What once was

I suppose it was inevitable but it was still hard to see the last house at L’Horte pulled down last week. What once stood proudly for centuries, over-looking the land that started out as the market garden for the Abbey in St-Hilaire, is now left with nothing more than its foundations. All that is left is there for the archeologists to poke around in, everything Pop had renovated – gone in a matter of days. Still, sad as it is, at least now that the digger and excavator crews have left, the place is peaceful once again and doing what it’s supposed to do. Be a market garden with Nicolas and Severine taking care of it all. Nicolas has promised me he’ll try and save Mumo’s peace rose that used to climb up the terrace, my brother Moth asked me if I could grab a few of the building’s cornerstones. I might be fit but I’m not a weightlifter thank you very much.

The old homestead at L’Horte hasn’t been the only receptacle to be drained of life these past few days. Despite Roy and I fixing the probable cause of the bloody pool’s leak, the algae has refused to budge. Running the pumps for several hours at a time and adding diluted chlorine hasn’t fazed the diabolical sludge so I’ve given up trying and the water plus its contents are now draining over the garden. I dread to think what’s living in those murky depths and it’ll be me getting in and cleaning the damn thing. Then Roy and I will fill the vast space with nicely spiced chlorine concentrated eau and put the cover back on until the summer. Another job ticked off the list.

Said list is getting shorter by the day. Denis and I have been toiling all hours of the day to get through it. The carport is cleared and brother Simon has got his car in it without hitting the sides, the tractor shed wall is now painted, I cleared all the weeds from the outside verge and the pool deck now has a fresh coat of preserve. Annoyingly, I only noticed the bit I missed after I’d cleaned the brushes but since the spot is on the margelle otherwise known as the under edge of the deck, I’m not going to say anything. And it wasn’t just the two of us making a difference, Paula, also known as the ‘Oven Queen’ came over for her yearly visit to sparkle up our stoves and catch up on news. Not only is Paula a genius but great fun to be around too and she doesn’t mind the woofers underfoot either.

Just as well as the apartment is getting more crowded by the minute. I’ve brought up one of my armchairs so I can finish the upholstering and I’ve got two saddles waiting to be returned to Le Jardin. I spied them lying dejected and dried out on one of the tables in what will soon be the refurbished bar and restaurant. With a lot of elbow grease and saddle soap, they are now ready to ride. Or as I have decided, become bar stools. I’ll be back down at Le Jardin in the coming week to help Abraham split and replant the seedlings I carefully poked into little pots of earth last month. He’s got enough to do and I weirdly like the work – it’s peaceful and doesn’t require stressing out the brain cells. Not that my life is that stressful except the evening tap tapping away at The Second Book. I’m so close to the end and my muse keeps going to sleep. It doesn’t help that this opus has a lot more factual information than the last one and trawling through pages of research isn’t my idea of fun. And with Spring arriving as the clocks have gone forward, I’d rather be outside talking to my tomatoes than banging my fingers on a keyboard. They are sprouting nicely in case you were worried, better than Denis’ – he’s managed to burn half of his because he put them too close to his barbecue. The same barbecue that will be the star of attention at tomorrow’s Maybon family get-together (D’s family that is) on the petanque ground down the road. The same one, if you remember last year’s, that the giant omelette is traditionally made for. The one laced with sugar and rum. Thankfully D had come to terms with my feelings about this curdled cultural congelation and I won’t have to eat it. The thing looks like a paler version of what I’m emptying the pool. I’m no fool…

“April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks: Go (Christopher Morley)

The wheel of life

It’s been a week of catching up with old friends and sadly, the loss of a little one too. Willy, my tiny Roborovski hamster passed away quietly on Wednesday night. I can’t say we had a very tactile relationship in the almost 3 years we spent together but he knew my voice and I had gotten used to the monotonous sound of his exercise wheel squeaking throughout the sleepy hours. Denis and I buried him in the new flowerbed under the apartment frontage – his little house marking his grave. I didn’t add the wheel, his spirit might wake the neighbours.

