Down on the Farm; Part Five

Despite much work left to do inside the farmhouse, our concern is momentarily diverted to the outside.

There is something fundamentally sad about seeing a house stripped naked. All layers of clothing and skin having been removed, revealing only bare bones and connective tissue.

Here we find an archeologist’s nightmare. The farmhouse walls are constructed with all kinds of materials spanning the centuries. Here; ancient earth bricks put in place over 300 years ago, there; newer terracotta bricks, here; concrete and there; rocks. A mix of old and ancient.

Herein lies the quandry. The newer stuff is at the bottom, the oldest at the top. Surely this is proof that geologists have led archaeologists astray?

Well, no. The truth here is that the earth bricks at the base of the old walls suffered more erosion than those protected by the eves. The eroded bricks were intermittently changed for newer materials.

No wonder nothing is straight in this house…

Hacking off the farmhouse’s clothes off takes time. Meanwhile ‘Le Snook’, geologically the younger of the two buildings, gets its coat of render.

And so, after waking each morning to the sound of pneumatic drills being pushed through my brain from exposed ear to pillow, as the farmhouse finally gave up its outer skin and integument, we moved on to the sound of hammering as grid was tightened onto the walls like a corset holding a complaining waist, then to the blasting of render into every nook and cranny, turning the skeletal walls into a crinkly skin, and throwing my sleeping pattern to the wind.

A month of noise and finally a calm hard fought.

The farmhouse and snooker room are finally are finished.

The calm was not to last.

In moved the earth movers, the terraforming machines intent on shortening our slumber once more. Our once green and pleasant land has become brown and somewhat stodgy. The land our farmhouse was built on 300 plus years ago has slowly, but surely, moved. Like some torpid but immensely powerful monster, it has accumulated detritus in some areas and shed its mass in others.

Many tonnes of earth have accumulated above the barn due to the rain flushing soil against its sides, whilst below us, the earth has moved, but not in a good way.

After much battling, we have our first but vital positive result. No longer are we surrounded by quagmire. We have a fresh clean gravel surface surrounding our newly blushing home. Not the final finish maybe, but mud has now been repelled from the borders.

The work outside goes on, whilst inside things are reshaping, changing, evolving. Becoming home… and so to part six…

Down on the Farm, Part 4

Forget jogging. Forget the gym. If you want to push yourself to the physical limit, try moving house.

Twenty years ago I had nothing except a dishwasher and a scraggy old sofa. Divorce had left me homeless, with nothing more than the above, slightly weird, belongings, a large record collection, and a business that was haemorrhaging money.

How times have changed.

I appear to have accumulated significant amounts of flotsam and jetsam over the intervening years, much of which we physically carted from one end of Montauban to the other over a three day period last week.

It started with an entire day being put over to dismantling then mantling (?) again my precious snooker table. This antique masterpiece was born the same year as my now departed mother, and in the same northern town of Accrington. Fate moves in mysterious ways.

The day started early, with the arrival of a somewhat truculent and noticeably expensive ‘billiard table transport specialist’. By chance there were three of us there to help him, as the whole process took immense effort. The slate bed was made of five pieces of dense matter like that found in the centre of black holes…

Each piece was carefully removed, one by one, as they were somewhat dangerous. Not carefully enough. Jean-Blaise discovered sensation once more in his previously numb fingers when falling headlong over a falling slab, trapping said fingers in painful embrace.

Removing the first piece left us exhausted and pondering the possibility of leaving the table as it was, making pocketing the balls considerably easier…

And so we continued, finally dragging the five masses, each the weight of a dead elephant, up the slope to and into the waiting van. We were all beyond exhaustion.

After stopping off at the Ardus bar for some reinvigoration, we carefully manipulated the five dead elephants back into place in their new home.

The end of the day finally came, leaving us all to tired to appreciate the results of our labour, let alone play snooker…

We greeted the morning of day two reluctantly, with aching muscles and complaining joints and a quick outing to pick up a lorry from the local supermarket (they sell everything).

