Pas Francais. Espagnol!

I was going to tell you about the rotovator today, but first:

I have been so proud that 'French' roofers are repairing Labartere, and not anyone else of a 'foreign' nationality. It seemed to us important that since it is a French house, then it should be healed by French artisans. And I tell the French I speak to that this is so. 'Pas Anglais charpentiers. Les charpentiers est Francais' (not English carpenters, the carpenters are French).

We do not want to be seen as being English invaders. There are loads of English here, and most don't want to integrate with the French people. Yet in England it is frowned upon if people do not speak English and prefer to live in their national groups and maintain their homeland's cultural ways. The same here. There is a distinct sub-culture of English people, living as if they were in England, proud to own imposing houses which they wouldn't have been able to afford in the UK, which makes them pompous and arrogant. I don't think they mean to be, but most do not have respect for the country which is now housing them. They don't see the culture as being of any benefit to them: they are here for the sun (when it shines which it often does), the food (which is sometimes good sometimes not, as in all countries), and the way of life, which is laid back, and because they can get a big house for their money. They bring England here. They do not leave England where it is, and allow themselves to become gradually absorbed into France.

I think to come to live in a country and not want to integrate as much as one can by trying to communicate as often as one can to the people whose country it is, is insulting to those people. Rarely do I see any English person even make the effort to communicate with people like the lady on the till in the supermarket. These are the people I practice my French on

Most times they are terse, and quite rightly the French can be unhelpful back. We are immigrants, and I find that if one remains aware of this, and respectful to the fact that the French are having to tolerate a huge swathe of incomers most of whom can't be bothered, and do not want to, try and merge with them by making the effort at least to say 'Bonjour, ca va?' then the French are lovely. Yesterday a lady actually came up to me in the supermarket and initiated a conversation with me, because I had twice already commented on her garden as I passed it on by. My French is still minimal, but she was patient and we managed to communicate sufficiently enough to end up in guffaws of laughter. I try. I wish the other English would do the same. Because most times I tend to feel ashamed of the English here, especially the two-homers who gallop around the supermarket as if they own the place. Most of us genuine incomers tend to steer clear of being associated with them and never would I speak English in earshot of them.

And so, Lester was given a lift to the Galiax wood mill by Stephan. Now working on the half-barn roof, Dani had decided that two beams needed to be replaced. So off Stephan and Lester went, to purchase the replacement beams.

So on the way back, and Stephan puts some music on.
"That's not French music" Lester says.
"Non, je ne suis pas français, je suis espagnol! Il est la musique espagnol." says Stephan.
"Non, vous etes espagnol?"
"Oui. Et tous les charpentiers sont espagnols. Dani, et Jean-Michel aussi. Tous les charpentiers!"

Mmmmm. So let me explain! Apparently ALL the men working on our house are Spanish! Which is why we don't have the foggiest idea of what they are saying either to us, or when they are talking with each whilst working! But it isn't clearly Spanish they use, but is a curious mixture of Spanish and French.

Well, we don't have a pig's ear of a chance to get off the starting blocks with this one! They do, however, understand "voulez-vous une tasse de thé anglais?" (do you want a cup of English tea) and I understand "le gateaux. Vous faites? C'est bon" (the cake, you make? It is good). Somehow Lester manages to communcate better, I just smile. I can do French / English. I can't do Spanish-French / English!

I have blathered on for quite some time, so will let you know about the rotovator next time. But on a last note: When Lester almost had a fatal accident last December, and I was waiting for the ambulance to sort him out, I thought to myself "What would I do if he died?" And the answer I received back from myself was "I would stay here. I am here for the duration". It is with great pleasure that after ten months we know as many French people as we do English. And when out and about, I speak as much French as I do English, or try to. As I have said, it is a steep learning curve, but in my heart I have the deepest of respect for a nation with whom we hope to spend the rest of our lives.

And the roofers, albeit of Spanish nationality, have been hard at work on the half barn this week.

Holay! We are looking good!

And down the well we go

Actually, it was not we, it was Lester. I just clucked around him like one of Denise's chickens (over at Much Malarkey Manor).

The well is deep, you see, and Lester bless him, is gathering unto himself a number of scars from the bumps he keeps getting. Being at the bottom of a well is likely to produce quite a big bump.

