A corner of France

Pots - 3 The Volcano Pot

2012-02-09T05:18:00.000-08:00

We saw the millenium in watching the fireworks on Waikiki Beach on the island of Oahu, part of the Hawaiian Island chain. The holiday was a special treat celebrating not only the millenium itself but also a successful business transaction earlier in the year.

As part of the trip we stayed on Big Island, and there we went to see the volcano Kilauea that was erupting at the time. The lava was flowing from a fissure in the side, down to the sea, and we went in the evening as it got dark, since that's when the red hot glow of the lava is seen to best effect.

The national Park that is Kilauea is open after dark, but the wardens go home, leavng the tourists to visit unguarded. They did insist that we buy battery torches and water to drink, since the walk was about a kilometer and the groud hot and stifling.

Walking to the hot flow over the solidified lava was an experience in itself. The surface was rumpled, rather as if large barrels had been scattered all over the landscape: you were continually dropping into small crevices and climbing back out again. And touching the rocks was a bad idea: the silicon crystals were razor sharp: I touched the surface one time to experience it, and it felt like rough sand over a hard surface, but when I looked at my hand a couple of minutes later, it was covered in blood where the crystals had penetrated the skin.

Once you got to the laval you could stand just a couple of meters from the edge of the flow, looking into the angry pulsating red, feeling the heat and breathing the sulphurous fumes it was giving off. Where the red blanket flowed over the cliff to the sea, wave after wave would come, dissipating into huge spouts of steam on contact, but without any visible effect on the lava that stayed red, flowing unhindered into the water.

This pot we found a few months later back in England, at a craft fair completely unrelated to our break. But the rough surface of the raku, plus the swirling colours around the base capture the experience of the volcano. The artist evaporated copper filings onto the pot during the casting, letting the vapours swirl where they would, just like the lava, Nature making its own patterns.

2012-02-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

Like most people in this part of the world we've had a bit of a cold snap. But despite the Siberian weather, this little indoor plant, a gift from my sister, is flowering unperturbed in the conservatory.

Magnatune dot com

2012-01-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

I like Magnatune. They are an independent record label, releasing music across a broad specturm of styles. You can find their website here. I got one of their emails this morning alerting me to a new web-based music player that plays their catalogue. It's excellent, a good piece of programming. This link takes you to a Jazz/Tango album that I partularly like.

I have always found the quality of their recordings and musicianship to be exceptional. And if you take out a subscription, the ads disappear, you can stream the music at will from their website, and/or download "all you can eat" in the highest quality formats available. The player below is a bit ordinary in style but it will show you what I mean.

Bonjour Line, et merci

2012-01-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

If you can remember your own childhood, have ever observed children or even watched them playing with Furbies and learning Furbish, you will know that children have an extraordinary capacity for learning language. The last time I read anything about the National Curriculum, it had been recognised that waiting until children reached the age of 12 before starting to teach them foreign languages was a bad idea. I don't know if any change in practice has resulted, though.

I was lucky enough to go to an enlightened junior school, and was introduced to French at about age 8 or 9. We were trundled into a special room kitted out with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a projector. The course consisted of pictures being projected onto a screen and the corresponding speech being played from the tape. It was a graphic novel, with the speech bubbles replaced by audio. We looked, listened and repeated. The teacher explained the vocabulary and went into aspects of grammar as they arose, but as far as we were concerned, we were being told a story. We didn't really realise that we were learning anything at the time. The title of the course was "Bonjour Line"

My family moved house part-way through the course, I moved to a different junior school, and I didn't study French again until grammar school. We started again with the same audio-visual concept, topping it off with two years of book-based French grammar, taking us to the "O" levels.

After "O" levels, I didn't make any effort to maintain my French skills. But 33 years later, on moving to France, I was able to make myself understood, could talk reasonably fluently and had a vocabulary sufficient for ordinary purposes. I put this entirely down entirely to the Bonjour Line course: the German that I also studied to "O" level has almost entirley disappeared.

I have never found anything better than the concept of listen and repeat for improving my French. The nearest thing to the Bonjour Line course that I have found is the graphic novel, although the speech bubbles are witten rather than spoken. I find that the combination of pictures, storyline and context mean that it is easier to remember new vocabulary as it is presented.

For speaking practice, there are various publications in which an audio version of the text is presented. I used to use a publication "Champs Elisées" now no longer available, that offered commentary on French current affairs, culture, history, tourism and other things. A free piece of software called Audacity allows you to slice the speech up into manageable pieces, and will replay them as often as you like while you practice repeating it correctly.

My enjoyment of the graphic novel has been rewarding in itself. I am reading an excellent adaptation of the story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Pilip K Dick, that was also the idea behind the film Blade Runner. The book is much more profound and subtle than the film (as is often the case). The graphic novels behind the film "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" are similarly fascinating, and I am delighted by my graphic bio of Jimi Hendrix. I am now reading The Watchmen, in English this time. And so the ripples spread.

Songs of the Auvergne

2012-01-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

Up until last weekend, all that I knew about the Auvergne is that it's in France somewhere, and Canteloube notated and orchestrated some traditional songs from that area. They are in the language of occitan, and quite exquisite; here's a couple.

The Auvergne is a Région of France, within the bounds of the massif central. This is a volcanic area that has been active for over 65 milion years, with short, sometimes cataclysmic eruptions, lasting from a few weeks to a couple of years. This leads to the curious fact that although the volcanoes have been, and remain, active over this period, they are usually, as today, dormant. We went there last weekend, with the Harmonie of Ste Suzanne, on a long weekend break, to laze about, explore and ski.

We stayed at Super Besse, a purpose-built, modern ski resort arranged around a volcanic caldera and lake. The weather wasn't ideal for skiing, being windy with a cloud base that could close in from time to time, and not much snow. But there was plenty of skiing to be done, and there were more skiable pistes than we had time to explore while we were there. I came the traditional cropper, launched into the air on a corner by an unnoticed hummock: a small explosion of snow and skiing kit, then a slow face-first deceleration down the mountainside. Followed by the usual concerned enquiries and retrieval of equipment by passers-by.

We ate traditional local food that seems to be common to many places with long hard Winters and short Summers: 1,001 things to do with potatoes, cheese, preserved meats and sausages. Still, the company and atmosphere were the main drivers: we ate mostly together and we had a good time. There were shops selling all the traditional foodstuffs, and judging by rather doubtful-looking animal parts in jars, I don't think I want to know what's in the sausages.

Saturday was the pig festival in Besse, the main town a bit farther down the valley. We went as a group to see what was happening. Well, they celebrate the things you can do with a freshly-killed pig, with accompaniment from the local wind bands. They used to slit the throat of The Chosen One in the main square, but today the warm dead pig is wheeled in in a barrow, and turned into... well, anything you can make with pig. This is then consumed into the night.

Our impression of the area is that it is well worth a second visit in the Summer. The scenery is stunning; mountainous and volcanic, with plenty to see and do. There are lots of mountain walks, interesting towns and spectacular views. And assuming that you can find non-traditional restaurants, a week at a time should be do-able. We drove down, giving a lift to other Harmonie members. I'm sure that the smell of their souvenir cheese (St Nectaire) will soon be gone from the car.

Venus

2012-01-18T05:37:00.001-08:00

Half a hole

2012-01-16T23:15:00.000-08:00

Of late, I have been cutting down rather more trees than I have been planting. Whilst I maintain that this is a good thing overall for the trees, I still need to think about replacing them with new ones. This Winter I have invested in a small number of fruit trees that I hope will be productive.

I planted a nectarine and an apricot earlier in the season. Even though people tell me that the weather here is not quite up to what they need, I am banking on global warming to deliver a decent crop over the years. Yesterday I planted one of two apples trees that I have bought. Apples are not self-fertile, so you have to plant two different kinds to cross-pollinate, and I chose Granny Smith and Gala. Granny Smith for cooking and Gala for eating.

It doesn't pay to be in a hurry when you plant a tree, especially here. The soil is full of rocks and stones, and hitting a big one of these can mean you spend the rest of the afternoon trying to hoik it out of the ground. I dedicated yesterday afternoon to planting, and it was the right amount of time.

First, fetch your tree, and decide where you're going to plant it. Put a stake in the ground to mark the spot, and using a spade, clear the turf from around it in a circle of about 1m diameter.

Then dig out the hole to twice the depth of the root ball, and fill it back up with good compost until it is a little deeper than the root ball. Plant the tree and refill the hole with a mix of compost and the soil you have dug out. Make a crater out of the soil so that when you water the tree, the water flows towards, rather than away from, the roots. Water it.

A maths teacher once pointed out to me that you can't have half a hole. He had a good point, (though you can have half a whole, of course) but this hole is half as deep as it needs to be, so I claim disproof by counter-example.

Flowers

2012-01-13T23:36:00.000-08:00

Here we are, January 14th and I have Chaenomeles Japonica, Snowdrops, Primula and Christmas Rose, all out in the garden at the same time.

The Care And Feeding of Young Trees

2012-01-12T04:50:00.001-08:00

Back in the days when I had a proper job, I would drive into London's West End a couple of times a week, for meetings. I would usually arrange to start at 9:00 so I would drive in early, park the car, and organise myself a leisurely breakfast and newspaper in one of the many cafés in the area. I enjoyed watching London wake up and it meant that I was fresh and relaxed for the meetings, rather than fraught after a difficult rush-hour drive.

It had other benefits too, in that I learned to navigate around London and I also discovered the best parking places. My favourite was just off Grosvenor Square, near the US embassy. (Sweet revenge on the Americans, putting their embassy in a place they can never pronounce) In the post-Christmas sales, we would drive in early, park there, hit the sales all day, and stagger home with our haul. Despite the exhorbitant cost of parking, we figured to save enough to more than cover it. I would typically find a decent pair of business brogues, perhaps some casual moccasins as well, maybe an everyday suit, and a few shirts to keep me going. These alone would easily justify the trip but my wife would also gleefully add up how much she had "saved" on her outfits, to maximise the percieved benefits (and to persuade me that it really was worthwhile and that we really ought to go again next year).