With the assistance of many able bodied helpers, we spent the next two days lifting, carrying and swearing. Lots of swearing. Lots of furniture, boxes, dark matter. I had not before realised how many chairs we had accumulated. Our bums have so much choice!

After several hours of continuous labour, we had finished our first load, and rewarded ourselves with another trip to the Ardus bar..

Four loads later…

Who would have thought that twenty years could accumulate more matter (mostly in the form of chairs) in one house than exists in the entire galaxy?

After a weekend of hard work, most flotsam was moved and jetsam discarded.

We had our new forever home…

And so we’ve moved in. After a week we have done so much, but there is still much to finish. Leaking baths, leaking toilets, leaking washing machines, leaking energy.

Heating would be nice…

Down On The Farm - Part 3

They say that beauty is skin deep. They say a lot of crap really don’t they? If it were true, then why is anatomy so bloody amazing?

In the case of buildings though, there maybe more than a grain of truth here. After having spent a great deal of time and money on the renovation of the farm, it truthfully looks more of a mess than when we started. Hacking off the inside walls makes our future home seem more like a deep mine after an explosion.

However, nearly all the preparation has been finished, and the time has arrived to add its ‘skin’.

After 70 litres of paint and 20 litres of varnish, I can safely say that I am more than a little fatigued. I never thought I’d be able to listen to my entire music catalogue in one go, but I think I’ve just achieved it. It’s a bit like watching paint dry…

We have reached the turning point. Each day, little by little, we can see the farms old beauty shining through.

Being one to get my priorities right, the snooker hall and bar are the first things to blossom,

the bathroom tiling is going at full pace,

and the kitchen is going in! Yay!

and so will we be, in two weeks time, with luck…

After the storm...

The dust has settled, the power is back on, the roads are being cleared.

But things have changed.

There are images indelibly printed on our memories. Key moments. This is one.

The power unleashed in that moment was ferocious. Despite the awful intense force, our local farmers were still firing their puny anti-hail canons in a surprising exhibition of man’s vain optimism.

This photo was taken by a neighbour of our new soon-to-be home:

The funnel of that enormous tornado pictured above is directly over our home.

The signs of the resulting destruction are still everywhere. Stands of trees stand no more, broken like so many matchsticks.

And so, after the storm comes… bureaucracy. Annick has spent the last week gathering estimates and headaches. We are nearly there. One last piece of paper and our claim goes in. That last piece of paper must come from the local tax office proving our existence. Hopefully this will be easier than proving the existence of the tax office, as no one seems to know where it is! It may well be true that the French don’t pay their taxes….

The claim is one thing, getting the repairs to our damaged home will take considerably longer. Workers have invaded this area from all over France, yet it is still not enough. We are lucky in that we already have builders working on the farm. We have decided to keep them there and accelerate our move. We now plan on moving the 24/25 October, so if any of you are free…

Once ensconced in our new home, we will begin reparations, and hopefully then move forward in selling It.

We will miss the view, which has been dramatically enlarged by the destruction of our neighbours giant poplar tree.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

of Heat & Hurricanes.

For the two and a half months before August arrived, we had experienced heat like never before. With temperatures in the upper 30’s and lower 40’s Montauban seemed to have been magically plonked down into Northern Africa.

Well, this heat may not be for everyone, but we took it with good grace, if a little too much perspiration…

Then arrived August, and with it its usual host of welcome guests, visiting local hostelries, eating scrumptious meals in relaxing company. It was bound to end badly…

First came Domitille & Vincent with their two offspring, who stayed with us for the first half of the month.

Then arrived Bernie and Geoff, with their daughter Jenny, who brought with them our first experience of wet weather for some time.

We toured the usual tourist traps.

 

The first couple of weeks of August seemed to bring an end to the seemingly endless heat.

We were wrong. It was to return.

