How to keep cool

I wasn't going to pop a blog up today, then thought I would.

First of all, for all you UK people experiencing some hot weather, here are some helpful hints from down here in SW France where we are more experienced with dealing with the heat.
1) Keep your clothes on. If you don't, and you get hot, then rivers of perspiration will run down all the crevasses of your body and will make you feel jolly uncomfortable. OK, so your clothing might feel a tad on the damp side, but it is much better than being in a shower of your own making.

2) When the heat is making you feel cooked and tired, just say to yourself: at least it's not raining and it's not cold.

3) I find that jam making in the caravan kitchen is a great way to cool down. Since the task itself requires heat, then that, plus the environment of the caravan on a hot day, will inflate the air temperatures no end. Once the task is finished, when one goes outside into the heat of the day, by comparison the temperature will feel cooler. After all, one is not standing infront of a gas ring going at full pelt, stirring a large pot of sugar and fruit.
If you do not have a caravan so you can't avail yourself of this cool-down hint, then switch on your gas fire for a few minutes, roast yourself infront of it, get yourself to sweltering-temperature, then off outside into the sunshine. As I say, by comparison, you will feel automatically cooler.

4) The need to have a siesta will come upon you the more the temperatures go up. Do so. Your body is working very hard to keep you cool so it deserves a bit of time out, and would appreciate you getting off your feet so it can have a rest too.
This might be difficult if you are in an office environment however. Shutting the office door and having a five minute kip on the floor is perhaps not the best activity to be engaged in. Others might misconstrue your floor-pose, believing either that you have fainted and then try to rescucitate you, or that you have gone on strike, or that you would like some titillation. So, sorry, I am not sure how you would go about a siesta in these circumstance. Five minutes on the loo perhaps?

5) Drink plenty of water. Your body will moan at you if you don't. The first sign that it is unhappy is when you can't do number two's but feel you want. to This is because your bodily fluid is coming out through your skin and there isn't enough to sort out the plumbing system of your nether regions.

6) Don't mind if your partner doesn't want to do 'spoons' at night. This is when you tuck up with each other, one front against the other's back. It does not mean that they are going off you, just that they are too sweaty and don't want to soak you as well. If you do feel that there is a bit of a gap between you in the bed and you don't like it, you can always slide a foot across the gap, and park it up on your partners body somewhere. That will keep a contact between you. However, if your partner rolls over suddenly, you might find your foot trapped beneath their body, so be watchful with this.

7) I touched on this in a previous blog, but wearing a hat when doing tasks will sop up the moisture which will run down your face and into your eyes as you get hotter, and might cause difficulties at moments when it is important to have full vision. I suppose a headband would suffice if you haven't got a hat, but I like hats because you can play with them when talking to others.

8) Don't moan about the sun, and how hot it is. Go outside and enjoy. Sit under a tree and watch the shadows. Think about the coldest day you remember and feel blessed that it is warm and you don't have to wear thermal vests.

9) Hot weather will encourage the midges to bite. There are plenty of creams on the market to remove the itch, but putting a nice large nugget of spit on the tip of a finger and smearing it onto the bite should help, but if you simply have to itch, then here is how you do it: Put the tip of one finger onto the tip of the bite. Then use your other fingers to scratch round the bite, all the while keeping the original finger in place. This method gives you a hearty good scratch without interfering with the top of the bite which, if you do scratch the actual top, will make the entire bite worse. Scratch the surrounding environment of the bite, not the actual bite itself.

10) Abandon your car. Don't give in to the herd mentality of 'going out for a drive'. All you will do is probably end up in a traffic jam. If you feel the need to have some water to immerse yourself in, get a bowl of water and put bits of you in it. Or use the hose pipe on yourself. Or walk to the local swimming pool, lake, stream, river, or beach. It is better for your lungs and general health if you do partake of a huge intake of petrol or diesel fumes as you wait for the next car to move infront of you.

11) Ban TV. Take every opportunity to get out into the air, after all, in the UK, sun is not always in bountiful supply.

So, I hope these hints help you to also enjoy the warm days. Meanwhile, here at Labartere, no builders today, but Johnathen has been working in the half barn. I have been jam making, blogging, and doing some final editing on Psychic Virgin. Lester has been hard at work on his PC. Three more months before he finishes his present employment, he was told today. The company he is working for is folding, and being gobbled up by its parent company which is also probably going to fold. Not to worry though. He has managed to get over a year's salary from them, which has enabled us to push forward with the renovation work.

Things I have learnt today: That keeping in the saddle can be quite hard work, but it one does feel like one is going to take a tumble, just pick up the phone and have a girly chat with one's daughter or one's friends. This will help one keep astride the pony which is one's life.