The sales in France are generally anaemic. The government dictates when they are allowed to happen, in case presumably, some dastardly shopkeeper wants to unfairly sell things that people want, at prices they find attractive, whenever they feel like it. But as the newspapers point out, French people have been shopping online at the London sales since December 27th, some enterprising shops even offering free delivery to the EU. Not fair! We'll have to get the government to do something about that.

We went to the sales here yesterday. Our catch? One meat mincer, one electric grindstone for sharpening blades, a set of titanium screwdriver bits, a pair of gardening boots for me, a roll of chicken wire and a tree tie. I think I've had a change of lifestyle.

The chicken wire is to protect the bottoms of my newly-planted trees from attack by rabbits and hares. Definitely a change of lifestyle.

P.S. I forgot the two pairs of gardening gloves.

Asparagus bed continued

2012-01-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

The next stage in preparing the new bed for asparagus is to dig it out and generally improve the quality of the soil there. Normally I would just do a double-spit dig, but I have a secondary objective which is to get rid of this huge compost heap that has been lurking in the garden for a few years.

With a double-spit dig, you dig over the ground to two spade-depths, and incorporate compost and manure as you go. But the compost is coming from my heap, and all the good stuff is at the bottom. So if I incorporate it as I go along, the poor compost from the top of the heap will be at one end of the bed and the good stuff will be at the other. I need to spread it all evenly along the length of the bed, so I am digging the bed out as a trench.

Here it is, together with the compost heap that will be buried in it. It's about 2/3 done. I have put the topsoil on the right and the subsoil on the left. You can see that they are quite different colours: the topsoil contains much more organic matter and is a greyish colour, whereas the subsoil is reddish. To add organic matter to the subsoil, I will put the compost in the trench, shovel the subsoil on top and mix it all up with the rotovator. Hopefully this will make for a soil that is fertile to a much greater depth than before.

Fireside cat

2012-01-05T00:49:00.001-08:00

I was given quite a few Christmas presents, and I am grateful for the thought, love and friendship they represent. Without demeaning those other presents that I have recieved, here is a picture of a cast iron cat from my Mum. It sits by the fire, and as well as being decorative, the hollow body neatly hides the matches and door handle for the stove.

Litte sods

2011-12-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

It's a good idea when growing veg, to grow those that you like to eat. I also like the idea of growing fresh veg to cook for gîte visitors, but in fact most of our visitors come in the early half of the year, so it's difficult to have home-grown veg ready in time.

Asparagus is an exception in that it is ready in the early Spring, from April or so, and it has the advantages of being easy to grow and it is quite expensive in the shops. So I am having a go at growing it next year, with a view to eating it myself, and maybe having some left over for gîte guests.

Constraints of space still apply, and the veg patch is currently at least half-full with strawberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries. I need to enlarge it, and that is what I have been doing over the last few days. I will then prepare a bed for the asparagus, incorporating a lot of sand, and compost from the compost heap into the new area.

I use a string guide to delineate the new boundary, and having done so, the next thing to do is to take off the grass layer. I do this in strips one spade blade wide, making a heap of little sods off to one side. These will be buried later, deep enough so they don't regrow. Once the whole area is cleared, I can dig a trench to fill with goodies for the asparagus, like sand and compost.

While I'm out there, I notice that the front panel on one of my new water butts is bent; it has been pushed in. I'm sure it wasn't like that before, I wonder what might have done that? Wild Boar? When I look closer at it, I see that the little spigot has been broken, it looks like it has been pushed down from above. All becomes clear. Some little sod has been climbing on it.

Lights in Laval

2011-12-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

Apparently, people come from miles away, in coaches to see the Christmas lights at Laval. We were pleased to go there on a clear and chilly evening, with my sister and her husband who were staying with us for Christmas. The lights came on as dusk was settling, and after we had sampled a few of the local shops (and delicacies), there were also animated projections on the walls of the town buildings. This year the show was a review of such things that have been done in the past, including, one year, *gasp* topless ladies. Projected five times larger than life on the side of a public building. It would never happen in the US, of course (the world's biggest exporter of porn), that nation's children are still traumatised by the memory of having seen Janet Jackson's breast.

One of the things I really like about the town centre in Laval is the merry-go-round. Yep, it's merry and it goes round, and it was invented before the modern passion for acronyms. You can ride in hot air balloons, on fish and horses, and bicycles, in submarines, and anything you can think of. It's great.

Tree up

2011-12-20T04:16:00.001-08:00

I like trees, especially big ones and those that live a long time. Oaks feature quite high on my list of favourites. There is a fabulous evergreen Oak in the municipal garden at Laval (le jardin de la Perrine), and I was pleased to plant one as the centrepiece of the flower bed alongside the car park.

It was planted 5 years ago as a small sapling, and this was to have been its third Winter without stakes. No such luck. It survived the storms of the last two Winters, but the latest storm clobbered it. I guess, since it is evergreen, the leaves that stay on make for a greater wind resistance in Winter than deciduous trees, and anyway, it blew over.

In this case, I think that only rope stays have any chance of success. I can barely move the tree myself back towards vertical, and whatever system I use to keep it up will probably have to stay in place for at least five years. I happen to have on hand some green nylon rope, and a few tree stakes. So I can surround the tree with stays and hopefully it will stay up.

With everything in place, it feels pretty solid and I can't move the tree in any direction. I guess I will have to monitor the stakes to make sure they don't ease their way out of the ground.

Advent

2011-12-13T10:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, you saw it here, an advent calendar for cats. Ridiculous! How do you know that your cat is Christian? And not, say, Mouselem? Ratstafarian? Shrewish? Zen Birdist?

Fortunately, lots of French people seem to agree, and the advent calendars laced with Gourmet Gold cat food were on sale at half price this week. Which happened to make Gourmet Gold, usually amongst the more expensive cat foods available, and a clear favourite with our cats, among the cheapest in the market.

I'll have 16, and I don't care if everyone in the shop thinks I'm a cat religion bigot.

WiFi Wot?

2011-12-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

One of the plus points of the gîte as a place for people to come and stay for a few days, is the WiFi internet access service. WiFi is becoming ubiquitous, you find it at McDonalds, most hotels and and increasing number of other places where people gather. It really is a good idea to have it.

It's not a good idea just to share your internet connection with clients you don't know very well. A law in France called HADOPI basically means that your internet provider can cut you off if your line has been used to download copyright material, and although most clients are, I am sure, trustworthy, the gîte business is critically dependent on the internet, specifically email, to function. So a system for controlling and checking online access is mandated.

I used to use a service called ZoneCD. It cost about 50 quid a year to operate, which is small enough not to matter too much, but unfortunately it relied on the company's servers, somwhere in the USA, to handle all the admin. These servers went offline some time ago, and haven't been seen since. So I have had to replace the WiFi.

This took longer than I expected, and I have spent the last two days pretty much tied to a desk, driving up to 3 PCs at a time, trying to get a new one installed and working. For the technicians amongst my avid readership, there were three problems:

1) The WiFi access point subnet was based on IP 10.10.10.n and I had lost the IP address of the antenna so I couldn't log into it to change it. (I think it got corrupted in fact)

2) I was misinformed that this didn't matter as I could continue to use the 10.10.10.n subnet with Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing Service (ICS) (dead wrong)

3) My ADSL modem/router used address 192.168.0.1 (even though its own address is 192.168.255.1), and for no apparent reason whatsoever. This clashes with Microsoft's ICS addresses and means that ICS doesn't work.

So having resolved all of these, and despite having a most unpleasant cold, and, independently, an ear infection that won't go away, I took time out to go to the Laval Christmas market. On the way, the fog lifted into a day of glorious sunshine. It was good to be out. Back home, it is still foggy.

Climate, what climate?

2011-12-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

I remember that when I first started cycling to school, I always took a rainproof riding cape with me in my bag, because you never knew if it was going to be raining by the end of the day. Six years later, in the 6th form, I stopped bothering because by then you knew if it was going to be sunny.

Similarly, I used to expect that snow would lie, in the South of England, for at least a couple of weeks in Winter. Nowadays it's rare.

We're in the first week of December, and have yet to have a ground frost. This time last year there was snow on the ground. This Iris is flowering forlornly in response to the mild conditions, braving the drizzle and wind that are the main features of the weather today.

I don't know what's happening to the climate, but it seems to be getting quite wierd.

Art à la cart

2011-11-22T23:44:00.000-08:00

I promise that this is the last post about my cart/trailer. An avid reader ticked me off not long ago for leaving the saga of the cart development unfinshed. So here is the end point of the story, the final cart, the pinnacle of cart refurbishment.

Please note: Silvery steel reinforcement where the handle joins the body, to strengthen it where it broke last time, firmly attached by screws.

And note also the fine extra cross-member in pine, cunningly placed to stop the full water containers sliding to the back of the cart and overloading it (which also contributed to its breaking last time)

And the shorter stiffer handle, so less likely to snap. All in all, the perfect embodiment of cart art.

I am now offering consultancy on garden cart design and construction. Excellent value, good rates, results guranteed. Yes, you will be guaranteed to get a result. The kind of result is open to discussion.

I was going to write a poem extolling the virtues of the finished product, but it has been done before, in a different context, by an genuine expert. Enjoy.

Business models

2011-11-17T02:35:00.000-08:00

I have noted before, that in Summer at least, a lot of sunny energy lands on the grange roof and gets turned into heat, and that it would be nice to turn this energy into electricity instead of wasting it.

EDF have a serious problem with their electricity distribution network in France: it is operating at near-capacity, demand is growing, and upgrading it will cost them a fortune. There are therefore various government subsidies and buy-back incentives for electricity that you might generate with solar panels, to encourage you to fit them.

But at the end of the day, when I looked at the numbers, it would cost upwards of 110,000 euro to cover the roof with solar panels, and the pay-back period would be longer than ten years. I'm sure I could find better things to do with the money, and anyway, it's EDF has the problem, not me. Why should I tie up a load of money, and give myself the headache of managing and maintaining a solar installation, just to help out EDF?

