It had been the kind of day that never really gets light. The kind of day when the sky hung heavy and dark, so low that you felt you could reach up and touch its cold dampness. The rain never stopped, occasionally interspersed with stinging showers of hail. The sort of day that made you feel that all you wanted to do was curl up by a log fire with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book.

The rivers running through nearby towns had already burst their banks, flooding car parks and camp sites, rushing along in swirling brown torrents, taking tree branches and anything else they could find in their wake, and flooding was making many roads impassable.

By the time we went to bed the wind was howling, whistling down the chimney and lashing the rain against the shutters. There are no street lights here and there was no sign of the moon or stars, so the night was as black as pitch, as we listened to the unaccustomed sounds of things being picked up and hurled around the garden. I woke about 2am; the bedroom door was rattling, so I found a “sausage” to put across the bottom of the door that leads into the rear part of the house, as yet un-wind-proofed. I wondered what damage we’d find in the morning.

It was still dark when another noise woke me; I came to, trying unsuccessfully to identify the sound. The door was rattling again, but this time it sounded different, as if there was some kind of force behind it and then the noise came again,  ………Hugo miaowing for his breakfast and head-butting the door!

If anybody out there has missed me, I’m sorry for the absence. After a week of fighting my back ache, I found an osteopath who would return my call and see me the following day; she contorted me and tied me in knots and left me feeling worse than before. No wonder she could see me so quickly! I’m now recovering from her less-than-tender ministrations and have taken her name off my list.

Nick, however, has been busy. The room that will, one day, be my work room is now plasterboarded, as is the entrance hall; he’s also tiled the chaufferie floor where the water heater is going.

Olivier has put down the chape liquide, so in a few weeks, when it’s completely dry, we’ll (and I hope that will include me!) be able to start tiling the house floors.

We were very impressed when the tile shop phoned, on time, to say our tiles had arrived. The big square tiles had arrived, the small square tiles had arrived, but where were the rectangular tiles? They’ll be here on Friday, they said; so I phoned on Friday, but there were no tiles for us. Ring Pau, they said, the shop where we placed the order; so I did, but no-one knew anything; the man who took the order would ring me back……. but he didn’t. It was beginning to feel very South-West France-ish. Then this morning the man from Pau rang to say our rectangular tiles hadn’t left Italy till a week after the rest, so they’d be here next week……… Five minutes later the Mont de Marsan shop rang; “Your tiles are here”. There’s no point fighting it, it’s just the way things are!

Nick and I went to London for a few days last week; mainly to visit the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern, but also to do a bit of shopping in the sales.

The exhibition was fantastic; I have loads of ideas for quilts inspired by his work now. When our new house is finished and we start letting the house we currently live in as a gite, we intend to decorate the bedrooms on the themes of artists, one of them being Paul Klee. We also managed a couple of hours visiting the surrealist exhibition; again, we loved it.

We bought a few things in the sales, as well as plenty of fabrics to make quilts; we had taken as little as possible with us, but, no matter how we tried, we couldn’t pack all our purchases , including my new coat, into the two small cabin bags we’d taken. So I travelled home in two thick sweaters, jeans under my skirt, and wore both my coats; I was certainly warm enough and felt like the Michelin man!

Unfortunately, all the travelling took its toll on my back, so I’m having to take things very gently this week, hence the lack of a blog for a while.

Christmas is over, so it’s back to the grind. We’d like to get the chaufferie floor tiled before the heating man comes back to install the stuff in there, so it had to be emptied. As they will live upstairs, the obvious place to put the cooker and fridge, weighing 130 and 150kg respectively, is upstairs, but we don’t have stairs at the moment. So Nick and Kieran rigged up a system to move them, using ladders, ratchet straps and a lot of brute strength, with me to position the wedges. It was a relief when we’d finished; now they’ve done the chape on the floor, when it’s dry we can tile it.

At the gite owned by the cycle club, they’re putting up an extension, but to keep costs down, club members are helping. Nick was asked to help Richard hang a door today; he said he wouldn’t be long, but………..  2 hours later, he returned, delighted to have discovered that Richard, a retired menuisier (carpenter), has a massive workshop, with huge planers, band saws and all the other boys’ toys that Nick hankers after. I suspect he might be going round there to play quite often.

Looking back over recent posts on my blog, there seem to be quite a lot of pictures of people eating! I’m afraid that it’s just one of the penalties of living here; food is very important to people, as it sharing a good meal with friends.

