That Français feeling

It’s that dreaded time of year. Not because we are at the end of August and therefore summer, worse almost – the tax man arriveth. Yes, down here we empty our bank accounts in October and are graced with a flurry of email reminders lest one forgets. I usually do. Still, if my plans for Witch Wackle are to be put in action, I’m going to have to be a little more organised in the paperwork department. That and I have to get another SIRET, basically a number that registers your business with the afore-mentioned tax man. I have one for the Montpelier property as it’s in retirement apartment complex. I was discussing this the other day with Adolphe, local Del Boy and my good friend who is banging on at me to sell my wares in Carcassonne and had bought over a rather lovely butler sink for my one day new workshop. I was a little worried as to whether or not I would be allowed to trade professionally being a Brit and all and with the Brexit boundaries but Adolphe just scoffed. “You speak French and you pay your dues, yes?”. Well, the latter definitely I replied, secretly pleased that he noted my grasp of the lingo, of which my pal decided, was enough to get my foot through the door and made me practically born here. I did further point out that I have yet to comprehend most of what I need to fill out on official forms but that was rebuffed as well. According to Adolphe, neither do French people and that’s why we have Google.

Mind you, I could be forgiven for thinking I’d missed the deadline judging by the weather last week. I know I said we needed rain desperately but that much? The garden’s started to turn green again and I had to delve into the depths of my drawers to find a sweater it was that cool. I say cool as 23 degrees is quite balmy to most but not when you’ve been in double that for the last three months. The sun has been out again this weekend thankfully but I feel the pool is unlikely to have bodies in it this year unless they are practicing for a swim across the English Channel. The bloody thing could have been usable if we had the chance to put the summer cover over but that decaying piece of plastic was what caused the problem with the pump – its deposits bunged up the filter. Since none of us want to shell out for a new bâche with this place up for sale and the season pretty much over anyway, the waters shall remain devoid of human life. Arry isn’t human and doesn’t compute cold water.

So tomorrow is the start of a new month and all too soon the heady days of summer will drift off into memory. Or maybe not quite yet. According to the local météo, that being the daily chat in the épicerie, another heatwave is bound to descend on us before Autumn rolls in. I’d dropped in to put up a new display for the season ahead and got the warning. I do hope so as I still have a lot of shell craft to peddle, not helped by a recent visit to Limoux’s recycling emporium ending up with me acquiring a sizeable chunk of cowries. I wouldn’t have bought them except that there was another lady eyeing them up and such a cheap steal wasn’t going to pass me by. That and she was English, which for some reason brought on the urge to grab them on the spot as well as several other bits and bobs under her visual. As we walked out of the shop, Denis started laughing. “Ma Chèrie, you are definitely turning French”…

““Summer should get a speeding ticket.” (Unknown)

Bartering and blowouts

Excuse me for the delay with this week’s blog but I’ve been out peddling my wares on main street all day. Yup today was Rouffiac d’Aude’s annual vide grenier which translates as emptying the attic or in another way, a car boot sale. Okay, so we didn’t rake in the dough but Denis made a decent dent in his tool collection including two pool pumps (he doesn’t have a pool) and I sold one of three microwaves, a few trinkets, a very nice child’s cot, a couple of bits of clothing and a hamster cage. For some reason the promenading ladies weren’t sold on my 4plus inch high shoe collection (they are English shoes hence the Imperial measurement) but frankly, I couldn’t blame them. Trying to walk down the local rues without breaking an ankle is hard enough in flats before you’ve had a drink – cobbles and all. Still, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day spent chatting with the other stall holders, most of which Denis and I know well even if they were clearly better experts at pulling in the punters. There was a brief scare when a group of kids thought a house was being broken into so the manly men, including D, shot off round the corner only to find the proprietor stuck in his window – he’d lost his keys and was a little larger than said aperture.

Considering the weather over the past week, it has actually been a pretty decent weekend which was just as well as Denis and I have spent most of it wining and dining with friends. Put it this way, I haven’t needed to drag the hose out once and what remains of water in the pool is now a nice shade of army green. And we’ve managed to finish the potager extension thanks to the heavens above – digging out three gazillion rocks is much easier when the temperature sits well below 30 and the soil doesn’t resemble concrete. But it is weird. Normally we’d still be sweltering for at least another month but right now I’m delving through my sock drawer, pulling out woolies and porting a parapluie. However, according to the daily gossip down at the epicerie, there’s another blast of heat coming our way before Autumn sets in and local folks are rarely wrong. Mind you, such a brief taste of next season might be good for my other half as I’ve just booked our plane tickets – we’re off to the UK at the end of October and it’s his first visit. Actually, it’s his first visit anywhere on a plane holding his first ever passport.

