Somebody, who shall remain nameless (he knows who he is!), has had the temerity to suggest that I don’t do any real work around here! I’m mortally wounded; cut to the quick! Ahhh, the plight of women the world over; who perform their day-to-day tasks with such quiet efficiency that the male of the species is blissfully unaware of how molly-coddled an existence he leads. Some even still believe it’s the pants fairy who does the washing!

Today was a different sort of day, though; with Kieran back in England, Nick needed some help to replace the cabanon roof. Having spent the morning finishing the task of moving the firewood from the terrace to the woodpile (by barrow or by hand since the trailer no longer fits through the gap since Nick filled it with roof tiles), I then became roofer’s labourer for the afternoon, helping lift beams and lats, position the tarpaulin and nail them in place.

That done, Nick sat down to a three course dinner which included home made bread, home made paté, a choice of quiche, made with home grown eggs and walnuts, salad with home grown lettuce, rocket and radish, all rounded off by a choice of crumble or lemon cake.

Not much time for painting my toenails today then ! 😉

It’s taken a long time, but today, one of the big hens, we don’t know which one, produced an egg! A beautiful, perfect, brown egg, which we hope will contain a deep yellow yolk. So a reprieve is in order and we won’t turn them into casserole or curry, not just yet, anyway.

On this morning’s club bike ride, I ended up riding with Maurice and another guy whose name I don’t know; they form the slower contingent, both being well into their sixties, I should think. Maurice was apologising for not having had time to shave this morning, to which I replied that it didn’t matter; I hadn’t washed my hair either. We had a good laugh as we rode along and although I’m not quite sure how much of the conversation I understood correctly,  I think it was suggested that in future I should ride in full make up and stockings, while they claim that they’re taking English lessons! Perhaps it was as well that I had to come home early. When he saw Nick after the ride, Maurice told Nick I’d gone home early to make him his favourite cake.

After what was a cool, wet start to the day, the sun came out at lunchtime and the afternoon and evening were lovely. Nick continued to dig out the soil at the side of the house and fill the hole with rubble while I started shifting the wood pile from the terrace to the wood pile in the field. Nick’s already removed the bricks and other building materials off the terrace, which will have to be broken up and removed – yes, producing a load more rubble!

The big chickens, Sage and Onion, may be about to start earning their keep! There were 2 soft-shelled eggs this morning; one on the drive and the other in the chicken run. They have yet to learn where to lay and, presumably, how to produce eggs with hard shells, but it’s a start – watch this space!

The nuggets, on the other hand, won’t be laying for some time yet; when they do, I wouldn’t be surprised to find eggs on the kitchen windowsill, since as soon as we open the shutters in the morning, they all hop straight up there, tapping on the glass with their beaks. I think they’re pining for Kieran as he used to feed them there; you’d better pass your motorbike test and come back soon, Kieran, or they’ll have forgotten you!

After all the rain, and now the warmth, the garden is going mad; weeds are springing up faster than we can pull them out and the potager is looking good. We’ve planted tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and peppers, have eaten most of the first crop of radishes and sown some more and have enjoyed spinach and rocket in salads. Tomorrow we can cut the first lettuce. Can’t believe I’m getting excited about such things; I really must get out more! I was told off for having planted stuff out so early, by the gardeners at the walking group yesterday; apparently it’s quite common to have a frost for the feast day of ” la sainte de glace” (or that’s what it sounded like!), which happens next week. We might be lucky, though, as no frosts are forecast yet.

Apart from sitting in the sunshine, watching the lettuces grow, I’ve lasured (glossary: lasure – French wood treatment, somewhere between creosote and varnish) the new shutters and Nick has bought a load of wood to replace the cabanon roof, which leaks badly.

I can’t believe it’s nearly a week since Kieran left; we don’t seem to have achieved very much, but yesterday was walking/cycling clubs, today was patchwork club, tomorrow is a bank holiday, so the cycle club is going out, Wednesday is the usual club bike ride and I’m teaching to cover someone’s absence…… And I thought retirement was supposed to be a time for slowing down and doing less!

