Friday 4 July 2008

La Belle France


Home again, home again, market is done. Or in this case, holidays are done, finished, finito, over with, completed at an end.

It was good, but Oh, I did miss my e-mail/internet connection! I kept a mini-blog while I was there, but had no way of uploading it. Here's a slightly expanded version of what I wrote each day.

We travelled non-stop from Newcastle to Portsmouth, boarded the ferry and slept as it steamed over to St Malo, where we drove off and headed south to the Dordogne. I was disappointed in La Belle France. She was not doing what I expected. She was letting me down.

7th June: I have hay fever, and the skies are cloudy and grey. Outside is warmer than inside the house. (17 degrees C inside, about 64 F.) The old mill walls are thick, and it has been empty for a while since the builders departed. A thick layer of dust covers everything from the floor to the sugar bowl.
8th Cloudy grey skies continue. So does the hay fever. Dare not go outside as local farmers are cutting hay. Spent time with mop and bucket cleaning up after the builders.
9th Sunny. Hurrah! Hay fever still with me. Resort to taking Zyrtecset. The label says it cures Rhinites, conjonctivities allergiques and crises d’urticaire, whatever they are. Reading Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester and Jane Austen – the World of her novels by Deirdre Le Faye. Thunderstorm in the evening.
10th Grey skies and cold! Second thunderstorm 5pm-ish. The creek at the bottom of the field is flooded.
11th Misty morning. Went shopping at M. Leclerc’s hampered by painful back no doubt brought on by days of excessive floor washing and extremely hard beds. I could hardly get in or out of the Honda, which is very low to the ground, because I could not bend spine. Must have looked amusing but it felt b-a-d. Shows how inactive I have been for the past few months.
Promptly at 4.30pm, third thunderstorm of the week. This one was the worst so far. Electric lights flickered, then went out – just as I was preparing to cook! Hasty scramble for candles until dh realised the storm had tripped the meter or whatever it is power surges do. He went downstairs with a torch, reset it and the electricity came on. Then we discovered water advancing in a wave across the floor of the bolly because the gutters could not cope with the volume of rain coming down. Sprang into action, seized mop, dug channels, stopped the worst of it saturating the house walls.

To be continued....

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