If on the other hand EDF came to me and asked to lease my roof so they could install solar panels, and pay me a bit of cash to do so, I would be interested. They can take the business risk, and I get a bit of money plus some smugness at being eco-friendly. So I was intrigued by these guys who are basically offering to do just that for customers in the UK. Maybe someone will take up this idea for France. And I wonder how long it will take for the likes of EDF to wake up and cut out the middle man?

Little water works

2011-11-16T04:11:00.001-08:00

I have mentioned before the fact that there is a well in the garden. I have decided to exploit it so that I can water the garden in Summer without feeling too guilty about using tap water of drinking quality. The well doesn't always have water in it, so I need to be able to store the water if I want it continuously available. My recent weeks have been spent in setting up a couple of storage tanks.

The project was simply to build a small hard standing, and put some water tanks on it. First I had to clear the undergrowth from the area where the tanks will go. Then build a little frame to hold the concrete, with some rocks at the bottom and some steel reinforcement on top of them so hopefully it won't crack.

Then pour the concrete. I borrowed a mixer from a friend down the road (thanks, Brian), which made the whole thing easier, but there were still 34-and-a-half 35Kg bags of premixed dry concrete to put into it. It took about four hours in all to mix and lay the concrete. For the water tanks, I had to buy them one at a time and transport them in the trailer because I couldn't quite get one in the Espace.

Once the concrete had dried, I put the tanks on top; this all seems to work well. I chained them to the concrete in case of light-fingered natives. So now, if they forget to bring their battery-powered angle-grinder (15 seconds to cut the chain) and instead only bring their lump hammer and cold chisel, it will take them 10 minutes to free the chain from the concrete. That'll be safe then.

The tanks aren't all connected up to the well yet, and the pump in the well is not permanently connected to the electricity (I have to plug it in) but at least I can now fill the tanks and have proper well water on tap.

Bogeyman the fungus

2011-11-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Various varieties of mushrooms were presenting themselves during today's little walk by the river. I have never seen the first one before: little spikes of white-tipped black poking out of the ground, about an inch and a half high. When you tap them, they give off a fine white powder that floats away.

Home again

2011-11-05T08:48:00.000-07:00

No matter how well-known the track, how many times I have walked on it, I find there is always something new to remark upon. This time, two coppers: A tree in copper Autumn colours, and a number of small copper butterflies, (thanks for the ID Mark), one of which stayed still enough to be captured by the camera.

I threaded my way through the undergrowth to see if I could find any seeds of the tree that was brightening my view, but there were none that I could see. I shall just have to enjoy it as it is and where it is. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Aspects of California - 4 Soaring career

2011-10-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

As my avid reader will know, I'm building a portfolio of nature videos as part of my effort to start a career as a BBC wildlife photographer. Here's a video of a big black bird, whose soaring of the up-currents in front of the Golden Gate bridge I found especially impressive. I feel imminent career success coming on.

Aspects of California - 3 Staple diet

2011-10-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm trolling around California with a number of friends, including Dick. We find ourselves at a loose end one morning so we decide to take a look in Staples. For me it's just curiosity. We have Staples in England and I want to see if I can spot any obvious differences.

Well, apart from being bigger, and with more room, and having staff who greet you with a friendly "good morning", it seemed pretty much the same. Except I have never seen a display of tablet PCs that you can play with in a UK Staples, but perhaps that's because I've not been in one recently.

There was the Galaxy 10.0, an Acer, and various others, and even better, they were connected to the internet. So I downloaded Angry Birds onto one, and showed Dick how to play it (he's not very computer savvy) and on a different one, I downloaded Fruit Ninja. Dick was soon chuckling away to himself as he fired dangerous birds at pigs and I was merrily slicing fruit.

Actually I was introduced to Fruit Ninja by a friend who had it on his iPad, where it ran well. But when I installed it on my Archos 1.01 I found that the processor power was lacking, and as soon as there were two fruits on the screen, it failed to respond to the touch. So I use my Fruit Ninja score as a proxy for tablet PC processor power. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Aspects of California - 2 Mixed feelings

2011-10-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

One of the great thigs about the internet is that it makes price comparisons easy. A couple of button-clicks and you can see which shop will sell you this month's gizmo for the least money. Another thing that the internet is good for is seeing in which country you can buy things cheaply.

Now I appreciate that an objective of nearly all businesses is to charge for their product or service "what the market will bear" (i.e. as much as they can get away with) and product pricing is an art. But I do get wound up to find that time and again, products are cheaper to buy abroad than they are here.

The new entry-level Amazon Kindle? 79 dollars or, to you in France, special offer, cutting me own throat guv, 99 euros, (say, 137 dollars). (Prices from amazon.fr and amazon.com today) I'm inclined to shout WHY WHY WHY, but in fact I don't give a damn what the excuse is, I just want this to stop.

So I have mixed feelings about the fact that I bought some Ryobi tools, of which I have spoken before, while I was in the USA, much cheaper than I can get them over here. Angle grinder? 44 dollars vs 70 euros, (say, 97 dollars). Circular saw? 70 dollars vs 70 euros. I got a great buy in comparison to European pricing, but why should I have to do that?

And the thing that wound me up most recently was that HDtracks.com wouldn't sell me a (high-definition, no compression, digital) copy of "Band on the Run" since their marketing contract with the record company did not permit them to sell it outside of the USA. WHAT? The record company thinks they can screw more money out of me via a European pricing model? It's data, for heaven's sake, the same the world over, no matter that it's used for entertainment. No wonder that the music companies are struggling to make money if they're at war with their customers.

This sort of thing encourages people to look for a nice blog reader based in the USA, with a Paypal account who could buy it and email it. As long as they don't keep a copy for themselves; that would never do.

Aspects of California - 1

2011-10-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

Anita and I spent 12 days touring around California with some friends recently. No need to go into daily details, but I'll note here a few aspects fo the trip. First some things that just tickled me.

This poster is clearly intended to hammer home the difference in quality between the Black Angus beef on offer at this particular diner, vs the competition. Fair enough. It was when Anita suggested that perhaps the competition's Black Angus had some White Angus ancestry from the last century that I saw it in a different light....

San José has a fine tech museum. It's intended to enthuse youngsters about technology, very appropriate for Silicon Valley. It has examples of interactive displays, things you can do, and so on. I was most impressed by the globe of the world that show ocean currents and climatological factors, that you can control with a trackball, but there were other things too, such as a device for simulating jetting around in zero-G space in a space suit doing repairs to a satellite. But there was a schoolboy glee in realising that the robot arm that spelled out using bricks, words that you typed in, could be made to spell anything you like....

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this notice beside the municipal fountain in San José. I've seen such fountains often enough, seen little kids playing in them, adults standing downwind to enjoy the spray, all in various locations around the world. But I've never seen a notice like this, nor in any swimming pool, public jacuzzi or anywhere else it might be relevant. I am just wondering if the city governers have given more thought than anyone else to the possible dangers, or perhaps they have had some traumatic experience in the past. Once could imagine the conversation:

"Ummm Mr Mayor, we've had another brown fountain day"
"Ahhhh sheeeeiiittt. Well, do something about it... put up a notice or something."
"yessir"

There's even a hotline number to report fountain contamination. I really don't want to think about that......

GOMNN Newsflash

2011-10-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

We have been using public transport a bit more than usual recently, which presents the opportunity to observe the great unwashed at close quarters.

The first incident was in the queue for the baggage X-ray at the Eurostar check-in. Our delightful subject (in his sixties, I guess, along with his wife) decided that the person at the front of the queue was taking too long to get their affairs in order, and elbowed past not one, not two, nor yet three, nor even four, but five people to get to the front of the queue to get his bags onto the conveyor. I mean, it's not like we're not going to catch the train, is it?

When you run a self-service, fast-food business, it is fairly easy to know how long the average customer takes to consume his meal. When you know how fast you can serve the meals you can then plan the number of tables you need, and this number is sensibly independent of the length of your queue for service. This fine balance is then completely screwed up by cretins who "reserve" a table by sitting at it and defending the unnocupied places by asserting that "someone is sitting there" while the rest of their troupe queues for food. The longer the queue for food, the more tables are wasted in this way. Prize goes to the woman at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles, who bagged not one, not two, but three whole tables (places for 12 people) for her meal-buying crew. Since hers was the most blatant abuse of all, I ate my meal there. I was gone before her group arrived to eat.

But queue-jumping and table-bagging are not exactly new forms of boorish behaviour. Heck, in our wild and impetuous youth, some of us might even have done it. Occasionally. But I was surprised and delighted to be able to study what was for me, a completely new phenomenon on the Air Canada flight from Paris to Toronto. A woman two seats away from me decided that her husband would be especially interested in an article in the paper she had just opened. She read it to him out loud. The whole thing. It was a full page of a broadsheet newspaper. It took her from about two minutes after sitting down, through the push-off from the terminal, through taxiing for take-off, take-off, climb to cruising altitude, and a few minutes of cruising. It was a précis of a speech given by Steve Jobs and printed in tribute. Since he graphically described some of his interventions for cancer, I was only glad it wasn't colo-rectal.

Her husband's reaction was equally interesting to watch. About halfway in he started playing with the touch screen in front of him, presumably found some music, and plugged the left earpiece into his ear. However he couldn't quite bring himself to plug in the one on the side his wife was sitting. He played with it, scratched his cheek with it, but couldn't quite bring himself to put it in. I was just willing him silently on... go on... go on... No luck.

That's all from your Grumpy Old Man News Network, stay tuned for more updates. And now life resumes as per normal.

Strawberry season

2011-10-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

The strawberry harvest was poor this Springtime. I put this down to the unseasonal hot, dry weather we had at that time, combined with my failure to water the plants.

And by this time of year, I would be expecting strawberry plants to be making runners, but they're not. Instead, they are making an enormous crop of strawberries. Perhaps the warm, rainy Summer followed by the last couple of weeks of dry heat has made the difference, but the plants are fruiting prolifically. This bowl holds the latest of several similar harvests of tasty, sweet berries. It's been difficult to keep up with the cropping.