After four weeks of almost constant rain, the weather seems to be improving. The last few days have been warm and sunny and much more conducive to getting on with some work; or going cycling, or sitting out, drinking tea, or watching the chickens, or any number of other things that aren’t work!

Having taken Kieran to the airport yesterday for his trip back to the UK, Nick and I intended to start some serious work on the house today, but it was such a lovely day that we ended up going out on the bikes instead, having a leisurely lunch and spending most of the afternoon shopping for such exciting items as a new wheelbarrow and chicken feed. I’m beginning to think, where the chickens are concerned, that we’ve been sold duds; the two big ones were sold as “ready to lay”, but in spite of lots of clucking noises, which my neighbour assures me means they’re laying eggs, there’s nothing. We’re thinking of changing their names to Casserole and Curry if they don’t produce something soon! They’re great entertainment, though: all through dinner tonight, Sage stood on the kitchen windowsill, shaking her tail feathers at us; I can only think this must be the chicken equivalent of mooning!

We haven’t been totally idle, though; while I cooked tonight, Nick hung the shutters on the first of his workshop windows and made the final preparations to hang the next pair (my workshop). Perhaps tomorrow I’ll start painting them.

Nick and I had a great weekend in London, Staying at my brother’s and going to Ian Anderson’s “Thick as a Brick” gig at the Hammersmith Apollo. It was fantastic!

There was a Superbikes France race on at Nogaro circuit this weekend, so Kieran and Nick headed off to watch the final day’s racing when we got home. The skies were very black and thunder rumbled around from time to time, but there wasn’t much rain, so they enjoyed themselves watching motorbikes with and without sidecars and  Ducattis by the hundred. They said that one of the sidecar passengers hadn’t quite got the hang of the game, but the paint job was great!

In between rain showers, of which there have been plenty this week, often lasting the whole day, Nick and Kieran have started the serious job of putting windows in Nick’s workshop, my workshop and the bike shed. It transforms the feel of the rooms, to have natural light pouring in and feels like real progress. Two down, two still to go; but that will be next week as Nick and I are heading off to London tomorrow for Ian Anderson’s “Thick as a Brick” tour, leaving Kieran behind to look after the chickens.

While they were suitably occupied, I’ve tiled behind the bath in the new bathroom; it’s not brilliant, but the wall was really wiggly, so I struggled to get the tiles flat. I hope it looks OK when the room’s painted and finished.

The staircase has been creaking really badly recently, so Nick took a look today. A good job he did! The supporting piece of wood was nailed into the old colombage wall, which was crumbling away, so the side of the stairs was unsupported. It’s propped up on a piece of wood for now, till he has time to cement it up.

The weather is meant to be warming up soon; I do hope so, it’s been cold, wet and windy for over a week now, feels rather like being back in Blighty!

We harvested our first crop from the potager today! OK, so it was only a couple of handfuls of radishes, but they did taste good! The cabbages, lettuces, spinach and rocket are growing well too, though the beans have yet to put in appearance.

Yesterday we went to a friend’s birthday party; the theme was supposed to be “extreme facial hair”, well, for the men anyway. Nick did his bit, with his moustache grown and waxed and his beard partly shaved (the rest went today), but disappointingly few of the other fellas had made the effort. It did, however, make me think it might be an amusing idea to have a “‘taches and lashes” party in the summer; men in moustaches and women in false eyelashes, or vice versa if anyone fancies it!

The high point of the evening for me, though, was a trip to the bathroom. Yes, I know; I’m a very sad person and I should get a life, but the shower was an amazing work of art, a mosaic depicting the tree of life.  Unfortunately, Nick is adamant that if I want a shower like that, it will have to be out in the garden:-( Near the pool, perhaps?:-)

At last, we’ve got round to naming the little chickens. Izzy named some of them – Flappy, Flossy and Fluffy, but we hope she won’t mind, or remember when she arrives in August.

The two big chickens are Sage and Onion; the little ones are Peppercorn, the black one; the golden one is Rosemary, and the other two, who we can’t tell apart, are Tarragon and Marjoram.