I nearly didn't have an adventure today

But then I did. Initiated by Boolie deciding that he really needed to Go OUT, and not keep poncing about on the campus like me and Lester had been doing all day. Well, we had been working. Lester to pay for Boo's food, and me to try and become an ever-so-famous-writer by selling at least one book. And what slow going that is and how I am learning that being a writer requires of one hours and hours and hours and yet more hours of earnest endeavour which can, quite frankly, drive one up the pole.

Anyway, on with today. It has been hot, so early lunch because being in the kitchen caravan is like being in a sauna if one is trying to cook. Heat from the sun + heat from the oven (if on, which most days it is) + top of stove cooking = one hot and drippy moi. Yesterday, it was hotter. I left it until late evening to wash up. It was still swelteringly hot. So I divested myself of my top and other articles except my pinny, and hoped that Bruno, bless him, wouldn't come swinging along to see how we were getting along. Fortunately he didn't. But I relied on Boo's ears to let me know if he, or anyone else, was about.

Trouble is that Boo's getting lazy. He used to bark at everything, which was a nuisance sometimes, but a blessing at other times especially if one was doing things which one didn't want anyone else to see. But he is getting inattentive to his job of late, and we are finding that we are the ones to investigate new arrivals before he does. I think I will have to have a talk with him about what his job actually entails, especially as it looks as if I am going to be only wearing a pinny in the kitchen caravan more often. We are, as it happens, still only in late spring, and the temperature in the bedroom caravan was at 30 degrees C.

So, 7pm here. Bools was of the opinion that messing about with potting compost was too damn boring. So he psyched me out. He does this by lying down with his head on his front paws and stares and stares at me, knowing that I will get the message eventually.

Off we go down the lane. Now I don't know why he has to do this, but he always does at least one or two deposits right outside Christiane's house. No matter how I try to get him to do his doggy dollops elsewhere, always he manages to find some contribution to dump around her property. I have become deft at doing a quick sideways flick with my booted foot to reposition the deposits. I am sure that Bools thinks it fun.

The grass has grown. So has the oil seed rape on our fields which means that we haven't been able to walk round our fields for weeks. We miss that. It makes us feel disengaged from the full extent of Labartere. Today I thought I would plough a way through. After all, I haven't had an adventure today, so here goes. Instead of returning the way I had come, I carried on over Christiane's field, into a little strip of woodland, then round the edge of our oil seed rape field.

The grass was as tall as my head. It was fun for a couple of yards. Bools thought so too. He does kangaroo hops in long grass. But he also spooks himself. The thing is, I rely on his desire to look after and protect me from anything which might come and eat me. It would seem that this only applies to when I am having a lie down in bed, when he can do watch-dog in comfort, or sitting at my computer when he can do a full-on sleep as can be heard by his snoring, him being obviously off-duty. But when it matters, as when I am having an adventure in tall grass which could be housing all manner of creatures both great and small, and here I am reminded of that humungous snake that I disturbed in the middle of winter when I was messing about out front, he seems to be looking toward me for protection. So it ended up with both of us spooking each other.

We made a safe return.

I had an adventure today. I have the mozzie bites to prove it and my nose is full of grass seed and oil seed rape dust, which means that the bedroom caravan will swim sweetly with the scent of Vick Vapour Rub which I will have to use in quantity if I am to keep my airways open so I can breath.

Bools meanwhile, is having a nap. After all, he was the leader on the adventure as such thinks he deserves the reward of a kip.

Things I have learnt today: That its best to wait until Farmer Foch cuts the oil seed rape and hopefully also cuts the verges so me and Bools can make a safe passage round our land and also ensure I do not become peppered overall with mozzie bites. That an early dinner was a good idea because I could wash up when it wasn't so hot and therefore avoid any embarassment to Bruno and other visitors by wearing only my pinny because it is too hot to do otherwise. That even when one doesn't think one is going to have an adventure, an adventure will pop up and find one. That Vick is a blessing.

Doors, blisters, and mozzies

Hellooo and welcome. This be t' owld doooor that upon a time ago serrrrved to protect t'occupants of t'tall barrrrn. Eet weavered many a storrrrm but ne'er eet failed. T'ole in t'wall eet protected.

Now eet ees no morrrre. Il est mort.




Et voila. Angel Jim did come and wave a magic wand, or rather, his toolbox. With great skill he made and manoevred a new door into place. Et voila!



The 'ole has been feeexed.