New Year’s Eve was no exception to this general rule. The cycle club was holding its annual reveillon, so we went along. It was a smaller affair than the Caupenne one of the last two years, but 34 people, cyclists and non-cyclists alike, had booked in. Jeanneau, who cooks for the monthly dinners, did us proud, with a seafood starter, comprising huge plates of oysters, king prawns, bulots (sea snails?) and clams; I’m not a fan of seafood, but managed a few oysters and a couple of prawns that Nick prepared for me; however, one clam was more than enough and I got as far as extracting a bulot from its shell before deciding there was no way that was going in my mouth! The next course was avocado with tuna mayonnaise, followed by ris de veau in a mushroom sauce, then a trou Gascon, a lemon sorbet served in white armagnac, to refresh the palate. By the time we got this far, it was fast approaching midnight, so there was a break before we tackled the main course of quail wrapped in bacon. As midnight struck, so the kissing started; everybody had to kiss everybody else on both cheeks, blokes included. It got to the stage of being difficult to remember who you’d kissed and who you hadn’t! Midnight out of the way, it was back to the serious task of eating; the main course was followed by cheese and salad, then omelette Norvegienne (baked Alaska), coffee and armagnac. A good job the meal was spread over 4 hours!

Our French has improved enormously since we arrived here and I’m frequently asked to translate for Philippa, another English cyclist. We were doing quite well, having discussed the antics of Gerard Depardieu, France’s answer to Oliver Reed and who, I read recently, “is affectionately known as Gégé”. Well I don’t know which Frenchman the journalist asked, I’ve yet to meet a French man or woman who regards him with anything other than utter contempt! But we came unstuck when Joseph started to talk about his favourite films, starring somebody whose name sounded like Low-ray-lardy. He couldn’t believe we’d never heard of this megastar and the discussion soon developed into an impromptu game of charades, until the penny finally dropped – Laurel and Hardy!

We got home at 3o’clock, feeling that 2014 could be a very good year.

2013 has been a year of ups and downs, but aren’t they all? It was the year in which Gemma separated from her husband, Johnny, but Kieran met his girlfriend, Alice, who’s lovely.

Highlights included Nick cycling Mont Ventoux, the giant of Provence, three times in 24 hours and our trip to Zaragoza at Easter. I started teaching, mostly French to the English, but also some English to the French and I joined an Irish band.

But most of our energy this year has gone into building our new house; with the help of Joel, the builder and Didier, the electrician, we’ve made enormous progress towards realising our dream. It seems to move at a snail’s pace, but when we look back at what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months, it’s really quite impressive, though I say it myself. Especially so as this was the year in which winter lasted until the end of June, we nearly lost a cement lorry and a digger in the swamp of a back garden and Joel refused to come back till it stopped raining! Nick, being totally incapable of sitting still, has built the plinths to put the beams on, that will support the roof of the abri and finished off the joists in the chaufferie today. He can’t do any of the big jobs at the moment as Kieran’s not around.

We hope to be able to move in sometime in 2014 and start renting out our current home as a gite; just to add extra incentive, we’ve invited the whole family for Christmas next year.

So I wish anyone reading this a very happy New Year; I hope it will turn out to be a good one for you.

Christmas Eve

Invited to Alice’s (Kieran’s girlfriend’s) parents, to meet them and the rest of the family (brothers, uncles, aunts, etc., etc.) I needn’t have been nervous after all, as we sat down to aperos of foie gras and smoked salmon, followed by a delicious dinner of lobster, chapon, cepes, to name but a few of the tasty morsels served. We had intended to go to Adrian and Julie’s that night, but as dinner went on till midnight and there was still the opening of presents to do, we took Alice up on her kind offer of a bed for the night, finally crawling in at around 2am.

Christmas Day

Spent the morning at Adrian and Julie’s, making sausages out of the bits of turkey (3kg) left over when Adrian jointed our one and his three giant birds. One batch made with added smoked belly pork, the other with apricots and cajun spice. All that hard work left us ready for a traditional Christmas lunch, courtesy of the Emperor himself. Then a walk in the lovely Christmas sunshine, a film, bits and nibbles, followed by two more films!

Boxing Day

Woke to hail lashing the windows, so what else was there to do but wait till Kieran joined us, then tuck into a full Blue Peter English, including, of course, the sausages we’d made earlier. Played some guitar, watched another film, then the annual sandwich-making competition, where you have to put some of every item on the Christmas Day menu into a sandwich; not easy with rice cakes! Thanks, Ade and Julie, for another fantastic Christmas.