I am thinking that the flavour is perhaps not quite as intense as I remember of the Spring crop, but if anything the sweetness is stronger. By the way, I have noted before that clotted cream is hard to get in France. I am very pleased to report that Mascarpone cheese, widely available, makes a very acceptable replacement. Especially on strawberries.

London calling

2011-10-04T02:51:00.001-07:00

We spent last weekend in London, occasioned by the 50th birthday celebrations of a good friend. A great time was had by all, I think, great evening at the pub, excellent meal and a natter afterwards, though we had to poop the party at 2:00 (3:00 French time). I guess we're none of us as young as we used to be.

On Monday, a visit to the London Eye. I note that this is now run by EDF (Electricité De France). I can never see the EDF logo without reflecting on the breathtaking hypocrisy of the French government, encouringing its industries to go out and buy foreign companies, whilst prohibiting foreign companies doing the same with French ones.

The eye trip comes complete with a cinematic show in "4-D", that loudly (deafeningly, perhaps) shows off various perspectives of the Eye, in a 3-D cinema. The "fourth dimension" is provided by the physical experience of real bubbles being blown at you when the film shows it happening, real fake snowflakes at the appropriate moment, and so on. I was glad that the seagull that led us through the scenes in the film was not similarly realistic.

We walked in the sunshine along the embankment towards Tower Bridge, to lunch with a diffferent friend, who works in the area. She told me she reads this blog (hiya!) and asked about progress on the infamous falling-apart cart, so I promised an update. To follow.

Meanwhile, here's some pictures taken of and from the London Eye.

Cracking nuts

2011-09-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

There doesn't seem to be a generic French word for nut. Une noix is specifically a walnut, and other nuts such as peanuts, almonds, etc have their own names.

Well we have two mature walnut trees in the garden, and several productive hazlenuts, and since their nuts have been on the ground for a little while, I thought I should set about gathering them and shelling them.

I think that the squirrels must have found the walnuts first, judging by the number of split shells all around. They have nicked all the good ones too, because once I started cracking them, the kernels turned out to be almost all black and shrivelled.

The hazelnuts were a better story, and after half an hour's patient work with the nutcrackers I had a bowlful of sweet and crunchy nuts. Those that I didn't eat ended up in the nut mix that I have with my yoghurt in the mornings.

Lots of squash

2011-09-18T00:34:00.001-07:00

I like butternut squash, and they're not that easy to find in France, so I thought I'd have a go at growing some this year. I also planted some acorn squash, just to see what they're like.

The trouble with growing your own veg is that if they crop well, you end up with too many. So I have 51 squash of various sizes. Even after giving some away, that's a lot of squash to eat over the next few months. Good job I like them.

They are easy to cook; you just have to heat the thing in whatever way you like, until it becomes soft. Probably my favourite is the simplest: you slice the sqash in half, remove the seeds and cover the exposed flesh with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, cook in the oven (220 degrees), exposed side up. It will take about an hour for the squash to be ready. Serve as is, with a knob of butter in the seed cavity.

This year has been quite wet, and my tomato plants only yielded a small crop before they rotted. I think the fungus might have infected some of the squash, since the fruits have a stained appearance on the skin in some areas. This hasn't affected the flesh at all, though, and they still taste good. The acorn squash (yellow and green in the pictures) taste very like butternut ones, by the way.

Pots 2 - Native American weed pot

2011-09-15T03:47:00.000-07:00

The general style of the Native American weed pot is of a bulbous vessel with one or more narrow, elongated openings. They were traditionally used for displaying grasses in flower or seed.

This one we bought on a holiday trip to Arizona. Its style is traditional but the execution is modern. The glaze is shinier, and the abstract pattern more complex and better-defined than would be the case on an original.

I brought it home and displayed it on the window-sill, and enthusiastically gathered some grasses from the garden, together with their seed plumes, to put in it. Two days later, my eyes were red, itchy, puffy and streaming, and I was sneezing all the time. Taking the grasses out of the pot solved this problem, and I can now with some confidence state that I'm allergic to grass pollen. And the pot is nowadays for decoration only.

The Marmot challenge

2011-09-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

Although marmots are easy enough to see when moving, they are difficult to spot when stationary. One of their defense tactics is to stop perfectly still, whereupon they are nearly invisible. I spent many frustrated minutes staring at mountainsides, conviced that there was a marmot to be seen, if only it would move.

So here is today's challenge. Can you spot the marmot in this photograph? He is visible, clear as day, once you have found him. How long will it take you? (It's probably best to click on the image to see a larger version)

Flowers!

2011-09-11T01:05:00.001-07:00

The plantlife on the mountainside was interesting. I've grown "alpine" plants in my garden for some time, but this was the first time I'd seen them in their natural habitat. Houseleeks, for example, and Aubretia were growing wild. Colchicum were sending up their as-yet leafless flowers. The trees made for an interesting bonsai effect, and the wild raspberries beside the path were delicious, and refreshing at the end of a long walk.

Bells!

2011-09-09T01:29:00.001-07:00

The journey to Meribel was an 8-hour drive. We took it easy, driving in two-hour stints and taking a lunch or coffee break between each one. The elapsed journey time was 10 hours. Easy. We'll do it again I'm sure; it's comfortable enough for a short, last-minute, long weekend break.

On our first evening there, the local cows were not far from the village, and their bells were making a huge din. I found it surprising; most of the cows were lying down but enough were moving to make a lot of noise. The video isn't that interesting, but it's the bells I wanted to capture.

Scenery!

2011-09-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

No photograph can really give you the impression of what it's like to be on the mountain. Up in the fresh air, looking around at the peak you are on, and down into the valley, sometimes through the cloud, is quite special. But here's a few photos to give you a taste.

Marmots!

2011-09-07T08:27:00.001-07:00

I have always wondered, during the occasional ski holiday I have taken in the past, what the mountain environment would be like in Summer. This year we found out, with a one-week walking holiday at the end of the season. It was just as peaceful as I had imagined it would be, and the scenery is spectacular and more colourful than in Winter, when pretty much everything is white.

Marmots live on the moutains but hibernate in Winter, so we had never seen a live one until last week. They are easier to see than to photograph, though. This picture was taken on the last walk that we did. The marmot, having been taken by surprise by our presence as he rounded a rock, decided that the best thing to do was to stop still. This gave us a bit better photo opportunity than normal.

The video is of the first marmot we saw, climbing a scree slope at the foot of the mountain. I hope you're impressed. Good, isn't it? I'm thinking of applying to be a BBC wildlife photographer.

Deep philosophy

2011-08-29T01:52:00.001-07:00

I'm sure there's a deeply philosophical comment to be made here, but perhaps the picture speaks for itself.

Random

2011-08-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

We've had really strange weather this year. We've had hot spells, so that some of our newly-planted trees, that haven't got much root depth yet, are struggling. But we've had so much rain that some of the tomatoes are rotting. And the Spring heat wave meant that the strawberry crop was poor at that time, but I have gathered a nice strawberry harvest today.

And the blackberries are also nice and fat and ripe, free for the taking from hedgerows as you pass.

The famous cart has a new lease of life: notice the new strong cross-bracing. The first time I tried to take it anywhere loaded up with water containers, the handle snapped off. So I think I'm going to reinforce it with metal. It'll look like an armoured tank by the time I'm done.

We were out on our bikes along the Mayenne recently. Many of the locks between Laval and Mayenne have little hydro-electric generators. Sounds like a good idea to me. Some have two side-by-side, some have only one. I wonder why the difference?

Also along the Mayenne river are some abandoned water mills. Except that they're not completely abandoned. Instead of a roof at roof level, they have roofs inside, even sometimes covering only part of the floor area. It's a pragmatic solution, I suppose, if you don't want to maintain the whole building.

It's village fête and car boot time again (village fêtes always seem to have a car boot as part of the deal). This time I bought a nice car battery charger at St Suzanne for 10 euros. You can get them on eBay for 12 pounds or so, plus postage, but here in the shops thy're upwards of 30 euros. Good bargain. At St Denis d'Orques there was the local wind band playing too. My friends Jill, Gabriel and Raoul from St Suzanne play in it too. Here's a picture. They're under the tent bacause it's raining. I guess you don't want to have the rain collecting in those tuba or baritone things, you'd be blowing bubbles in no time.

Snake-in-the-grass

2011-08-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

We are endowed with a fair share of reptilian wildlife around here. Slow-worms, grass snakes, various kinds of lizards, and adders. Adders like to shelter under rocks, or sun themselves on top. As it happens, I have been working on my dry stone wall recently, and that involves moving a lot of rocks.

Now I don't mind adders in full view, where they are easy to spot. They are shy, and as long as you don't annoy them, they will disappear to safety rather than bite. But I'm not so keen on adders in the undergrowth, because you can't see them, and an adder stepped on is likely to think it's under attack and therefore to respond in kind.

This adder came to my attention yesterday, when I found it under a rock. It's easy enough to see in the first photograph, but it is present in all three pictures, though harder to spot in the other two. How quickly can you find it? That's what I'm worried about.

Fruit and herbs

2011-08-10T08:50:00.001-07:00

Five minutes outside by the blackberry bush yielded these blackberries that were turned into a very nice tart one evening, and a dessert with muscarpone cheese the evening after. Yum!

The Parsley has run to seed so we should have plenty for next year.

And the Sage is being decorative and providing food for bees, it seems.

Flowers

2011-08-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

We have had strange weather this year. A dry heat wave in Spring, followed by mild rainy weather with occasional sun. This has conufsed the flowers in the garden; they're not sure if they should be flowering or not. Here's some that are.

Opéra de Baugé

2011-08-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

The website for the Opéra de Baugé tells you more about the organisation than I can in this blog. We went there recently with some friends to see Beethoven's Fidelio. And A fine experience it was too: The opera itself was excellent, it was good to see friends from England again and the pic-nic on the lawn during the interval was fun. To add a special interest, the daughter of one of the friends was playing flute in the orchestra. I remember her when she was learning.