John & Susie’s visit in the third week of August saw temperatures once more increasing, only to bring another couple of days of inclement weather.

August over here is renowned for its storms. The last couple of years had been disappointing in this respect. Our disappointment is at an end.

Lisa’s visit for the final week of August saw another scorcher. Even a short trip to the Pyrénées did not halt the humid heat.

Our final evening in France before returning to Wales (or so we thought) saw us sitting down to a meal of fajitas. At that point we noted the looming darkness, as if Montauban had been replaced by Mordor and its Nazgul.

Halfway through that first fajita the wind started to blow. Glancing outside, we saw our hefty barbecue trundling past. The power went off. The storm had arrived. But this was no normal storm, this was hurricane.

Few things put me off my fajitas, but this comes high on the list. The blasting winds were at first stunning, even slightly exciting, but then… frightening. The fajitas were forgotten as we saw the covers on the swimming pool being ripped off one by one. Then the pergola tried to wrap itself around the lampposts.

Then the ceiling started to drip. The lights in the kitchen, lit no longer, started to belch water. Our bedroom was the same.

This was not good.

Buckets and bowls were conscripted to battle the flowing water. Candles were lit to fight off the dark.

We seemed to be winning as eventually the storm abated enough for us to go out and try to rescue some of the panels from the pool. A hopeless task.

We left the garden to the following day. In the house all appeared calm, and so we gave ourselves up to sleep.

Attempting sleep with ongoing Chinese water torture is not easy, but eventually we slipped into slumber, only to be awoken by an enormous CRASH at about half four in the morning.

I am well aware of the vagaries of our visual system. Much of what we see is purely interpretation and invention. I hope this explains what I saw upon suddenly coming awake from deep torpor. I swear I saw Annick leap from the bed, do a loop-the-loop on the wall only to be buried beneath falling cabinets.

“What the f**k!” I screamed.

“Don’t worry” Annick responded, “It’s only the ceiling caving in”.

Well, she was right. Half of the bedroom ceiling was where it was meant to be, the other half, along with a huge quantity of wet insulating fluffy stuff reminiscent of vomit, was lying on the floor around our bed, looking as if our bedroom had regurgitated over us.

It had missed us by inches.

After a vain attempt at clearing up, morning arrived and I drove Lisa to the airport to return, without us, to Wales.

The journey was heart-rending.

The roads around our house were littered with broken trees and scattered cables as if a giant toddler had thrown its toys around. Driving past the chicanes of torn trees made driving somewhat hazardous. Once achieving more open roads, the true devastation hit us. Broken branches, trees torn out by their roots, entire orchards flattened beyond recognition, crops destroyed, roofs open to the elements. Armageddon.

On returning to Montauban I drove directly to our farm with a growing sense of unease. Giant Plane trees, so common on French roadsides, stood deformed with their limbs thrown across the roads that they had previously guarded. Poplars lay strewn about as if the final war had just passed by. I feared the worst. Had our farm survived? So many ruined roofs, with gaping wounds.

We were in luck. Our home-to-be was untouched, its new roof had held without fail. Fallen trees from the neighbouring forest seemed like nothing more than a gift of firewood, none coming near the house or its outbuildings. The snooker room was intact. Even the old barn was unscathed.

And so back to our old home, to stare impotently at the devastation. Our bedroom uninhabitable, the ceiling on the main level ruined, the garden trampled beneath giant feet, the pool denuded, the roof smashed by its own chimney top.

The sale of the house, necessary to finish the work on the farm, is now on hold, awaiting massive repair work.

It has been declared a natural disaster area (no, not just our house) meaning that insurance companies are bound by law to fast track payments. Maybe.

None of us were injured. Our neighbours twin boys had chosen, out of fear, to sleep in the lounge. Good choice. Their bedroom ceiling fell directly onto their beds.

