Moving boxes, furniture and bibelots down to the basement and garage over the past few days has meant my glutes are feeling like they are 20 yrs old again! phew!:) Well, maybe not 20, but certainly more youthful. I dont think you would notice from the rear, in my baggy green trousers...yes, we are back in trousers, so cool has the weather been...but I'm telling you...I notice!
Having had a few run-in's with steps and stairs and done myself some major damage in the not too distant past, I am SOOO careful going up and down them. I love our new stairs...wide treads and not too high a step up and a nice 'curl' around between floors. Good hand railing and I feel the benefits of stair climbing every time I ascend.
I have exhorted Waz to take care on step stools, stairs et al, as we dont need any medical emergencies...again. I check and check again every time I get on the step stool/ladder and make sure to plant it properly. Cant be too careful. Unfortunately, owning a house on a hill, even though the incline is small in the scheme of things, means we have steps outside...concrete steps. We went up and down those things so many times, today, I lost count. We have a load cart to help us with the heavier things, but we will have to get someone to help us lower some of the furniture over the terrace railing. It simply is too wide or long to fit through the gap in the kitchen between the cooktop and the sink cabinets. Who designs these spaces? Rhetorical question!
We have the Brocante man coming tomorrow to 'take a look' at all the extra furniture we have taken down to the garage. We desperately need him to just take it all away, so I'm hoping there wont be any haggling about what he will and wont take. I was assured that he takes everything, and he gets it for free I might add, so I'm going to be a bit pissy if he decides to get choosy. It has to be worth his while to get a truck in here to transport it to his home base. He makes a living off things people dont want. Unfortunately, I have been told that mattresses end up at the dump. We have a really good Double mattress and base which I dont want to see being tossed, so we might try to sell that privately. The other one can be trashed....so old and just like a log of wood to lie on.
We haven't had time to de-cobweb the basement yet, or trash the bits and pieces that seem to lie everywhere broken, but this scene was rather picturesque, I thought.
There are a number of HUGE horseshoes lying around, so I wonder if they were for the game of horse shoes? Maybe. They aren't all in one place, so who knows.
The cobwebs are like curtains.
It has rained for the past four days, almost non-stop. Sometimes the sun appears around 7pm and we get a glimpse of blue sky, surrounded by plenty of dark brooding clouds. Thunder that rolls constantly makes us wonder where the lightening is. Apparently there have been 100's of thousands of lightening strikes over the past week in France. We didnt get the rotten weather, high winds and downed trees along with flooding, that much of France has had. The temperature has been a steady 15-16C most days, cool enough to break out the jeans and work trousers, and we have been glad to keep our sweatshirts on. We even entertained the idea of putting the heating on the other night, but instead broke out a blanket and snuggled up.
The process of getting rid of someone else's possessions is a curious one. We have found plenty of personal items...well, they were...and items that we shake our heads over, wondering why they were purchased in the first place. The previous owners appear to have done plenty of Brocante shopping, and there is 'stuff' everywhere.
We spent a couple of hours (in the rain) first in Archiac (at shee ack) visiting an Antiques dealer whose shop is adjacent (on his property) to his lovely Maison Bourgeois, operating as a Chambre d'hote. He looked at the photos of items we wanted to divest ourselves of and shook his head. Too English and too new! sigh. On to the next place. Waz had looked up all the Brocante shops (second hand shops) in the area, and because most of them are French owned, we had to go there. My French language needs to see the person saying the words. Telephones are yet a bad idea for us! :) unless they speak Anglais!
Jonzac was the next place on the 'tour' and we stopped at the Tourist Information Center where generally you can find someone who speaks English well enough to converse. We were in luck. Jonzac is a Chateau town (right slap bang in the middle, actually) so it gets plenty of tourist traffic. They directed us to the Brocante where the owner said he spoke a little English, but turned out to speak a lot! He too looked at my photos and shook his head. Too new and too English. We noted the huge pile of spent cigarettes on the desk beside him, and thought that he had a legitimate excuse for not wanting what we had to sell...tourist season hadn't started, and when we looked around his store briefly on the way out, we thought he had a shop full, for now.
Back in the car...Waz asked me what was in Jonzac that we just HAD to do....I give up! What?
How could I forget!!!! The patisserie!