"Oooooouuuuucccchhhhhh!" Head Gardener wailed this morning, "I've got a blister on my thumb". And so a blister had grown where before there had been none. Indeed, HG's once white, pristine, office hands are now brown, earthen, and starting to grow baby calouses. Ah bless! And now the advent of a blister, brought about by the moving of the field, not with a tractor nor yet a sit upon lawn mower, but by his ancient petrol lawnmower which has to be pushed over the docks, nettles, wild flowers, old corn stalks, new corn, and other assorted greenery which has made up the field out back of the house. And HG, stirling trooper that he is, has mown a goodly portion of this field, and turned it into a trainee lawn. Hence the blister. It takes hours. He is brown, fit, and has newly made muscles in certain places. Mmmm, lovely!

And so the mozzies have arrived for their summer vacation. They have been floating around for a few days, but in a lazy fashion as if they are still half asleep and wouldn't take a sip of blood out of us even if we offered ourselves up for them to do so. Not now. Last night, with a vengeance they were zooming in to any piece of skin which dared show itself. So that's it for the rest of the year. Never mind, one gets used to them. All windows and doors are shut before they start flying about in the evening and HG is a marvelous aim with his flyswot, and we say Hurrah to the bats and swifts which are zooming about overhead eating them for dinner.




And 'ere beee t'doorrrr!












Things I have learnt today: That sometimes I can speak French, sometimes I can't. So not to get into a flurry if I can't for the life of me understand the French butcher into whose shop I ventured for the first time. Perhaps next time I might.(This is a different butcher to the one I have spoken about in the past). And not to mind if my double chin seems to have vanished. It will probably be back soon.

Watering, logs and bees.

Upon his watering mission last night, Lester found the plod round the property just too much. Having planted seventeen fruit trees all about the place, I said he would have trouble keeping up with the watering. "Make an orchard" I said, "by putting them in a random clump as nature would have intented. That'll make the watering easier" which seemed a logical solution to where to plant our trees.
"I want them in straight lines...." he said in his 'I am the chief planter around here' voice which he is using a lot of late. "And I want them around the edge of the property" he added.
"Yes but it will make the watering harder. Can't you put them all together in a group?"
"No."

And thus was my prophecy proved correct last night as he trundled the water bucket from tree to tree. Out front there are nine edging the perimeter: 2 peach, 2 apricot, 2 Pear, 3 plum. By the oak out back: 2 peach, 2 apricot. By the bridge: 2 apple, 1 cherry, 1 unknown. It is quite a walk for him. But he found a solution for the furthest ones: he got the water from the Adour. "It's full of minerals and things" he said, "better than tap water. It comes down off the Pyrenees so it must be good". And yes, it is, only I know my husband well enough to expect the news that sometime soon that she has taken away the bucket and that she has made him have wet feet. Only I hope he is careful, I wouldn't like to see him floating off down the Adour. She is a fast and busy river, and would be eager to have a passenger.

Already he is eyeing up the pile of logs captured by the bridge support and is making plans as to how he can retrieve them, one of which is wading across to them and manhandling them back to dry land. I smile and say "What a good idea, but wouldn't it be better to get a blow-up boat or something so you can row across", not wanting to put him off his gung-ho, 'man-provider' mode while all the while secretly hoping that the French will come and tidy up the bridge themselves. Only Lester rarely does anything at Labartere without needing my help, so it is a distinct possibility that moi will be captured into a retrieval of logs adventure sometime during 2009, hopefully when the Adour is in her sleepy state of summertime laziness. Or perhaps he might drop the idea all together, which will be even better!

As for the trees: if we manage to get half of them to survive then we will consider it a bonus. We are organically minded. Unfortunately, this area is rife with humungous bugs. They are big. And voracious. I am not sure we can stay organic, this land may not let us, but we will wait and see on that.

On inspection of the trees, I find myself hugging them and telling them to "hang on in there, we will do our best to look after you". I may, or may not, be losing the plot! Our French neighbours might be thinking the same as they see me hugging, and talking to, our little trees.

But then they may become even more concerned when we get the bee keeping project under way. The beehives will be out by the woodland on the front field and there is no way that we are going to manage to look after them without all the neighbourhood knowing about it. Seeing us walking about in veiled white overalls might just push our neighbours over the edge with us! But the whole bee-keeping project might be put off until later on in the year: apparently bees don't like lawn mowers which I presume also includes tractors, and we don't want Monsieur Prunet-Foch to be stung to pieces while he is lifting off his harvest from our fields in June. Swatting away at the bees while they are telling him to "**** away from our flight paths" will possibly have him fetching up, tractor and all, in the Adour. Which will make her happy as she will then have a passenger to play with, plus a bit of mechanical equipment as well.

First gnat bite. First bramble scratch. First visit from the Gendarmerie. Ooh la la!