This is our first daffodil for the year, actually from 29 March. They are a bit later than some because they don't get much sun in the back garden at this time of year, but isn't it handsome?
Like most seafood they must be cooked for a very short time or they turn into the most dreadful rubber. You also need to scrub them well before cooking to remove grit and growths that might fall off in the cooking. To eat them hook them out with a fork or toothpick, pop them in your mouth and bite off the hard 'foot'. At this time of year they seem to be producing roe at the other end, which is delicious - rather like liver in texture and flavour.
They are a beetle in the Cerambycidae family, known as longicorns in English and capricornes in French. If you live in France and you've had these beetles in your house you may be worried now that you know that they are capricornes. You get the impression that capricorne beetles can eat entire houses in a single night if you read some accounts.
The red ones are most often Pyrrhidium sanguineum or Welsh Oak Longicorn Beetle. It doesn't seem to have a French name, which is curious, as it is quite common. They arrive in people's homes in the fire wood. Their natural emergence is scheduled for this time of year, but the warmth of their new homes causes the adults to emerge throughout the winter. Both because of their scarlet colour and their habit of heading for the net curtains (they are programmed to head for the light to escape) they are highly visible. Not only are they visible, but there is usually more than one, seemingly appearing from nowhere. The homeowner begins to worry about the state of their woodwork, but there is no need. Oak Longicorns don't like milled timber, only rough oak with its bark still on.
Fishing licences (cartes de pêche) can be bought in tackle shops and post offices, and from this year, you can buy your licence online. You need to supply a photo for the licence, and they are valid for the département only. To fish further afield you need to get an additional stamp on your licence. Rivers and lakes are categorised into Category 1 (those fast flowing rivers where trout and salmon thrive) and Category 2 (slower, warmer waters where coarse fish dominate). Landowners do not necessarily own the fishing rights to lakes and rivers on their property. Many of the best trout fishing rights are owned by local angling clubs (e.g. along the Aigronne), so in addition to having a fishing licence, you must also join an angling club. Fortunately, almost all the clubs have reciprocal agreements with each other, so joining one club means you can fish almost anywhere (certainly in Indre-et-Loire, and up and down the Loire Valley as a whole). Your licence will come with a leaflet that explains where you can fish.
One of the features of BricoDepôt (and one we haven't tried before) is the drive through section for buying what is called "bati" - proper building stuff like lumber, bags of cement, insulation, bricks, cement mixers, scaffolding, and 1001 other big butch things. The idea is that you drive through, loading your car/van/trailer, and then pay at the end once you are done.
We needed 30 pieces of wood, 3 metres long, and 63mm x 75mm profile. This we found without problem (it would be embarrassing to have to "do a blockie") and started loading the trailer. All of a sudden it seemed like an awful lot more wood than I had bargained for.
Once we had paid for the wood and a couple of bags of insulation at the drive through cashiers we left for home. Immediately a problem became obvious.
We followed the tractor to the outskirts of Châtellerault, and of course, once in town we were almost capable of the speed limit. We kept on driving (at one stage tucking in behind a cyclist as another excuse for not driving fast) until our path crossed with Nicole's.
After trans-shipping a greater part of the load we proceeded home in convoy. Thanks to Nicole we had the wood undercover before a serious storm hit - if that had happened while we were sitting by the side of the road we would have been REALLY miserable.
So there you go - an exciting day, but not one I would care to repeat.
Today we are off to Dissay to buy the wood to build frame for lining the guest bedroom walls. The frame will hold 100mm of laine de verre (glass wool, or fibreglass) insulation and the gaine (conduit tube for the electricity) in place, and eventually be covered by placo (plasterboard).
Imagine my surprise, then, when even before I started painting this year I discovered a jar full of white spirit with 3 paint brushes in it. I had obviously been distracted in about October, because they had been sitting there in the back of the garage gently soaking away all winter. Being frozen in white spirit does strange things to paint brushes - the residual paint was harder than the rubber handles.
Yesterday we planted the kiwi vine against the grapevine trellis. As we arrived at the gate of the potager the first frog of the season jumped into the brook. The first cherry blossom has appeared on our trees, and the black redstarts are in a frenzy.
While I was gardening yesterday a black beetle lumbered purposefully along the retaining wall. It was a male Lesser Bloody-nosed Beetle Timarcha goettingensis (called le petit crache-sang in French i.e. 'the little spit-blood'). Bloody-nosed beetles are so called because when alarmed they ooze a red substance from their mouth and kneecaps. They are amongst the largest in the leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae and have that family's typical smooth rounded profile. Bloody-nosed beetles cannot fly, and have a very distinctive rather ponderous gait, raising their bodies off the ground in a somewhat awkward looking way. This one was a beetle on a mission (presumably to meet a female beetle) and was too busy to be frightened by us encouraging him into more photographic positions. You can tell he is a male by his very large feet. Like many insects, male bloody-nosed beetles are smaller than females. Both this species and the larger T. tenebricosa are common in France.