We made a day of it, visiting the castle in the town of Baugé itself, before wandering off to the opera that was in the grounds of a manor house just on the edge of the town. Here's some pictures: the castle, the pic-nic lawn, and a couple of photos I took in an abandoned greenhouse and shed: a vaulted brick roof, and a stack of flower pots.

Bats

2011-07-25T05:38:00.001-07:00

I seem to be inundated with small creatures at the moment. This bat stuck itself to the wall last night. I'd better leave it alone; highly visible external walls are not good hiding places for healthy bats, and they can carry rabies. I'll see if it's still there tomorrow, and deal with it then if I have to.

Another big moth

2011-07-21T01:04:00.001-07:00

This one about as long as two index finger joints.

Snailing

2011-07-18T04:02:00.000-07:00

It is time to make vin aux noix about now, and the recent winds and rain have knocked a few immature walnuts off the trees. So when we saw these two guys strolling up the road, poking the undergrowth with a stick and collecting something, we thought it would be unripe walnuts they were after. Not a bit of it. Snails. These ones are the escargos de bourgogne, apparently, big and tasty, and they have been brought out by the rain. Yummy.

Didn't Rod Stewart record a song called "We are Snailing"?

Marketing genius?

2011-07-15T06:08:00.001-07:00

When Sony invented the Walkman, it was the first of its kind, and there was much internal debate at the company as to whether it would sell or not. Of course it turned out to be a roaring success, and could have helped Sony to captilaise on their lead in the MP3 player market too, had they had the courage to create a product that might compete with their CD sales.

So here's another marketing question. You're in an area that needs to attract tourists, and you've got a disused single-track railway line going through your village. What do you do with it? Turn it into a cycle track or walking route? No, you you build little pedal-powered carts for tourists to pedal along a few kilometres of its length, and charge them for it. Strangely enough, it's a success, and it's fun to do, being different enough from run-of-the-mill holiday activities to attract the curious.

We went to enjoy it a second time recently, with friends from England.

The re-taking of St Suzanne

2011-07-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

The nearby medieval town of St Suzanne was held by the English from 1425 - 1439. There is a passing historical reference to the effect that the castle was re-taken by the French with the help of an English traitor who had fallen for a French girl. From these slim threads a local medievalist created a play that was performed in the Castle grounds a few evenings ago. Good fun, and an excuse to dress up. The Harmonie was going to play some incidental music, but didn't in the end. That didn't stop the Ouest France newspaper from reporting that they did play though. A long story...

Trolling in Paris

2011-07-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

The word "trolling" seems to have taken on the meaning "to post abusive comments on a blog or public website" but for me its meaning is "to wander aimlessly". The purpose of our trip to Paris was to attend a Paul Simon concert on the Wednesday evening, but it presented the opportunity to wander around Paris during the days before and after.

The concert was excellent. Although the focus was the presentation of the new album "So Beautiful or So What", Paul Simon gave us a lot of old favourites too, going back as far as The Sound of Silence which he presented as a solo item with acoustic guitar. I can't decide if that song is even more relevant today with the likes of Facebook and blogs, or if these technologies undermine its message. I guess time will tell.

Meanwhile, a street market in Paris is clearly not complete without a bike-propelled mobile coffee stall. The water is heated by a gas cylinder in the box, and the grinder is battery powered. The big levers on the top of the device that look like beer pulls are hand pumps that push the water through the coffee grounds. And the coffee was great. The ice cream was from Amorinos, the shop being disappointing only in that it didn't do hot chocolate or coffee as well (that's the shop at the Bastille, apparently) But the ice cream was good.

And a suprise fly-by in honour of our visit.

Presumption of Innocence

2011-07-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

The typical citizen is obliged to be honest and upstanding, and has a corresponding right to be presumed to be so. So in law, a person is deemed to be innocent until it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that he or she is not.

So if you wish to accuse someone of a crime, it is up to you to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt. This is not always easy, and a lack of evidence or a lack of witnesses (or other things) can make it impossible.

Defending yourself against a criminal charge is stressful; a lot is at stake, and mistakes can be made. Accusing a person of a crime whilst knowing the accusation to be false, and lying in court are both frowned upon. In France, an accusation known to be false is a "dénonciation calomnieuse" and making one is a crime.

It doesn't take a brain the size of a planet, nor a Masters' Degree in logic to realise that failure to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt against a person who is presumed to be innocent, does not automatically mean that your accusation was false, or known to be false. And yet this illogic was written into French law: if you failed to prove your case, you were automatically guilty of "dénonciation calomnieuse".

It took a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights on 30 June this year to correct this error on the basis that it overturned the presumption of innocence. I think that the ECHR is a Good Thing.

Cart vitale - 2

2011-07-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

A sunny Sunday afternoon, the ideal time for fixing my water-carrying cart. Last time I tried to use it, the handle broke, so I went off to get a new bit of wood, and also invest in a proper tow-ball towing hook, the better to attach it to my mower.

A fancy new tow hook for the ball on the back of the mower. New pine handle too, though I was a bit worried it might not be strong enough.

The jerricans hold 25 litres each; there are 13 of them. Total load 325 kilos. My mower can just about manage to pull the cart loaded up with water from the well.

Did it work? No. The cross-member to which the handle was attached at the front of the cart couldn't take the load, and split. Time for a pause and a new cross-member.

Weekend

2011-07-01T05:43:00.000-07:00

Here, in the throbbing metropolis of St Pierre sur Erve, there is always something to be getting on with. During the weekends we are looking after clients, and between clients there is gardening that has to be done, and even if it's raining, there are housework and renovation projects to do indoors. Taking a break is a discipline, but a necessary one. This Wednesday we went off to lunch La Flèche.

World-famous in Pays de La Loire for its zoo, La Flèche is a pretty town on the banks of Le Loir, with a nice restaurant in a converted mill close to the town centre. Lunch there, followed by a troll around the town. B&B in a nearby chateau with a pretty garden, and the next day, a little walk along the river. Saw three Kingfishers, but I wasn't anywhere near fast enough to capture them on camera.

Pots 1 - Terracotta

2011-06-26T03:19:00.000-07:00

I'm not generally a "thing"-oriented person. I prefer functional objects over decorative ones, and I like to keep a critical eye on the things I keep around me. However, I do have a fondness for pots, I have no idea why. So here is the first in an occasional series of posts about pots that I like, starting at the bottom, with the humble terracotta plant pot.

In some ways it is surprising that you can still find them in garden centres: they are buliker than the modern plastic equivalent, heavier, more expensive, more fragile, and not even frost-proof. Yet I find something satisfying in them. Their earthy origins, their weight in the hand, and the way they carry the tide marks from their history of plants they have cradled. Their porous nature helps prevent rot, and if you tap them they will sing their charges' need for water. And when they break, you can put the shards in the bottom of a different pot, for drainage.

Cultural nuances

2011-06-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

We had a wedding party in the gîte this last weekend. The guests were all French except for one English man. This combination highlighted a little cultural difference that perhaps is a reflection of a more profound difference in thought.

There were two different cakes; one in celebration of the wedding and the other in celebration of a birthday, both events being celebrated at the same meal.

Faced with dividing two different-flavoured cakes between 16 people, the English instinct is to divide the two cakes into 8 portions each and ask the diners which flavour they would prefer. This is so that everyone can choose their favourite. The French instinct is to divide each cake into 16 portions and give everyone a smaller piece of both cakes. This is so that everyone gets an equal share.

Curious. And with interesting implications for possibilities of conflict, resolution and negotiation too.

Adults evening

2011-06-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

Under-18s keep out! proclaimed the posters. Yep, it's time for the adult students' evening concert at the Evron music school - sorry conservatoire. An evening of performances followed by a bring-and-share picnic. Here's me and Alain with a piece by Celso Machado entitled Sambossa.

Gender issues

2011-06-09T09:58:00.001-07:00

The assignment of gender to nouns in English is logical. The noun is masculine, feminine or neuter according to whether the object it describes has these characteristics by nature. (With a few exceptions, like ship)

As a lad learning French, I was puzzled but not dismayed to learn that every French noun is either masculine or feminine, with no apparent rhyme or reason. But I was astonished by the straightforward illogic of German with its three perfectly sensible genders, all assigned to nouns at random. I learn that some languages have even more genders, including one with 14 or so. I guess that gender in language is essentially an abstract concept.

Some curious anomalies arise in French. Vagina is masculine (le vagin) as are breast (le sein) and tit (le nichon). And while penis is mercifully masculine (same word in English and French), dick (la bite) is feminine. Very odd.

Which leads on to the curious fact that some words have one gender in the singular, and the other one in the plural. French for organ (the musical instrument often found in churches) is orgue (pronounced "org"). Our French teacher told us that in the singular it is masculine, and in the plural it is feminine. I pointed out that this must be because only women have multiple orgs. No-one laughed. A bit straight-laced, I reckon, our French class.

Madonna Lily

2011-06-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

I have never before managed to get Madonna Lilies to thrive in my garden. Usually I hoe the buds off in Springtime when they are just appearing above soil. This puts paid to any flowers for a year. If they make it past this stage, I find they usually get eaten by slugs or something. I don't know what eats them, but it completely removes all growing parts, leaving nothing behind except small black turds and the stalk.

These Lilies came up under my trees this year, and it has been so long since I planted them that I had forgotten what they are. I thought maybe they were Fritillarias. Anyway, this year when they came under attack I drenched them in insecticide and surrounded them with slug pellets and they have now flowered. A first for me.

Even more belles chaises

2011-05-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Les Belles Chaises is a little village event that has been held for several successive years in the throbbing metropolis of St Pierre sur Erve. It's basically an excuse for a get-together, the central organising theme being decorated household chairs which are displayed in the village centre.

Here is a chair that has been creatively turned into a rocking-horse/car toy, much to the delight of my friend Christian.

Cart vitale

2011-05-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

There is a drought across most of France, and although we don't have a hosepipe ban in the Mayenne yet, one will surely come. I don't yet have an electricity supply to my well, and using watering cans is hard work and time-consuming, so I have been looking for another watering solution that doesn't involve hosepipes.