Speaking of neighbours or should I say, the neighbourhood, everyone’s been out in their gardens over the past few days to soak up the glorious early Spring warmth. Mowers humming and beer caps popping as shorts were pulled out of drawer depths – they’ll be returned to their winter lodgings tomorrow however as we are set for a wet and windy week ahead. Just in time for the Easter Weekend. I have to keep reminding myself that March winds and April showers are to be expected and we still really need the rain but I do prefer flip flops to work boots. The short burst of sunshine however has given my tomatoes a boost – they may be tortoises but slow and steady they rise. And I managed to make a start on painting the tractor house wall, luckily I’m taller than D so he’s only got the top of the wall to do – unless I sneak out the ladder whilst he’s not looking. We’ve shot through our to-do list mind you, ambient temperatures and blue sky abundance tend to get the work done – I just wish I’d decided to the pool leak last Thursday instead of the one coming. Ah well, wetsuit it is.

And with the nights more on the cool than chilly side, I hosted a dinner party out on the terrace on Friday evening. Denis cooked a traditional chicken and olive stew and I provided the vegetarian tatin de tomates. Sixteen were very well-fed and equally, well drunk and all had a thoroughly good evening. I only wish that I could have had everyone over last night instead as my good friend and once grooming mentor arrived yesterday for a stopover on her way to her holiday home near Málaga in Spain. It’s been wonderful to see Heidi again after almost 9 years and to meet her stunning Standard Poodle Tiffany and travel gal pal Lindy. Naturally they’ve had a guided tour of Rouffiac d’Aude, which takes all of 15 minutes and a drive around Carcassonne to see La Cité and St-Hilaire to see the Abbaye de St-Hilaire. We didn’t do any actually walking around as Tiffany is a little on the shy side but the views seem to impress her human counterparts. I do love having visitors and being able to show off this little corner of France (subtle hint to all those who keep promising to pop in, ahem).

As mentioned, Easter is almost upon us and then it’ll be April and hopefully, Spring. This year seems to be whizzing by or perhaps I’m just getting old. I still have another 5 chapters to finish which I’d like to get done before the summer so I can put the wretched thing in the hands of the experts to refine so to speak. It’s not that I don’t like writing it, it’s just that I have itchy feet and want to get on with other projects – ones that don’t require so many brain cells. On the subject of itchy feet, Callum’s is much better he tells me so he’s off being touristy for a couple of weeks around Taz before getting back into the work mode. Life’s all about getting the right balance and getting off the hamster wheel…

““Friendship’s the wine of life.” ( Edward Young)

Parenting skills

Being a parent is not an easy job but I do think some are more in tune with the basics of bringing up kids than others. Take Mr and Mrs Pratt, the pigeon couple for example, versus Bert and Skirt Magpie. Every year, these pairs come back to build their nests and raise their families – Bert and Skirt choosing the safety of the giant cedar tree and the Pratts, well they’ve decided this year to move from the terrace overhang to the gutter above. The woofers have already had one fledgling that had fallen out of the narrow nursery and then I heard another scrabbling around in the bottom of the drainpipe. There was no way I could take the tube apart which broke my heart but I blame the parents. How the population of pigeons keeps growing, is a baffling question considering their ideas on progeny production. At least my offspring is back in touch again having disappeared into the Tasmanian wilderness for a couple of weeks. I do try not to worry but hey, I’m a Mum and what doesn’t help is when he tells me half an hour into our conversation that he’s been in hospital. All that larking about in the forest ended up with an infected foot – infected no doubt because he didn’t have access to my motherly smothering. Serves him right as he can’t go climbing up any mountains or kayaking off waterfalls until the doc says so.