Speaking of flying visits, I got to introduce D to a couple of friends of mine earlier in the week as we joined them for dinner at a pizzeria in St-Hilaire. Only it hadn’t got any pizza so we had duck instead. Some of you may remember the wedding I set up for Joshua and Jacey from Colorado in the vineyard up the road last year. They have a house yet to be lived in permanently a few minutes from Rouffiac so were shooting through to do a few repairs before whizzing off again. An all too brief reunion but they’ll be back in a few months and we’ve promised to take them out on town Rouffiac style. Which is exactly what Denis and I have been up to the past few days.

Friday started with a traditional Paella lunch over at amis Adolphe and Sarah’s home and wow, what a feast. The dish was huge, spilling over with aromatic rice, fresh seafood and chunks of pork – as the Catalans do I was emphatically informed. All groaningly gorgeous. Thankfully, considering the size of my belly after that, the evening was all about the last night of Le Bistrot which also marked the end of summer as the kids have all gone back at school. I bopped and bounced along to the sounds of an Indie/punk band – flippin’ brilliant although I think the music may not have been to everyone’s taste. Hah, I rocked the clubs back in the early 90’s and Callum keeps me up to date with all the latest tunes so I am somewhat an aficionado of the genre groove . And I got rid of enough calories to inhale down the most delicious, beautifully designed canapés made by our pal Michel for his wife’s birthday do the next day, served on Michel’s hand-made platters before D and I finished our Saturday groaning over brother Simon’s barbecued lamb. As much as I miss the warmth of September sunshine, my body is telling me otherwise – now might be a good time to get back up those hills and run before I end up buying back the wardrobe I sold because it was too big for me…

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.” (Orson Welles)

September supplements

There’s nothing quite like a decent drenching to welcome in a new month so hello September. Okay, I know it’s not technically the end of summer and experience has taught me that we are more than likely to have another heatwave or two before the winter but I am looking forward to seeing the back of this season gone. A statement I shall no doubt regret when the woolies get dragged out from under my bed and muddy paw prints embed themselves over the tiled floors once more. As I write this, Denis is stuck between here and the South Coast having spent the weekend celebrating his great-niece’s baptism, he’s somewhere in the lanes of traffic trying to get home after the long school holiday – I was invited to the celebration but with no-one to mind the dogs or D’s animals, I got out of it. Mercifully judging by the pictures of stagnant autoroutes.

Speaking of D’s brood, there’s been an addition to his non-human family. Gaya the dog, Dolly the cat, Caesar the canary and Gypsy the semi-feral hedgehog have been joined by a tortoise. Denis found him wandering around the front garden and with no-one posting reward posters for the safe return of their roaming reptile, decided to adopt the little creature. The male tortue is as yet still without a name although I have suggested Captain Hilts due to the number of escape attempts. Who knew an animal fabled for its slowness could scale his fenced enclosure so fast? I have to admit I have grown rather fond of Denis’ new companion although having one of my own is out of the question – Arry’s obsession with rocks for starters and Sherman’s penchant for getting into mischief when it comes to anything not canine related for seconds. I accidentally stood on the remains of a hedgehog skin the other day and boy, do those prickles hurt. However it must be said that this one was not a victim of my youngest woofer, these adorable looking spiny mammals regularly murder each other I’m reliably informed.

It’s not that Sherman is a natural born killer, unlike his mum who can rid several hectares of rats in seconds but he is a big lad. A recent trip to the vets with both for their annual jabs had him tipping the scales at a whopping 12 kilos, 4 kilos heavier than Mama Alice. Mind you, as the vet pointed out, my gorgeous lump of a Border terrier is pure muscle – hardly surprising considering he’s best mates with my idiotic German Shepherd.

With Denis being away, I’ve had to do a bit of bicep-flexing myself to hoist the re-conditioned petanque bench into its new home court side. The once tired looking wooden seat is now stripped and varnished and the iron work painted green, typical for the style. It’s a shame all the family have left now that the holidays are over so there’s no-one to enjoy its luxury but I’m sure we’ll have a few more fêtes with friends before the winter comes. And now that almost all the summer jobs have been completed, I can look forward to a new list of ‘to-dos’ – there’s the new extended potager to plant out, the saga of my life needs a second drafting, the outside staircase needs re-painting, the walnuts and almond trees to be harvested, the village map to finish mapping and the old pool liner to replace. Summer’s over kids…

“The end-of-summer winds make people restless.” (Sebastian Faulks)