Put it this way...you dont go for one of something to this place. We didnt make a meal of the cakes as we had last time, but we did have a light lunch first, before devouring the delights. I deliberately didnt take a photo, because you will by now be thinking that all we do is eat pastries and we are the size of houses! lol.
We dont, and we aren't. It just sounds that way;)
In the meantime much packing, sorting, carting and cleaning has gone on. We find ourselves waylaid constantly. We start out doing one thing, see something that needs doing now and do that, and three hours later return to the original item. It can be very frustrating, but everything needs cleaning! Not just cleaning, but painting, scraping, fixing etc. We knew we would have to do some of this, but as always, you dont know the extent of the need until you live in it for a while. It sure didnt take long!
A trip to Barbezieux had us visiting the Tourist Office there, the day before our visit to Jonzac. The young woman there did some research and wrote down Brocante sites for us, which certainly helped the next day. The rain let up for a bit, and we went for a 4pm 'pick me up'...here again we sound like we eat nothing but cakes! lol..
Normally our Grand Crème coffee will cost us 5,60 euros just for the two coffees (this is a single shot of espresso and hot milk to fill the cup (Not a latte or a cappuccino)). We had seen this coffee shop one other time when we visited the area and decided to try their coffee. The cakes were inexpensive, so we had afternoon tea (as it were, in kiwi parlance) which cost us 5,50 euros. WOW! Coffee and cake for less than we normally spend on two coffees! What a deal. We will return!
Barbezieux is a Bastide town (on a hill with a chateau on the top) with quite a large hospital and most 'commerces' or businesses that we might want. We have a choice of at least three supermarkets here and like to return here for our groceries most weeks. It is also the chief source of our Brico/hardware purchases. What we dont find here we will find on a longer journey into Castorama, Nth Angouleme. We are now the proud owners of a fidelity card there:)
I had to peek over the wall into the grounds of a stately home on the main road in Barbezieux, as we walked by. Roses are blooming their heads off everywhere. Stunning! I loved the modern trellis privacy fence above this garden.
I kept forgetting to wear closed shoes, so my sandals kept getting drenched. Cant wait for another pair to arrive from Florida before this one and only pair (whose idea was THAT!?) melts away.
Today we heard voices out in the vineyard next door...well, over the hedge. These are migrant workers, and they aren't speaking French. Didnt identify the language, and I was careful not to show them I was photographing them. They moved very quickly down the rows, pruning something that we couldn't identify...just saw stray vine parts lying on the ground. Later in the day a tractor unit went by spraying, but we also encountered a tractor that prunes...rotating blades that were probably chopping off the lateral strays that appear to want to cross the divide between the rows. Vines are a bit like weeds, to be frank.
Thank goodness for a day without rain.
All the vineyards were abuzz with machinery. Its pretty sad when you rush to the window to check out the next machine going by the house.:) Some pretty fancy ones, let me tell you, and they all do different things with the vines. We got very excited when a brand new yellow one went by...it was taller than our hedge and we had no idea, just looking at it, what it's purpose might be. We often rush to see them in the field, to figure out their purpose.
7pm came around. Goodness, where does the day go? And bright sunshine. We ate out on the front terrace tonight. Thankfully leftovers were available. I made a large pan of Tortellini Primavera last night and there was plenty for dinner tonight too. We purchased some Rose at the supermarket this afternoon, in Segonzac (we went to check it out) and decided to sample it. Very easy to drink...a bit like lolly water. No wonder it is the favorite tipple in these parts.
We had bought some meringues at the same supermarket, and Waz decided he wanted dessert. Making Eton Mess is easy and yummy...We use an apricot compote, which is divine, a little cream drizzled on and crushed meringues. How fun does this look! A cup of coffee and back out to the terrace to finish the day off.
We ended up on the terrace above this one, chairs oriented to the view out across the vines, and reveling in the sunshine at 8pm and the sense of utter contentment we both felt.
It is still light at 10pm, and the birds are still noisy. We thought NZ had noisy birds...well, I think the French ones are similarly noisy. We love it:)
Im off to shower and sleep the sleep of the well satisfied and exhausted. More stairs tomorrow, and almost finished with the clean out. Our first container arrives next week. Yay! Our own 'stuff'!!!!
Night, night.
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