But,"We need to get off-grid" is one of Lester's pet subjects. Off-grid for food, off-grid for electricity, off-grid for water, off-grid for fuel. So there I was, doing cookingy things in the kitchen caravan, Lester yells through the door as he passes on by "I'm off down the well. I've got an experiment to do with Bruno". Ah, Bruno. Whenever he appears there is normally some man-stuff going to be happening. Like disappearing down to the donkey farm, or clearing off into Plaisance for a boy's jolly round the market and the bar.
I was busy. Making bread. Hands sticky. Couldn't really interfere.

Clang. Oh-oh! Sounded like the ladders.

Bread slapped down into tin sharpish. I knew it was going to complain later because it hadn't been rolled around enough (bread does like to have a friendly romp around under the hands. If it doesn't get such nice treatment it tends to not bother rising properly, and fetches up less than lovely.) Out to the front I trotted, to see the ladders extending a couple of feet in the air, the rest being in the well. Lester's hat was disappering down the ladder, presumably still attached to Lester's head.

Bruno turned to me sweetly, and said 'Lester, he go down the well', which was obvious because now his voice was yelling out that he had reached the water, and could he have a bucket sent down so he could test the water and see how deep it was.

"eet ees exciting! Now you have water." Bruno says, full of boyish enthusiasm.
'No, eet eees not exciting' I am thinking to myself, my head full of worrying thoughts like 'what if he falls into the water, how deep is it? What if slips and hurts himself, how are we going to get him back up.' and "Lester, will you get yourself back up here" I find myself yelling.

"NO" he sends back up. "I want a bucket. Get me that red bucket". Oh, the red bucket which was originally purchased by myself for doing the floors with, or rather mopping the tarpaulins because we don't actually have a 'floor' in the normal sense. Not solid, indoor-type floors. We have caravan floors which are carpeted but covered over with towels and throws in an effort to keep them from getting too wet or too muddy, and they are getting bouncy, trampolin bouncy, the more we walk over them. One of these days we are going to step heavily and either end up going through the 'floor' or we will find ourselves hitting out heads on the ceiling by the bounce-effect.

I use the red bucket and mop to wash over the tarpaulins which lie outside around our living quarters. They don't look particularly attractive, but it is a case of either have wet caravan floors, or wet and muddy caravan floors, and the tarps cover the ground like an external carpet. Washing them over makes me feel that I am making an attempt at keeping the place clean. To be quite honest, it doesn't make any difference really, since we both wear boots which leave chunks of mud everywhere, except for Boolie but he has four furry feet which seem to gather as much wet mud as all our boots put together.

However, a while ago, the red bucket was found by The Man of the House, or rather The Man of the Roofless House, Two Caravans, and an Office. It is rarely seen. It is always Somewhere Else, being used for things it has no right to be used for. So now I am supposed to locate the red bucket and send it down the well to The Man so he can mess about in the water at the bottom of the well as an 'experiment'.

It was at this point I went off the boil with it all. I do that. Go off the boil. I happily go along with The Man's projects, and then I seem to reach a point when I rapidly lose interest, like a gas ring being switched off under a pan of boiling water.

So, I walked off, yelling back at him some excuse or other, leaving him and Bruno to sort out the experiment between them.

It went well, down the well. Bruno found a metal bucket which unfortunately had a hole in the bottom, tied it to a length of rope and sent it down to Lester. Apparently there was some altercation between them as to the angle of the hauling up of the bucket. Full of wet sludge, through the hole in the bottom of the bucket, much of the contents dripped back onto Lester as he stood up to his knees in the water. I know it was messy down at the bottom of the well, because I was handed a pile of very messy clothes to wash.

He was not best pleased that I lacked enthusiasm to join in the 'experiment' to get the well going. But I think that sometimes men are best left to get on with having their 'adventures', and him and Bruno enjoyed themselves more without a woman clucking around them, telling them to 'be careful', 'the bucket's got a hole in it, so it isn't going to be any good', 'you need a hard hat Lester', 'Bruno, be careful, that bucket's going to hit Lester on the head in a minute', and so on.

The upshot of the 'experiment' is that we can pump loads of water out of the well, which is running clear because it is being filtered through an ancient river bed system.

Bruno had just filled his swimming pool up with water from his well. We do not plan to have a swimming pool, we want a roof.