I started with the idea of a wheeled water tank that I can fill up an then tow behind my lawn mower. Being a farming area, you can find a lot of used water bowsers for sale, but they are too big. Starting at 500 litres and built for rough use on farms, they weigh anything up to a ton when full. Much too big for my little mower.

I ended up with the concept of a number of jerry cans on a cart. I can pull the cart around with my mower, and load it up to capacity with cans. I can get empty plastic containers up the dump, so I am left with the problem of finding a trailer that I can tow. A new or used "proper" aluminium one would be a few hundred euros; overkill and too expensive for what I have in mind.

I was explaining this problem to my friend Christian in the coffee bar the other day, and it turns out that he has an old unused cart that should do the job. Great! Even better, I can have it for free! A bit of refurbishment and off we go.

Here it is! A good set of metal wheels and axle, the rest of it wood, some of it rotten.

Knock the floor out, take a good look at the chassis.

Cut the rotted ends of the chassis,

Replace the strut with a new one,

Make a new floor out of some old oak planks I happen to have lying around,

Some sides so the water containers don't slide off, and off we go!

Oops! Handle broke. Idea sound, execution failure. Must make a new handle....

Shingle beach

2011-05-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

I can't really pretend that the water front at Warsash is pretty. It offers a grand view of Fawley oil refinery and the associated power station, and the big yachting marina at Hamble. The estuary is muddy and the beach is shingle. It doesn't even border on the Channel, but looks out onto the river Hamble and Southampton Water, and a bit of the Solent if you direct your view towards the Isle of Wight.

But I like it. It is full of activity; the boat yards, the school of navigation, the lifeboat training station, the little pink ferry that shuttles across the Hamble. And all the boats that go into Southampton pass here; there's always something going on.

Here's a few extra pictures of the area, and some of the plants you can find there.

Fish 'n chips at Warsash

2011-05-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was spent in the South of England, visiting friends and relatives. I noticed two things: that the sales staff I encountered were helpful and polite, and that the food was excellent.

On the boat out I found some reading glasses for under a tenner, but I couldn't find a pair that I liked of the right power. So on the shopping trip in Fareham, I asked in the first glasses shop if they had any reading glasses for a tenner. "No, sorry, ours start at 25 pounds" But then the lady caught us up going out of the shop and listed all the other places in Fareham where cheap glasses might be found.

The young guy in Jessops who enthusiastically took me through the new Sony Nex-5 camera in some detail, even though I had explained that I wasn't going to buy that day.

And the guy in the fish 'n chip shop who made sure my chips had lashings of salt and vinegar on them, which is how I like them.

Now the only way to eat fish 'n chips is with your fingers, out of a newspaper, by the sea. I don't think they are allowed to sell them in newspaper any more, so ours were served in a sterile paper bag. But still, I enjoyed a bench on Warsash front, where I used to cycle, and superb fish 'n chips (and mushy peas), eaten with the fingers. And a stroll along the shingle beach afterwards, following the trail I used to walk with my bike, towards the cliffs that will eventually lead you to Titchfield marshes.

In the garden this morning

2011-05-09T03:24:00.001-07:00

Big moth

2011-05-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

How big? This big!

Snail food

2011-04-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

A random trip to the garden centre to get some mildew-killer for the roses, and we found these geraniums that have a perfect colour match with the gîte. They are great for planting in pots since they don't give up the ghost as soon as you forget to water them, so they will go into the planters in front of the pool. That's if the snails don't get them first.

Also a freebie pic of the roses themselves.

A quick trip round the garden

2011-04-25T02:25:00.001-07:00

When I lived in High Wycombe, I bought a scarlet perennial poppy plant. Its brash, bright flowers were pleasing on the eye, but I decided that I had planted it in the wrong place. Come the Autumn, I dug it up and moved it to where I thought it would be better suited. This resulted in two plants; one in the new place and another that grew from the roots left behind in the old place. It so happened that I decided that the new place was wrong too, so I repeated the process. After a few years of this, I would be greeted every Springtime with myriad bright, brash, cheerful poppy blooms, almost all of them in the wrong place.

I found this kind of endearing, (some would say because it encapsulates my approach to ensemble music-making, but I don't pay any attention to this) and perennial poppies have been a firm favourite of mine ever since. I usually buy them as plants, because I don't seem to have much luck growing them from seed. (Any hints and tips welcome).

This spring, the poppy "Aurora" in particular seems to be growing like a Triffid, and is the the first to bloom. Here's a pic, with some others from around the garden.

Hot air balloon

2011-04-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

French for hot air balloon is montgolfière (f), after its inventors. A company offers flights over a selection of Loire valley chateaux, and we went to enjoy the experience. The flights take place at dawn and dusk because there is less wind at these times, and we set off at dusk. Our target chateau was Chenonceau.

Steering hot air balloons is a bit hit-and-miss. The pilot relies on the likelihood that the wind is going in slightly different directions at different heights. We set off quite a few miles from Chenonceau, so we were very dependent on a fair wind. Four balloons were launched and we established different heights to try to determine which one was the best one to take us to the chateau. The wind direction turned out to be about the same at all heights and we ended up slightly off to one side. But not so far away that we couldn't take any pictures.

In the end though, it was the flight itself that was the fun thing; the destination was largely irrelevant.

Window panes

2011-04-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

These windows were spotted during the walk in St Suzanne. They form part of a shed wall, and it looks like they have been whitewashed ages ago and the paint has slid down. Well, I liked the patterns.

Oh no! Camera problems!

2011-04-12T03:32:00.000-07:00

My blogcam seems to have developed a problem, in that there is a darkened area on the upper right hand side of the photographs it takes. It looks like it might be caused by a bit of dust. The spot gets progressively more obvious as the lens moves towards its maximum zoom, so I conclude that the speck of dust is on the glassworks as opposed to the CCD sensor.

I have tried removing the spot with image editing software (GIMP) and this works to an extent limited by my lack of skill, but takes a long time, maybe 5-10 minutes per picture. I probably need to take the thing in to a proper camera shop, but meanwhile a work-around is to hold the camera upside-down when taking pictures. It takes a matter of seconds to invert a photo, and although you can still see the dark spot (now in the lower left-hand part of the picture) it is much less offensive.

Joint concert

2011-04-11T03:53:00.000-07:00

The Harmonie of St Suzanne joined with the Harmonie of Louvingé du Désert on Saturday afternoon to give a joint, free public concert in the evening. We were "at home" at St Suzanne and the afternoon started with a communal lunch, and continued with a visit to St Suzanne. The main visit concentrated on the medieval town centre, but we were able to give our two lunchtime companions a more personalised visit, with a ramble along the river valley and views of the old town from the Tertre Ganne opposite.

At 6:00 we did a joint rehearsal, had a light snack and the concert started at 8:30. We did the first half, the Harmonie from Louvigné did the second half and we all got together at the end for a couple of pieces together. A great way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening, and we made some friends into the bargain. We will have a return visit in December. Looking forward.

Wisteria

2011-04-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Wisteria is out. An ideal thing to sit under whilst reading.

Trustworthy government

2011-04-07T09:28:00.001-07:00

I got a letter in the post today concerning my personal pension. As far as I can make out, the upshot of it is:

1) The maximum pension I can draw (from the next re-valuation of my SIPP fund, that happens to be now) has been reduced by 17%. I just got a 17% income cut.
2) I don't have to buy an annuity when I am 75.
3) When I die, the inheritor of my pension fund has to pay 55% tax instead of 35%, a hike of 57%.
4) The inheritor can inherit even if I die after 75 whereas they couldn't before.

I might be being cynical, but it seems to me that:

1) In reducing the amount that I can take out of my pension, the government are increasing what will be left when I die, thus increasing their potential tax revenues.
2) What is left when I die will be taxed at a higher rate, increasing their potential tax revenues.
3) Perhaps they are hoping to increase their potential tax revenues, in that if I don't buy an annuity there might be some money left in my pension fund when I die that they can tax, whereas an annuity turns into a pumpkin when I die and thus produces no tax.

Is there a theme here? Do not rely on this blog post for financial advice. Do not make any decision based on the content of this blog post. Have a nice day.

I love Springtime

2011-04-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

We set off for a coffee this morning and I took the camera along to take a few snaps. The tulips are out in full splendour, with Mahonia, Rosemary and other shrubs making a showing (Wisteria photos to follow).

To make the morning complete, the wife found a lost glove, missing for a few weeks. Someone had found it on the road and put it on a door handle so it could be seen. Good job she didn't throw the other one away.

The plum trees are out in full blossom, and the buzz of the many, enormous, bumble bees working the nectar is more like a roar. Shame it doesn't translate well to a blog post, but you get the idea.

Rusty boats

2011-03-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Both Deauville and Honfleur are fishing villages, and the fishing boats were moored at the quayside while we were there. Each mooring seemed to have associated with it some fishing gear, going rusty. I don't know why, but I like rust shades, so here's some rusty pictures.

To market

2011-03-27T09:15:00.001-07:00

There is a quayside market at Deauville: they sell all sorts of things, but there is a special assortment of fresh seafood, as you would imagine. I like the casual art formed by the layout of the products for sale. Here's a few pictures of some vegetables, that I prefer to ones of dead fish.

Deauville

2011-03-27T00:59:00.001-07:00

We spent a couple of days on a spontaneous break on the coast at Deauville (touristy) and Honfleur (quaint and very touristy). Great seafood restaurants, sea-front markets, and, being early in the season, not too busy. You can start the day with a nice slow coffee by the harbour, and pick your way slowly round the shops, whiling away the time before a lunch of fresh fish. A beer in the afternoon whilst reading your latest BD. And so through the day.

If you have any musical interest at all, you must visit the museum of Erik Satie in Honfleur. It takes about an hour to go round and it aims to be as quirky and irreverent as the man himself. It is very well done.

Spring

2011-03-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Spring seems to be well under way, and quite a bit earlier than usual. Some of the flowers are out already and buds are appearing everywhere. But nothing quite does it for me like daffodils. Plain, ordinary, light and dark yellow daffs. Can't beat 'em.