The bar serves an extensive list of drinks, with a particularly impressive choice of non-alcoholic cocktails. Susan had an Explosif, which was raspberry, ginger, apricot and lemon juice, for just over 4€. All the cocktails were served in tall icecream soda glasses, with beautifully presented swizzle sticks made in house from bamboo skewers decorated with fine wedges of apple and orange and a chewy marshmallow on top. We were fascinated to see that almost everyone bought a drink at the beginning of the evening and nursed that same drink throughout the entire proceedings. It seemed the only people who had more than one drink were those drinking beer. The non-alcoholic cocktails were just as popular as the alcoholic ones. The concert was free and the bar makes its money through the sale of drinks, so the reasonable prices and the moderate habits of the clientele were even more surprising. It makes it a very pleasant and cheap night out.
The sound quality was good too - not too loud, not jarringly distorted as happens only too frequently.
Victor Maîtrejean was born in 1921 in Algeria (then a French colony). At 14 years old he lost an arm in an accident on an airfield when he was turning a propeller by hand to start an aeroplane engine. In 1940 he and his mother moved to central France, where he took up an apprentice gardener post at the Château de Pray between Amboise and Mosnes.
The Germans took over the château, and when they left, an SS officer offered Victor a gift of the vehicle that had been used as the officers' transport. Victor, who was young and impressionable, was delighted and moved towards the car. His boss, the head gardener, who had been through the First World War, warned him not to touch it. Sure enough, the door had been booby trapped with a grenade, and had Victor opened the door...
Following this event, he joined the maquis (the Resistance), and didn't return to the place until the end of the war. I have translated his account of some of the action he saw. (FFI stands for Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur.)
"On 24 June 1944*, being in the maquis FFI of Loches, commanded by Césario Bretegnier, we took up arms and left at 3 o'clock in a bus to patrol and ambush. At 9:30 after having made around 30 kilometres, we came to an area called le Liege. We hid up and rested until 11:10, when we saw a German truck coming over the brow of a hill. As soon as they passed we attacked. The truck caught fire and we killed 13 German soldiers - a number that must have brought us bad luck, because we didn't know that behind this scout truck there was a company of Germans. The battle raged from 11:10 to 18:05 - 34 against 150 to 200. We killed 21 German soldiers and set two trucks on fire at the beginning, but it was too much and later, field upon field, vine after vine we retreated and lost 7 men killed and 5 others we know were captured and forced to dig their own grave then interred alive. By this time some of us were down to a single cartridge or grenade and we had lost our bus. On the Loches road there is a memorial as you leave le Liege, for those who were buried alive, and another at Verneuil-sur-Indre to my companions who were killed or died after deportation. As a result of my participation in this battle I have been awarded the Order of the Army."
Tifaine sent us a charming little note during the week. (I don't imagine we were special, I expect the class was told to write and thank everyone who bought bulbs.)
The gates are now the same blue/grey colour the window shutters were painted last year. This helps it blend into the environment more - the black really stood out, although looking at the photo you may question the accuracy of that statement!
When we got back in the car at 4.30pm the thermometer read 21°C. We both knew it was hot as we had been working in jeans and t-shirts, which is really nice after being all rugged up for so long, but 21°? Positively tropical, and over 20 degrees warmer than 10 days ago. If the temperature keeps increasing at that rate, August will be "interestingly" warm.
Even after presenting ourselves at the cabinet (surgery) yesterday and having him sign our form from RAM, which gets sent back to them with our details for our state medical insurance, we still haven't met him. Nor do we actually have our Cartes Vitales, the green plastic wallet card that allows one to reclaim a percentage of medical expenses. We've been waiting since November to get to this stage, after having registered the business and becoming regular taxpayers and therefore eligible for state medical cover. The covering letter from RAM says ' Vous avez choisi la RAM pour la gestion de vos prestations maladie'. Err...well, no we didn't choose RAM, RAM appear to have chosen us. We weren't even aware a choice was possible, since emailing RAM's senior partner RSI (Régime Social des Indépendants) has failed to produce any indication of where our file was at since November. I assume RAM stands for Régime d'Assurance Maladie, but nowhere on their correspondance or website can I find it written in full. Anyway, it appears that RAM are the agency responsible for the administration of the state health protection for trades people (artisans), business people and most independent professionals.
As a serial expat, I must say that health systems are mysterious things. The locals have all grown up with their respective systems, and such systems are deeply ingrained political entities. Although countries try to explain their systems, there is so much that is just understood and unspoken, an incomer is often hopelessly out of their depth. At least the French system hasn't reduced me to tears, which the British system did on several occasions. You would think something as basic as a health system would work more or less the same, but the devil is in the detail and negotiating a foreign health system, whether here or in the UK, is for me fraught with frustration and a certain sense of helplessness. Who does what and what they are called is just the beginning of it. The French system seems to be quite like the Australian system, albeit a bit more complicated, but neither the French or Australian system is anything like the British system.