Mind you, I did have to swing into nurse mode last week after Neo managed to acquire a deep gash on his left side. I’ve no idea how he managed to make such a mess of himself but since vet visits and Neo do not mix well, a bit of home TLC seems to be doing the trick. He might look sweet but he’s got a mean bite where distrust is concerned. Plus, the late great Keith Butt taught me well when it comes to open wounds on dogs – stitching it up would not be the best practice, infections are better out than in.

I’m sure the change in the weather is helping Neo’s recovery, the sun has come out and the temperature is suitably pleasant for this time of year. Denis and I have been busy getting through the long list of garden projects, he’s even started clearing his own plot – working on everyone else’s greenery hasn’t given him any time for his own. I didn’t even know he had a gate at the back of the property such was the overgrowth. Our terrain however, is beginning to look very Spring-like – I’ve finished painting Denis’ old trailer that he wanted to throw away, Bella will now carry strawberries and marigolds instead of rusting away in some corner of a dump. And we’ve started on the stone wall that will hopefully transform the flowerbed below the front of the apartment. I say we but realistically, D’s doing most of the hard graft whilst I play with the flowers.

Of course, there is still much to do. There are the daily chores; cleaning up after the woofers, tending the ‘allotment’ and battling the ever-present algae that is slowly beginning to dissipate from what water remains in the pool depths. Hopefully, having bought some dye from the piscine shop in Carcassonne where D’s son works (we get a discount yay!), we’ve found where the leak is most likely to lie. I was right, next to the pool steps. Next week, I’ll have the joy of fixing that imperceptible irritation – I just hope the wetsuit still fits. And speaking of dinky dramas, there is hope in the air. My timid tomatoes have finally decided to reach for the sky! Okay, they’ve a long way to go if they are going to catch up with Denis’ mini monsters but I’m very proud of my brood. It’s tough being a parent but watching all you have carefully nurtured grow upwards is all you could ever want. Unless you’re a pigeon…

“When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ It is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to do it anyway.” (Erma Bombeck)

Busying away the blah

I started the weekend in a somewhat filthy mood. It would have been easy to surmise that the blame for my dour demeanour should be placed solely on Callum’s departure on Thursday but he wasn’t the only guilty one. All my friends seem to be down with either a cold, the flu or a mixture of both since the New Year started so life has suddenly gone a bit blah. It doesn’t help that the main house is now empty of its family save Mumo now that all have returned to their own nests and everything seems strangely silent right now. It’s as though the party has been boxed up and put away until the warmer seasons creep in – all a bit depressing really. Mind you, a few months of semi-solitude will be good for me – there’s a book that won’t write itself and several pieces of furniture needing my attention let alone the garden. Denis and I are excitedly awaiting my Christmas present from Mumo, a serre (a sort of mix between a greenhouse and a poly tunnel) so we can start growing little seedlings before letting them out into the big wide potager.

Yes, my own not-so-little seedling has flown back across the vast seas to South Oz. I’m already missing him like crazy and I’m not the only one. The bedside lamp socket in Mumo’s bedroom decided to go on the blink as soon as the only electrically-capable family member left the country and neither Mumo or I can figure out how to get the filter out of her fridge to replace it. The night before he left, Cal and sat up in the apartment talking about our lives and Tony. I know I say it a thousand times a second but I am so proud of our boy. Considering how much he has gone through, he has turned into a confident, knowledgeable and sensitive young man. Driving to the airport on Thursday afternoon, I noticed him fiddling with my phone – it wasn’t until I got back to the car after dropping him off at the departure gate that I realised he’d synced his music playlist with mine. He has excellent taste in tunes. And as much as it tore at my heart waving good-bye to my gorgeous grown up son, there was also the worry about how he’d cope with the flight this time i.e. would he spend the entire time throwing up again or would my theory prove correct and the drugs would do their thing. It seems my research paid off and he landed with stomach intact – it wasn’t air sickness he was suffering from, it was altitude sickness. I’ll speak to him during the week when the jet lag dissipates.

