the time evening came, they were tired but very pleased to have achieved so much; tomorrow they’ll be able to start putting the actual roofing stuff on (corrugated, bitumen-coated sheets on the back, to take the photovoltaique panels and tiles on the front).

Having spent the best part of this week sorting out our paperwork, I was given time off for good behaviour this afternoon and allowed to go cycling with the club. I only did half the ride as I’ve not done much over the summer; but I was shocked at how unfit I’ve become! Must get out more!

We love the life here; the climate, the space, the people, the lifestyle; but there has to be a down side and that is the red tape which entwines itself around so many aspects of French life.

As you may know, Nick fell off his bike on Sunday; his injuries aren’t serious, but we have had to jump through a series of hoops since then. I don’t know how we’d have coped had it not been for our friend and fellow cyclist, Maithée, and her husband, Pierre, who have taken us through every step. They downloaded the four page accident report form and filled it in; everything from the time of the incident to the weather forecast, the condition of the road to whether Nick was in a group or on his own, had to be reported. He had to go to the doctor to get a medical certificate and we needed to include our house insurance contract number as well as Nick’s cycling license. Maithée had to phone Paris and Strasbourg for clarification of certain points and we had to buy Nick a new helmet, to replace the one that was damaged, today at the latest, to include the bill so he can be reimbursed.

I have to get the package of papers in the post, first class, first thing in the morning, as the claim must arrive in the insurance company’s head office in Strasbourg no later than five days after the accident.

So thank you so much, Maithée; you’re a true friend, we couldn’t have done this without you 🙂

Joel, our builder, came round last week to see the plans for the inside of the house, take measurements, etc. I had misunderstood when I thought he was going to start in October; he’ll start at the end of the year, unless we have a very wet October and we’re ready to go. So it’s all hands on deck now, to get the preparation done in case it rains a lot next month. Kieran’s broken up all of the concrete floor in the grange with a noisy breaker-thingy, so we’re ready to start removing it. Hopefully a local farmer will want at least some of it and the rest will go to the tip.

Of course, this involved emptying the grange, Kieran’s motorbike parking up to now; he’s thrilled with his new, clean garage area – my arrière cuisine!

But Sundays are rest days, the mornings anyway; so I went walking and Nick went out on his bike this morning. He hadn’t gone very far when he thinks his wheel got caught in a rut in the road on a fast descent; it pulled his handlebars sideways and sent him spilling across the tarmac. He’s removed a considerable amount of skin from his leg, hip and shoulder; yes, the same side as always, which has already sustained a broken hip and bears the scars of several tumbles. His new shorts and favourite jersey will have to go in the bin, along with his helmet, which is well scuffed and broken internally. But it could have been a lot worse; typical Nick, he cycled the 10miles home!