They are becoming more confident by the day; when Nick opened the door this afternoon, to go out,  three of them hopped straight up onto the doorstep and into the hall! I think it’s nearly time to start keeping them in their own enclosure!

Today has given new meaning to the term “April showers”; it has oscillated all day between pouring rain, bright sun and tremendous hail showers, the changes being unbelievably quick. Because we weren’t able to do any outside work; Nick finished a spice rack he started before Christmas and I spent the afternoon pulling all the silicon sealant out of the bottom edge of the new shower because it still leaks. I’ll give it till tomorrow to dry out thoroughly, then seal it again; surely it can’t be that difficult to do!

The little chicks are growing noticeably bigger now, and are becoming very much more adventurous; no longer cowering in their temporary home and nearly smothering each other at our approach, but running madly towards anyone who ventures out of the house, hoping for food treats. We even found one on the kitchen windowsill yesterday; I hope they don’t think they’ll be invited in when the windows are open (except to go in the pot, that is!) They’re becoming expert at hiding in the undergrowth (of which there’s loads), to the point that sometimes we have to search for them to check that they haven’t packed their bags and left!

On Sunday evening we went out to round them up for the night, but couldn’t find them in any of their favourite spots; after a few minutes searching, we found two of them on top of the spare roof tiles at the side of the poulailler, so we put them away for the night and started looking for the others. One of them turned up in the garden round the side of the house, presumably having flown over the carefully chicken-wired gate, with her clipped wings. By this time it was getting very dark and we were concerned about the last one; we searched the garden, the orchard, the field, even the vineyard, all by torchlight, and had all but given up when Kieran spotted her, outside the main gate to the road, quietly waiting to be let in! Kieran blamed the windy conditions for having given her the extra uplift she needed to get over the gate!

Before we can get the builder in, we need rid of the rubble mountain in the grange; so we’ve started digging out the soil from the path at the side of the house and will fill the space with some of the rubble, then pave it. It’ll provide good drainage and the soil’s useful to fill in some of the dips in the garden. It doesn’t look as though we’ll get any more done this week, though, as it’s forecast to rain for at least the next week 🙁

The end of a good holiday is always sad, but particularly so for Izzy yesterday; she’d had a wonderful time, learning to speak a little French, getting over her fear of all things animal, she made good friends with Julie and Adrian’s dogs and even better friends of our chickens, who she loved feeding. She’d also been walking and sledging in the Pyrenees, played with the Flemish speaking children from up the road (one of whom told her mother she thought Izzy must be speaking Chinese!), helped Grandad cast concrete lintels for over the workshop windows, done some woodwork and had driven the mower whenever possible. So there were tears on Saturday morning as they left for the airport.

Our hens haven’t started laying yet, so each morning while she was here, Nick put a couple of eggs from our neighbour’s hens in the hen house; Izzy loved going to look for them and having them for breakfast. But on Friday, we’d run out of “real” eggs and had to use some from the shops; there was a big debate as to whether or not Izzy would notice the date stamp, but we thought probably not. WRONG! She brought the eggs in to the kitchen, saying that there were some marks on them which looked just like letters. She wouldn’t be distracted as Nick took them from her and surreptitiously tried to scrub the date stamps off; even when he’d finished, she insisted on showing them to me, assuring me that the pink smudges had really looked just like letters when she got them out of the hen house! Eventually we managed to distract her, and hope the memory has faded.

The second week of their holidays wasn’t blessed with the sort of weather we’d had at the beginning; we had quite a lot of wind and rain, though it didn’t stop us having the odd barbecue. It’s much needed rain as France as a whole has had 25% less than it should have had this winter and the aquifers are well down; but that doesn’t mean we have to enjoy it! The plus side (apart from not having to water the garden)  is that there have been some quite dramatic views over the vineyard, sunlit in front of heavy, charcoal grey skies. Graham took some amazing photos which I’ll put in the gallery when he sends them to me.

For the rest of us now, it’s back to work. The bathroom needs finishing, windows need putting in the workshop walls, the rubble piles in the grange need relocating and we need to contact the builder to see when he can start on the major works. It’s going to be all go….