Then I started on the green slime that covered the walls of the old long drop (I'm not sure - or at least, unwilling to guess what caused that) and the stone steps at the back of the graineterie.
Cleaning: big time blokey stylee
They had obviously fallen out of my shirt pocket and been well and truly trampled into the dust and dirt on the garage floor.
Not that they will work very well. I hope I can go to the local optometrists and get a frame that will fit the (luckily) still intact lenses. The current frames are really cheap ones from Tescos, so getting a fit may be difficult. It could be cheaper to fly to London and buy another set of Tescos frames than buy here (which really is just plain wrong).
Immature scuties have fewer legs, starting off with just 4 pairs. As they grow they moult their exoskeleton, and each time, they gain a few more pairs of legs until they are adult, after the fifth moult. They move very fast. The hindlegs are twice as long as the front legs, which allows them to cross over and beyond, preventing the scutie from ending up in a tangled ball of legs.
Kiwi fruit will grow in Preuilly (I've seen them in someone's garden, and there is a local producer who only sells kiwi fruit and asparagus on his stall in early spring), so I have bought a self fertile plant to run up the new trellis. From what I know about how rampant kiwi fruit plants are, it should compete more than adequately with the old red table grape vine that is also to be trained across the trellis (rather than 20m up the catalpa tree, which is useless).
Unknown in France 30 years ago, today the kiwi fruit is a winter favourite in a season when not much good local fruit is available. From May to the end of the year, they are imported from the southern hemisphere, then the European crop takes over. A variety called Adour, grown in les Landes since the 1960s is registered as Label Rouge. 'Red Label' produce is high quality, organic and must be produced along strict traditional methods within a designated area.
Our rubbish bag allocation is 5 rolls of black bags for general rubbish, and 3 rolls of sacs jaunes (yellow bags) for anything that can be recycled, except glass, which is too heavy to go in the bags and must be disposed of by the householder in the special bins placed in several locations around town. I think we've been given a total of 100 black bags and 60 recycling bags. French rubbish sacks have an integrated string for tying them up when full. It's a really clever design. A flat plastic thread runs down the length of the bags, perforated like the bags are so they can be separated for use. Each bag has its own piece of string, attached at the bottom, ready to be snapped off and tied round the top.
Apparently, according to our friend Stéphane, this is the longest winter since the early '80s in the Touraine. I assume he got this information from the news or something. It isn't the coldest winter though. Last winter had significantly lower temperatures, getting down to -17°C, but for a much shorter period. Our neighbour Edouard says that in 1956 the temperature remained below 0°C from the first to the 19th of February, and the winter wheat crop failed as a result.
Until then I am still struggling with PHP scripts (let me assure you, if you don't know what they are, you really REALLY don't want to know) for the website, planning a publicity campaign for the business, and trying to chose a handbasin unit for the bathroom. And learning French whilst trying to stay warm.
Although yesterday wasn't particularly windy, the wind was coming in from the north, where according to Bengt (who rang while I was visiting Jill and John), Sweden is suffering the worst winter for many years. He had just come in from shovelling 70cm of snow, and wasn't terribly impressed with me commenting how cold it was here.
It was nice and sunny though, and if you were able to find a spot in the sun but out of the wind (not easy) it was a lovely day.
Yesterday being another fine but chilly day, I went down to dig the vegetable garden in preparation for planting potatoes. Edouard, our neighbour with the most impressive potager, tells me I should wait a fortnight (une quinzaine) before planting.
I am not an experienced vegetable grower, but I've read a lot of the theory, and I am hoping this will be the first and last year I need to dig extensively. The soil is 50% clay and I have to wait until it is at just the right moisture level before I can dig. At the moment it is just dry enough to dig, but it will be easier after another couple of days for the wind to dry it out some more. At this time of year wind is far more effective than the sun at reducing the moisture content in the top few centimetres of soil. This year I will mulch heavily with old straw to add vegetable matter and keep the soil from developing a crust.
Although the wind was perishingly cold, from the north, there was considerable small bird activity and noise, and some brightly coloured early flowers. Some of the carrots have survived the winter and we ate them a couple of days ago, along with a baby cabbage that the big storm had knocked over.
The cheese course, in between the lamb and the dessert, is pavé de Betz, from Betz le Château, (the town name is pronounced by some locals as "Be'l'château") only a few kilometres away. Pavé de Betz is so called because it is the size and shape of a small paving tile, or paver. It is a soft goat cheese, with quite an assertive flavour. How creamy it is depends on the season, and it takes 1.4 litres of milk to make a 170g cheese.
The lizard family at the orchard were certainly taking advantage of it. We watched about 8 Common Wall Lizards Podarcis muralis (le lézard des murailles in French). As is to be expected for early spring, they were quite frisky. We witnessed some athletic leaping from log to branch, a fight between two males and plenty of submissive arm waving by females and juveniles.
Common Wall Lizards vary quite a bit in markings and colour, but in this family, females seem to be a reddish brown with dark brown and cream spots; whilst males are greyer, with fewer spots, but including a row of bright blue spots along each side.