With the weather reminding us what winter is all about last week, save the snow that was promised but never arrived, I kept myself busy hammering little gold nails into one of my current renovations, lop-sidedly I might add, whilst Denis planted a whole slew of giant cacti on the verge outside. One of the village residents had one too many growing in his garden so Denis went over and did a bit of uprooting and self-harm. With arms looking like he’d been hooked on heroin, scratched and pot-holed – my brave man repositioned the horned demons into their new habitat which I hope will stop the dog from round the corner attacking my lot through the front fence. I’m actually rather fond of such spiky sculptures and our new frontage has gotten many a thumbs-up from the locals. Apart from said dog that is.

Oh and by the way, I did eventually succeed in making a podcast on Spotify. A day late. I had set everything up and lines ready, hit record, did my spiel and pressed the publish button. Except said button refused to comply and my Ipad almost ended up in next-door’s garden. Temper flaring, I took the bloody thing over to Cal who promptly fiddled with it for two seconds and bingo, my podcast flew off into the ether that is media. I’ll have another go this evening as Callum is 9 hours ahead and I don’t want to wake him up when I can’t press the button again. Did I tell you what an amazingly gifted child I have?…

“Behind every great kid is a mom who’s pretty sure she’s screwing it up.” (Anon)

An album in mind

For some reason yesterday, as I was stretching purple velour over the base of a chair whilst trying not to get stabbed by a disagreeable pin frantic for freedom, I’d set the living room speakers to play 1990’s Britpop at volume. As I sang along to Oasis, Blur and the rest, snapshots of times spent partying with friends in London and dancing round the kitchen with Tony screened through my mind- it’s funny how music does that. I didn’t upset me or make me hanker for the old days, I rarely reminisce about such things unless I’m writing The Second Book and that, just like the first opus, is like writing about someone else. Perhaps getting the little chest that I kept a few souvenirs of his father’s in down from the attic for Callum to go through had triggered my music choice, who knows but I still know all the words to Wonderwall.

Maybe jumping into a new year had something to do with my brief slip into days gone by although it wasn’t so much as a leap as a crawl. There’s been a bug going round town and most of the remaining family were starting to suffer with it by New Years Eve. With the main house filled with the sound of noses being parped and throats hacking, Denis and I left the sad party to see in 2024 upstairs. I barely made to the Bonne Année bit before dropping off, the exhaustion of the last couple of weeks catching up with me. And with my niece Katie and her brother Louis flying off last Thursday, the L’Horte Four (if you haven’t read the book, I’m not elaborating) are down to 2. Two that will be leaving us next week, one for Chad and the other for Australia. I’m trying not to think about that one. It wasn’t so long ago that each of them would have been going back to school, now they all have jobs requiring their return. Katie’s gone back to her lab, Louis to his square pianos and will be followed by Max off for his wildlife and Callum to his growing number of trades in the building industry. Denis outshone himself with a deliciously decadent tagine last night especially for Max and Callum which I’m sure won’t be forgotten for a while – it has certainly been a holiday for the photo albums.

Speaking of albums, today marks the 5th anniversary of this here blog. Half a decade of Sunday writings to which I have all of you to thank. Of course, I’ll keep up the weekly posts but I’m going to attempt to add a podcast too. Knowing my ineptitude towards anything vaguely technological, I’ve no idea whether it’ll work but I’m willing to have a crack at it. I’ll put a link on the Facebook site when I figure it all out.

So now as the decorations are back in the garage and the fairy lights carefully wrapped so they can tangle themselves all over again, life is slowly getting back to normal. The balmy temperatures of Christmas have been replaced with near-zeros and between the bitterly cold wind whipping across my terrace and the pelting rain, even the hardiest of woofers, Sherman, wants to stay indoors and curl up on my bed. Apparently we might have snow arriving over the next few days. Whoopee. Ah well, it’s only 4 months until Spring…

“The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer.” (Vita Sackville-West)