And so, with freezer warming and water cooling, we sit under a mocking sun, awaiting the return of power to the house. Having seen the power cables strewn about like demented spaghetti, this could take a very long time…

Edit. Officially, it was a tornado. 2 dead. One young woman crushed by a tree, the other a truck driver who stepped out of his lorry to see what was going on. In his bare feet.

Edit 2. Two days later, power has returned, allowing me to finally post this blog…

For all photos of our August visitors … https://www.flickr.com/gp/phil-hyde/h2nw23

For photos of our touristic trips… https://flic.kr/s/aHskg3UMKD

Down on the Farm - part 2

Despite August being a month of holidays for French workers, work has continued apace down on the farm up until this last week.

The roof has been finished on the farmhouse

and ‘Le Snook’

New floors have been poured, plasterboard fixed and the mezzanine in Le Snook put in place.

Most of the work done has been to a very high standard, just look at this for a work of plumbing art.

Our one concern is the guys making the doors and windows. There are faults with nearly everything they’ve done, including the wrong colour used for the doors, poor fitting, windows forgotten, delayed manufacturing, etc etc.

No other work can now be done until these guys have finished.

This week they are back from their month-long holiday, so hopefully things will get restarted. The week’s pause has given me the chance to get varnishing, with the help of Annick…
with a special app…
called Facebook…

My life passed in front of my eyes. And it was green

You can have too much of a good thing.

After a late night slurping with friends at our regular snooker night get together, we decided to take our house guests (Domitille et al) to one of our favourite nosh-spots in Puycelci.

What better place to eat out than in this hill-top bastide?

With its stunning architecture…

With fois gras to start, followed by steak tartare helped down with a couple of glasses of the local red wine, then a damme blanche ice cream then expresso to finish, how could life get better than this?

Then a gentle stroll around the village in the afternoon scorching heat, then back home to relax by the pool…

That last bit is where it all went wrong.

The heat, the food, the ambience all added together made us somewhat content and relaxed. Too relaxed.

Annick went straight off to sleep leaving me struggling to remain conscious.

On hearing Annick’s cry, I awoke to see my life screaming past me.

And it was green.

We were in fact hammering along at a crazy angle in the ditch at the side of the road. The green was the long grass whipping by us. I thought that the end had come.

We were in luck. No telegraph poles, no trees, no rocks, no people, no vehicles. We came to a smooth stop with no damage except to my ego.

Everyone passing stopped to help. We found a local farmer to tow us out. The car was damage free, the effect of sliding on its side only resulted in the car being cleaner than usual.

Everyone was kind and helpful.

The gentle mocking started later.

The Charente.

Spending a couple of days in the Charente, about an hour north-east of Bordeaux, gave ample opportunity to extract camera from pouch.

Despite the long-unseen fluffy stuff covering the skies, there were opportunities in abundance.

We were there visiting an old college mate Of mine called Dave. Having spent several years at university with him, sometimes in the same house, it is clear to me now where I picked up some of my somewhat dry sense of humour. Dave’s is so dry that he can, to the unwary, come across as a miserable old sod…

That’s him in full laughter mode…

Being something of an ancient mariner, he took us for a trip on his boat on the river Charente

on the banks of which his French property dwells

French departments get their names mostly from the rivers that pass through them. The Charente is large by British standards and, like the rest, flows sleepily and smoothly though the countryside. I bit like the French population really. (That’s not a slur, it’s a compliment.)

We spent a day touring the local sights. Bassac was close by,

with its imposing Abbey.

Enter here all ye sinners…

Having unnecessarily sought redemption, we moved on to Jarnac

the home of Courvoisier Cognac.

Now cleaned up, this beautiful town was once covered in black mould, the ‘Angels Share’ referring to the evaporation of stored cognac that the mould fed on. Signs of it still remain.

This impressive building was where Courvoisier was produced, but manufacturing has moved out of town to even larger premises.

Then back for a bbq in the rain by the Charente once more.

Thanks Dave & Karen for a relaxing couple of days.