And Lester has come up with the stirling idea of building a water tower into which the well-water will be pumped, and from which all our water-needs can then be taken.
Unfortunately, a water tower is not something I can go along with. I think it will look 'orrible. So I have managed to get him to agree to a ground 'water tower'. What I mean is, a water tank at ground level, over which we will put a 'hat' of trellis and grow plants on it, so the tank will have a floral hat, which I think will look quite nice.

Pour ce momente, the well has been abandoned. The rotovator has been repaired and he is ploughing everything up. But I will tell you about that tomorrow. But the well-project has joined the queue for self-sufficiency-must-do. I await with interest Bruno and Lester's next experiment. Hopefully it will not involve buckets, ladders, and wells.

Sick trees & yogpots, rhubarb a go-go

Without wishing to pile a heap of 'I told you so's onto Head Gardener shoulders, with great dignity he agreed with me that donkey manure might not be quite such a good medium for starting little seedlings off. In my head, I think it is because donkey-wee is too strong. I don't know why I should think this, but I keep seeing a donkey weeing in my head when I think of the donkey compost. It may or may not be imagination, but it doesn't matter because my doubts have been realised. Despite instructions from Head Gardener as to how to prepare the manure, and his endeavours to plant a few pots out to show me how to do it, he met with a high failure rate as well. Actually not so much of a failure rate, more like zilch, zero, nil, not at all. This photo is of MY pots, and I did have a few brave seedlings come up.

Upon receiving new instructions from Head Gardener, I am to start all over again with purchased seed compost bought from a shop. It is hoped that sometime this year we will manage to produce something to put in our newly dug ground. It would be nice to get going with self sufficiency this side of Christmas.

And another thing. I had to do some strimming today, and felt miserable beyond belief that I had to cut down a very healthy swathe of nettles. For the duration of the cutting I could not get Andy's nettle beer (Denise's husband over at Malarkey Manor) out of my head. I felt as if I was letting the self sufficiency team down, and only managed to stem the building-up of guilt by telling myself that we will get to do recycling of nettles and other 'wild' produce in the fullness of time.

Like when we actually have a proper kitchen, like when we have a roof over our heads, like when we are in post-camping mode. It might take a long time. The roofers are managing about two days a week at the moment. We anticipate August, if we are lucky, for the roof to go on, and then we have to fit out the half barn to live in. Probably next year, then, for nettle recycling and dandelion jam, and the continuing retraining of ourselves to eat things from the natural world rather than from a supermarket shelf.

And then a walk round our front garden drenched us in a bucket of cold water figuratively speaking. For there, on one of our peach trees, instead of healthy green leaves, there were twisted up and gnarled ones. An Internet search came up with 'peach leaf curl' which 'cannot be done anything with once Spring arrives, and perhaps the tree will live, or maybe it won't.' I tell you, to actually get to eat your own food takes a heck of a lot of effort. As I have mentioned before, everything else is racing for the food table you have so graciously provided, and it would seem that all we will get at the end is what everything else doesn't want.

I have made a note in my diary to 'spray peaches in November, then again in January, and pick up all leaves in Autumn so the peach leaf curl culprits can't over-winter at the foot of the tree. I suspect my diary will get full of such instructions.




Head Gardener has a passion for figs. I don't. One huge tree is enough. I made thirty pots of jam last season, which was quite a feat on a caravan gas ring. But, HG thinks we should have more trees, so went on a raid for some fig cuttings (Black Fig) to supplement our two figs which are Turkey Browns. Unfortunately, No, No, don't be like that Vera!!! FORTUNATELY (that's more like it - a positive attitude is what is called for....after all, I might eventually get to like Black Figs, once I have got to like Turkey Browns. If one eats enough of them, surely they will grow on one!)it looks like most of his cuttings have taken, probably inspired to root by the Hormone Rooting Powder which was used on them.

And now, our FIRST MAJOR SUCCESS! Rhubarb!!!!! Brought from the UK last year, they survived in their pots somehow until they were planted out last October. And crikey but don't they like their new home. Galloping away with an enthusiasm which is astonishing, they are trying ever so hard to push out flowers, which I equally as diligently remove. But they don't seem to mind, even letting me have some of their stems to make our very first rhubarb and apple crumble, which was gorgeous.

We managed to enjoy the rhubarb before everything else woke up. Even the slugs and snails hadn't really had a go at it. And so this day draws to a close, and we feel suitable pleased with ourselves, because we are self sufficient in rhubarb at least. Hopefully the coming months will enlarge our self sufficient diet.