But the Wisteria buds are full of promise and the waxy, red-edged leaves of the roses are a delight in themselves. And the Hellebores are out too.

Compagnonnage

2011-03-22T02:32:00.000-07:00

While I was at university, before the era of computer games, I spent quite a lot of time playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends. You would assume a virtual character and wander around a virtual countryside, encountering and dealing with various hazards as you went. There are plenty of computer games now that emulate this kind of thing, but we had to use our imaginations, aided by various chemicals, mostly alcohol.

The hazards that you would encounter would include booby-trapped locks or treasure chests, etc, the usual outcome being that if you attempted to pick them you would die, probably horribly.

The wife and I were in Tours recently, and there is there, a museum of Compagnonnage, which probably loosely translates as a guild of master craftsmen. And there, I was delighted to find, is an example of the real deal: a booby-trapped lock.

Modern laws, at least in the UK, seem to require that you ensure that burglars are coddled while they are robbing your house, and you can't install anything which might leave as much as a scratch on their poor sensitive skins. Things didn't used to be like that. In the picture below, the little cylinder at the top of the lock is a gun that shoots you if you try to pick it. The two hinged loops of steel that form an oval at the base of the handle, spring a handcuff on you (or your corpse) if you try to turn it without having unlocked it first.

I'll have five please, with the grenade and sub-machine-gun options.

Markmobile

2011-03-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

OK, it's just a new car, but I'm pleased with it :) And it matches the house too.

Microlight flight

2011-03-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

From time to time, microlight aircraft fly overhead here; there's a flying club not far away, and I have had it in mind for some time to take a flight with a view to taking some pictures of Les Hallais, but also with a view to having a bit of fun.

There was a bit of haze today so it wasn't ideal conditions for taking photographs, but the day was otherwise bright and sunny, and there is no time like the present. I can always come back on a clear day in Summer if I want brighter pictures.

Here's a few: The aircraft - a microlight, or ULM in French. The village of St Pierre sur Erve, you can see the H-shaped chateau in the middle of the village with its formal garden. Les Hallais, a fine place for groups of people to come and stay :) and the nearby village of Saulges. Also, two views of the canyon formed by the river Erve a hundred yards or so from chez moi.

Lonicera fragrantissima

2011-03-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

This plant is a shrubby honeysuckle; it doesn't climb by twining around other plants, it just sits and grows like a shrub. It's usually described as "unusual" as a garden plant, but I don't know why; it's not commonly grown but it's easy enough. It likes good soil and sunshine. It flowers profusely in the winter months, with tiny little white flowers that are heavily scented. Very pretty, and it brings you flowers before the daffs come out.

Long weekend in Milan - 3

2011-02-28T23:13:00.001-08:00

I could post hundreds of pictures of beautiful buildings in Milan, but to finish the long weekend subject, here's a few pictures of the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio.

To avoid boring the pants off you all, I have omitted the Chinese New Year/Twinning parade, the cute Sunday lunchtime restaurant, the free concert by the pianist Laszlo Borbely, and the Castle Sforzesco.

Long weekend in Milan - 2

2011-02-25T01:38:00.000-08:00

The centre of Milan is dominated by the cathedral. It stands in a large square a little way apart from the surrounding buildings, but it is crowded a little by them. Astonishing masonry, magnificent marble facades. You can go up on the roof, accessed by stairs (not too difficult) or a lift, where you can get a wonderful view of the symmetry of the architecture.

Long weekend in Milan - 1

2011-02-19T07:56:00.000-08:00

We had a long weekend in Milan recently. Transport was easy, at least in theory; a TGV from Le Mans with a change in Paris takes you directly to Milan Central Station. In practice, there was a bus for the last hour or so on the way out, but we arrived only about 15 minutes late.

Here is a tip if you are on a TGV and need to cross Paris by the Metro: don't buy your metro tickets on the TGV. It sounds like a good idea for saving time, but the tickets cost more and don't work. So when you get to the metro, instead of buying your tickets quickly at a machine, you have to queue up to talk to a real person, who tells you not to buy your tickets on the TGV because they cost more and don't work.

If you visit Milan, you must see the cathedral. Some pics of this in a later post, but first, the shopping centre Galleria Vittorio Emanuela II that backs onto the cathedral square. I liked its collection of classic brand name shops and comfortable atmosphere. It has a fine DVD and CD shop; I browsed for ages. The arcade is laid out in a cross, and the central junction features four fine brands:

I can indulge in a wry smile at the juxtaposition of the Golden Arches alongside prestige brands, but there is something to be said for Macdonald's. On the Saturday morning, being left to my own devices, I indulged in an English Language newspaper and read it in a café on the cathedral square. At lunchtime I was too lazy to walk the 100 yards to the Macdonald's and settled for the burgers and chips as offered by the café. They would have shamed a down-market greasy spoon. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of Macdonald's, but I do think they deserve some respect.

Crane with Moon

2011-02-18T10:05:00.001-08:00

Out of Nowhere - 1

2011-02-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

I have memories from before I was born. The earliest is my first recollection of consciousness.

Have you ever been in the countryside, and suddenly heard distant church bells? And when you heard them, you realise that there were several peals *before* the one you actually heard, that you are hearing now, in retrospect?

Well, it was like that. I woke up, and at the same time I realised I had been awake before. And also that because I could remember having been awake before, there was a connection between these states of wakefulness, and that connection was me. Wow! I existed!

Now as every good scientist knows, people can't remember that far back, so clearly this is a false or manufactured memory. This is convenient, because if it were a true memory, it would give the lie to the belief that consciousness requires language, since it would mean that I was conscious before having any language. And it's helpful too because you can treat animals like automata, since, although they clearly react to pain, they don't actually *feel* it in any conscious way, having no language. Dead handy for experiments.

And everyone knows that rocks don't fall from the sky, either.

Watching a "Yes" DVD

2011-02-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

With a cat.

Frosty walk

2011-01-31T01:52:00.000-08:00

It was -6 degrees outside this morning, the coldest so far this Winter. A short, frosty walk.

Enhancements

2011-01-30T06:55:00.000-08:00

When renovating the gîte, we planned a nice little patio, off from the dining room, at the back of the lodge. The idea was for people to take coffees out, or perhaps tea in the sunshine of an afternoon, so we made it big enough for about 12 people, or half what the gîte can accommodate.

Mistake. What actually happens is that our guests like to eat a barbecue outside in the sunshine of a lunchtime, so, in fact the terrace was too small. So this Winter we set about enlarging it, and while we were at it, a pétanque pitch seemed like a good idea. Oh, and why not extend the concrete path around the end of the lodge so that wheelchairs can get there? Works have been going on this last week.

This is the terrace as it used to be; quite small but friendly. And the enormous digger Mr Chaudet brought to clear the way for the new terrace.

So now there is a new pétanque pitch, and although the patio isn't finished, you can see where it's going to be.

Just one question: What happened to all the earth, rocks and rubble that were scraped away to make room for all this? I'm glad you asked. It's all at the bottom of the field. I always had in mind to build a dry stone wall and backfill it with earth to make a terrace there. Well, now's my chance. A bit of effort might be needed. But I thought I might build some sort of pergola at the top, to look down on the valley of a Summer afernoon in the sunshine. Maybe it will be a popular place for tea.

Tree management

2011-01-28T07:53:00.001-08:00

I don't especially like cutting down trees, but sometimes you have to. It's about removing dead wood, giving the trees that remain air and light, and ensuring good growth for the future.

You need a good chain saw, and Jean-Claude doesn't mess about: he has three, a small one, a medium and a large one. I asked him if I could borrow his big one, and he said no, but he offered to come round and cut the trees himself, which he did the other day.

The big Walnut is now free from its entanglement with the Mirabelle trees, the remaining older Mirabelles are healthy, and the saplings have room to grow. And I have a stack of wood to dry out for heating in a couple of Winter's time.

I think a poem's not as good
As half a ton of well-stacked wood.

Probability

2011-01-22T00:17:00.000-08:00

A shop has a stock of five wheelbarrows. Each barrow has a left handle and a right handle, the left ones being different from the right, making a stock of ten handles in all, five left and five right.

You have to assemble the barrows yourself from component parts that are collected together for you by a shop assistant. If, instead of choosing one left handle and one right handle, the assistant chooses a pair at random, what is the probability that you end up with a barrow with a correct left and right pair of handles?

Supplementary question: What is the probability that the buyer will notice that he has two left handles 1) before leaving the shop? 2) before commencing assembly? 3) during assembly? 4) only after he has finished?

Battery management

2011-01-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not too bad at DIY. Not as gifted as my brother-in-law, perhaps, but not bad, and I do a fair bit of it. You have to, really if you're running a gîte, because it would be too expensive to pay for a pro every time there is a bit of maintenance to be done. I have noticed over the years, that whenever I need a power tool, and if I have a choice, I use a battery-powered one in preference to a mains-powered one. I find them more convenient and easier to use.

But they do have a problem, which is that the batteries need a bit of care if they are to stay in good condition. They need to be stored properly, and recharged every few months or so or else they quickly become useless. This is not too difficult when you only have one to look after, but when you have several different batteries for several different tools, each with its own charger, the job starts to become onerous.

So I started looking for a solution to this problem: a range of tools that all take the same battery, so that even if you have a lot of tools you only have one set of batteries to worry about. Also the batteries have to be lithium technology for better power/weight and easier storage. It took a while for me to find, but I reckon that Ryobi have scored with their One+ range of battery-powered tools. A whole range of battery-powered tools that can all use the same 18 volt lithium battery.

I'm hooked. The range is marketed in France as eco-friendly (two batteries instead of 30, for 30 tools), and it also has emotional appeal arising from obvious efficiency. I bought two batteries, a charger and a shark saw. You need two batteries so you can use one while the other is charging.

I used the shark saw today to kill ivy that was strangling a walnut tree: I sawed a two-inch gap in the ivy trunks, all around the tree. And the tree was at the bottom of my field, out of reach of mains cables. Cool tool. More tool purchases to follow, and I'll flog my other battery-powered stuff at the car boot (vide grenier) or maybe eBay.