December 27th

Realised I’d left my handbag at Ade’s, so we met them in Pau to collect it. A wander around the town proved enchanting, as we ambled through the Christmas Village and on to the Christmas market where a jazz band was playing. It was ridiculously warm (21ºC) and sunny, with amazing views of the mountains as we drank tisane and hot chocolate at a pavement café, listening to the band.

I’ve a horrible feeling I may be making Christmas dinner next year, the first time in many years; I hope I can live up to the standards that have been set!

Christmas is a-comin’, the goose is getting fat,

I’d put it on the table, but Nick won’t hear of that!

Having done battle with the goose again this morning, when I had to go into the hen run and it repeatedly attacked me, I would be more than happy to serve goose for Christmas dinner. But Nick’s very attached to Herman/Hermione, so I’m not allowed!

The heating man finally turned up last week, drew lines all over the insulation, then covered the lines up with heating pipes; the chape will go down after Christmas. This meant it was time for us to choose floor tiles. It doesn’t sound like too difficult a task, after all, there are loads of tiles to choose from, so we headed to Pau. Three shops later and we still hadn’t seen anything we liked; there were a few that we thought would do, but nothing that really grabbed us.

We decided to go to Spain, where we’d been told tiles are much cheaper; Nick seemed to be under the impression that we’d cross the border and there’d be wall-to-wall tile shops – wrong! After visiting Irun and finding not one tile shop, we headed to San Sebastian; a beautiful town, but so busy that we couldn’t even find a parking space, so we came home, disappointed.

Next stop Mont de Marsan, followed by Condom and Auch; I lost count of the number of shops we visited, but saw nothing we really liked. Well, that’s not strictly true, but as we don’t have €10 000 to spend on floor tiles, they didn’t count!

So back to Pau, where we found another shop, recently opened, and where we found tiles that fitted all our requirements; multi-sized, tone with the kitchen cupboard doors, but a slightly darker shade, hard wearing and within our price range. We even got a 20% discount! At 125 square metres, putting them down isn’t going to be a quick task, but I’m sure we’ll manage eventually.

When not driving round the country, tile-hunting, we had the band Christmas party. Everyone took food and drink; we took mulled wine, a Christmas pudding and a microwave to warm them up in; and had a great fun, if very silly, evening.

To anyone reading this, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

It was the walking club’s last walk of the year on Sunday and we went out in style, visiting la Ronde des Creches at the other end of the Gers. Several villages all build Christmas cribs which are open to visitors 24 hours a day from mid-December to mid-January. Each year has a different theme, this year’s being the books of Jules Verne, so each village chose a book and decorated their crib accordingly. They must take months to build, mostly made of papier maché, but some with water features and moving parts, they’re really creative. The cribs themselves seemed to be incidental to the whole thing, mostly being stuck in a corner of the creations, though this doesn’t seem to bother the 25000 or so people who come to visit each year. There are stands selling hot drinks, honey and other local produce in most of the villages, giving the event something of a festival atmosphere.

It was barely light and very frosty when we climbed onto the bus for the two hour drive to the canton (a collection of villages) of Miradoux. The scenery en route was  breathtaking , the early morning mist beginning to burn off the fields, the rivers and the forests as the sun rose in a clear blue sky and the temperature started to rise. It’s a lovely area, rolling hills and valleys, with most of the villages being perched on the tops of the hills, a throw back to the wars of religion in the 14th century, when they were all fortified to keep out the enemy. We visited the first creche then did our walk, visiting another two creches in villages en route, followed by lunch, then back onto the bus to visit the rest. The sun was setting by the time we left the last one and headed back to Nogaro, having had a very pleasant day.

The weather’s been so lovely this week, with cold, clear, frosty nights and gloriously warm, sunny days, that it would have been a shame to stay indoors. So Nick and Kieran took themselves off to the wood yard to choose the wood for the balcony; they decided on acacia as it is very hard and doesn’t rot, in fact it’s what they use to make the stakes in vineyards. Three trailer-loads later, we had all we needed.

Just as the living room floor is going to be 3cm higher than originally planned, so the balcony needed raising by the same amount, so they cut strips to go along the beams, then put the floorboards on top of them. It actually looks really good, just as if it was planned from the start. Come the spring I’ll get round to lasuring it, but in the meantime, it’s great to be able to sit out in the December sun, for tea and cakes or a beer!

The heating man came for a couple of days and has put down most of the insulation, but there wasn’t enough for the ground floor, so heaven only knows when he’ll be back…….