What is neat about this from a marketing point of view, is that I'm not, for the foreseeable future, going to buy any other battery-powered tool that isn't made by Ryobi, or that isn't at least compatible with their batteries. Brand loyalty is built-in. I might even buy their shares too.

On Frozen Pond

2010-12-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

We spent time in England over Christmas, visiting relatives and friends and generally having a good time. My sister put us up to start with, and over Christmas we had a delightful time staying with friends in Wimbledon.

Here are just a few pictures to capture some of what went down. We took Mum out to lunch at Titchfield Mill, an old Mill beside the river Meon. It used to be a farm shop of sorts and Mum remembers buying foodstuffs in bulk there before it was converted. It is now a modern pub with proper food and real beer. We got out after an excellent meal and a drink, for about 11 quid a head too, which I reckon is pretty good value these days.

.

The Meon looks like a scruffy little stream in the picture, but I have fond memories of it. It flows from the mill, on into Titchfield village, and then joins the Solent at Hill head. As a teenager I used to walk from home, join the river at the downstream edge of Titchfield and follow it down to the sea, and then walk back via Beach Road and Posbrook Lane into Titchfield and on home from there.

Farther upstream the river crosses what was one of my favourite biking routes, and it was my habit to stop and spend 15 minutes or so, staring into the stream. Faith to continue while nothing was happening was rewarded by sights of fish and bugs in the water, as the eyes became accustomed to what they were seeing.

The period over Christmas was spent in Wimbledon, and a walk on Boxing day in the icy conditions yielded an opportunity to climb what I was assured is "The Climbing Tree", and also to slide about on the frozen pond.

Here's a couple of extra images for free: an unusual Christmas Rose plant, being almost pure white; a present from the Mayor's wife, and my new great-niece Isobelle. What a cutie!

Pies

2010-12-19T23:45:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again for making mince pies. Yum! And in keeping with the tradition of Jean-Claude the chef being interested in things British and Christmassy, I took some down for him to taste as well.

Good job I took a few, because when I got down to the restaurant there was Jean-Claude and Marie as expected, but also Mr Mottais the Mayor, Mr Housset the plumber (back to fix the boiler (again)), and the lady helping out Marie in the restaurant. Karine who runs the tourist office wasn't there, so there was a pie left for me to enjoy with coffee.

The Internet's Children

2010-12-15T09:58:00.001-08:00

Despite the fact that I'm comfortable with the internet, perhaps I am not a true child of the net, not having grown up with it.

I saw a poster advert a while back for Drumcat, a South Korean band of female drummers, playing in Mayenne. They looked like they might be entertaining so I got us two tickets and we went to see them. Great fun! You haven't heard the Rodrigo Concerto d'Aranjuez until you've heard their take on it, nor, if it comes to that, Beethoven's Ninth, both with the help of the electric violinist who seems to be included in the deal.

So having failed to take my camera to the concert, or make any other visual note of the event, I was looking for an internet link to attach to this blog post. There's quite a lot of information about them to be found: here, here and here, for example.

A true child of the web would have looked this up before buying the tickets. Not that I'm at all unhappy. They're great fun, recommended. Take ear defenders.

Fun with the Boiler

2010-12-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

In general, I'm pleased with the decision to go for a wood-fired boiler to heat the gîte. I like the idea of its eco-friendliness, and I like the fact that the heat costs me about 4 (euro) cents per kilowatt-hour. On the other hand, it does need looking after to make sure that all is well: The quality of the after-sales service is an important consideration, and not one that was taken into account when making the purchase.

The boiler is made by Heizomat, a German manufacturer, 100Kwatts and, like many things German, built to last. However it was installed by Nideck Chauffage, a French outfit, who were the sole Heizomat distributors in France at that time. I had been unhappy with the after-sales service from Nideck, and I was recently delighted (and relieved) to discover that Heizomat are setting up a direct sales and support operation in France. I can now go the the manufacturer for any help I need, and this gives me considerable comfort. I do stress out when I imagine having guests in the gîte and no heating.

The concept of the boiler is basically quite simple. Wood chips are fed in one end, and as they enter, air is blown over them to get them burning quickly. The hot air and smoke exits at the other end of the boiler having passed over the water jacket. All this is regulated by a computer control system mounted on the wall. It's great when things are going well, but when the system is out of kilter, the effect can be dramatic. This happened the other day, and the boiler room filled with smoke. I was very glad the boiler was some way away from the house.

The problem was a simple one, resolved after a careful investigation and some calls to Heizomat France. I feel much better but I am keeping an eye on it.

Flour

2010-11-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

Conspicuous by its absence in French supermarkets is self-raising flour. As a consequence, the Victoria Sponge Cake is also almost unknown here.

Self-raising flour is ordinary flour with two added components: an acid and an alkali that when mixed together in the presence of water react to create bubbles of carbon dioxide. It is these bubbles that cause a sponge cake to rise and give it its light, spongy texture. If you want to make a sponge cake with plain flour you have to beat in the bubbles using a whisk, which is time-consuming and much less reliable.

Baking powder, which is a mixture of the acid and alkali ingredients, can be found hidden away in the "foreign" section of supermarket shelves. Otherwise you have to source your own baking soda and cream of tartar and mix them yourself.

The other day, Jean-Claude, the new chef down in the restaurant Le Canyon, was asking about English Christmas traditions, and we got on to the subject of English cake (cake Anglaise). It turned out that he was talking about sponge cake, and he asked how it was made, and for a recipe. What better way to deal with this than to conspire with the wife to create one, and go down with it one morning, hand over the recipe, and enjoy a social coffee and cake for elevenses?

Subbing

2010-11-22T02:57:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I was asked to sub for Caroline, a flutist, in the Harmonie at Evron, since she was unable to make it to the concerts at the end of term. This was great fun, even though it blew a hole in my diary for the three weeks that followed, and gave me a fair bit of extra work to do learning the pieces.

I do like the concept of the Harmonie as a local wind band. It gives adults of all levels a chance to play and to socialise and it results in free concerts for the townspeople to go to. And I can't believe how many there are: there is a Harmonie in Evron, St Suzanne, Sablé sur Sarthe, Meslay du Maine, St Denis D'Orques, and those are just the ones I know about. It's as if, when I lived in England, there was one in Staines, Egham, Hounslow, Feltham, Chertsey, Shepperton, being the towns and villages that surrounded me there.

It is also great for the youngsters learning an instrument. As soon as you get to a reasonable level of competence (equivalent to grade 5, say) on your instrument, you are expected to play in the Harmonie. For example, Solène, my flute teacher tells me she was in her local Harmonie from the age of 9. If you can't play all the notes, no problem, you are just expected to make whatever contribution you can. And you get experience in playing in a group, in watching a conductor, and performing in public. It's also a tradition for professional musicians who have "made it" to drop in on their old Harmonie pals and play along from time to time. Fabulous!

The bedrock of the Evron Harmonie is the teachers from the music school (that is now classed as a conservatoire, in fact). I think that the music teachers for accordion, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, euphonium, percussion, oboe, sax and guitar were all playing. (I might have missed some) This makes for excellent overall musical quality and is a confidence-booster for the students: if you have the same part as your teacher, and you are doing something different, you know to stop, correct, and restart, while the teacher "holds the fort".

I used my new recorder to record the concert on the Saturday evening, and used the resulting files as a play-along to practice some more before the last concert on Sunday. Very practical, useful and confidence-building. I will use that technique again. I'll see if I can post some audio tracks here for your listening delight, but meanwhile here's a pic. (If you know how to post an MP3 file, please do tell)

The calendar

2010-11-14T04:01:00.000-08:00

It was the journée calendrier for the Harmonie de St Suzanne on Saturday, whereby as a fund-raising activity, the members of the band go around the canton of St Suzanne offering commemorative calendars in exchange for donations. We don't actually sell the calendars of course; that would fall foul of all sorts of regulations. So we give them away, and, at the same time, remind people of the acceptable nature of donations.

It was chucking down with rain all morning. All day in fact, but we finished at 1:00 PM or thereabouts and retired to a big basement to enjoy a communal lunch, to get dry and warm again, and to count the profits.

Our team of three canvassed the estate near the town centre, and we disposed of 37 calendars at an average price of about 8 euros each. I am always surprised by the willingness of homeowners to let us into their houses. I would say that well over half of the people who opened their doors to us took a calendar, and of these all but a small handful invited us inside to complete the transaction. Perhaps it is a generational thing; the younger people on the team said that they never do it. I don't either.

In any case, if any reader would like to acquire one of these works of art, please get in touch via the email address on my profile page. A genuine bit of France to distinguish your home. Donations welcome, postage and packing extra, at cost. Thank you. Here is a copy of our picture as it appears on the calendar; beneath this are the actual calendar pages, and messages from our sponsors. And please do tell your friends!

A music party

2010-11-08T23:48:00.000-08:00

Shortly after I first moved out here, I stumbled across a little musical instrument repair shop, called l'Atelier d'Orphée in the old town part of Le Mans. They have serviced my flute ever since. They sent me an invitation not long ago to come to a free afternoon of music, in celebration of their 20th birthday, and to be held at an old abbey to the East of the town. Sounds like an offer I can't refuse.

There was flute jazz, a three-piece band (drums, trombone, tuba) made a great sound, a brass wind band and a Klezmer group. Pretty good for all in one afternoon, a fact that was not lost on the other invitees; there must have been 1,000 people there.. Plus, an exhibition of musical instruments presented by various manufacturers, and free crêpes. And all in a beautiful restored abbey. What's not to like?

Old year's resolution

2010-11-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

I took a look at the pictures I have been taking recently and they look like I have been suffering from even more shaky hands than usual. I like digital cameras in part because their high sensitivity gives them greater immunity to shake. But these were uniformly worse than usual. Detective work revealed that I had somehow managed to set my camera to 640x480 resolution. Fortunately it hasn't been set like that for long.

So anyway here's a couple of pictures where I like what the light was doing, in the first one highlighting the trees across the valley and in the second one, lighting the way. Finally two views in the evening sun from my thotful spot on top of the cliffs.