Guests!

Ask anyone and they will tell you that unless it's close family a guest should remember the Golden Rule: "only stay for 3 nights".  Read any book written by an english man/woman who has bought a house in France and they will tell you that you can't rid of your guests once they are ensconced. I now understand what they were talking about!  I do realise that the sort of people who are buying little stone cottages in remote villages in the most remote and rural area of France are likely (as in my case) to be the sort who actively avoid other people when they can, but heck, why is only the guests you WANT to stay for longer who know the Golden Rule?  Of course I lay most of the blame at OAP's door as he was the one practically begging everyone we know to come and visit and "stay as long as you like", but on the other hand he, like me, thought they would at least get out and about and do some exploring on their own.

Our latest guest is an old business chum of OAPs and visits us in Europe every year, usually accompanied by his little fox terrier that I used to find cute.  Now he is old, cranky and sheds needle like hairs into (NOT onto) all the furniture that his doting owner allows him on (which is all of it).  He also has a dicey bowel.  So OAP suggested he get left behind in Germany this visit and we were both happy to hear an acknowledgement of this suggestion.  But Herr OAP obviously doesn't like to travel alone and asked if he could bring his grandson.  As we felt a bit guilty about the loose-bowelled dog we felt obliged to say this was fine.  So he turned up on Saturday with BOTH grandsons as the younger one "felt left out".  I must say that I enjoyed the company of the kids (much more my sort of thing than old men who do nothing but drink and pontificate) but he insisted that they were HIS responsibility and that I mustn't do anything for them.  Stupid me - taking him at his word!  I was obviously supposed to say "No No I insist" but didn't and watched these poor boys go through boredom, hunger and homesickness while Oupa drank himself into a coma each day.  Eventually I'd had enough and insisted he take them to the lake for a swim (the temperatures here are incredibly high - yes, I know, it was only a short time ago that I was whining about the cold) but he would only go if we also went.  SO into the car we piled, the two OAPs in the front in comfort and the 2 boys and me in the back seat with both boys tickling, punching and kicking each other - God, how my hand itched!  Once at the lake the men spent half an hour examining the menu at the restaurant while the boys and I went to the beach.  But they wouldn't go in! OAP and Herr OAP arrived finally at the beach and there we sat, roasting, waiting for the boys to swim.  Eventually OAP borrowed a cozzie and went in himself, whereupon the boys joyfully followed!  Hmmmm.  As soon as he came out of the water so did they and then they wanted to eat.  We had lunch at the restaurant and then went home where the boys decided they were bored and hungry!  I made supper and we watched TV - I went to bed at 11 leaving them all up waiting for a phone call from German Mom.
Tuesday I thought they were leaving and had made pad kos for them the night before but instead was gleefully told that they were now going to visit the Wolves of Chabriere and the Maze.  I garbed up in gardening togs, grabbed the weed whacker and pretended to be an invading British army attacking across the Rhine!  They came back at 3pm having seen the Wolves (not a word about how good or bad it was) not the Maze but the inside of a supermarket that Herr Oupa liked and the boys were starving as they had eaten nothing since breakfast (a slice of bread with cold meat).  So I cooked for them and went off with our neighbours to a local village celebration (the 1st anniversary of the bakery).  Came back at 6pm to find them braaing so made potato salad and a huge green salad to go with the meat. 
Wednesday I thought they were leaving (you would think I would learn!) only to find they wanted to go to the local market.  That took up the best part of an hour and then they were bored and - guess what? - hungry!   They actually left yesterday - our fridge is bare and we are exhausted and the house looked like a tip!  I spent all day cleaning and washing bedding which I ironed in 31 degree heat today, while OAP took to his bed!!
Next guests arrive end of August.

Les French insects

Why is it that insects bite me and leave OAP alone?  Is it because I am a sweet little morsel and OAP is a grumpy old fart?  Yeah!!   We have our second batch of guests - OAP's old chum from Dusseldorf and his two grandsons.  Thank heavens he left the dog at home!  Actually I like the boys very much: aged 14 and 10 the younger one reminds me of my dearest grandson who I miss like mad over here.  Today we dragged them, kicking and screaming to two vide-greniers in the amazing heat (29 degrees) and then bought them cokes and lunch for being such sports!  They bought themselves (DON'T ask me why) a pair of ice tongs and proceeded to irritate everyone for the rest of the day with them!  Eventually the 10 year old fell asleep in the car and the 14 year old, after a valiant effort not to, followed shortly after and peace reigned for an hour!  At home again they had great fun in the road (no traffic) with their remote control cars.  Supper was only at  9 pm - lasagna and salad- eaten in the garden while slapping at the midges and mozzies.  Both boys know to present themselves to me at 7pm to have stuff sprayed and smeared on to try to keep them at bay (the midges and mozzies - not the boys) but itdoesn't seem to help much.  I bought citronella candles and have them burning all over the place but it seems to draw the insects not repel them.

Tomorrow we're off to the lake which hopefully will be more to the boys taste as they are driving OAP mad with their noise, their cars and their restlessness.  Sigh - why can't adults remember what it was like to be a child stuck with a bunch of grumpy old farts?

An evening out - French country stlye

Last night we attended a pig roast at our local Mairie (town hall this sort of translates as, although ours acts as a primary school and council offices as well as somewhere we can have events like this).  The pig was spitted and began its slow cooking early in the morning while OAP and I were investigating yet another car- boot sale.  We bought a very amateurish picture of a cat - for the frame!  I bought 2 plates for my new wall collection and I managed to knock 10 euros off a pair of curtains for ''Sally's'' room.  Then it was off to the Bricolage to exchange our weed-eater for a small lawn mower.  Reason for this?  We decided that unless I get a top of the range monster I'm not going to be able to tackle the weeds across the road in the orchard.  I have been doing it by hand, but if you stop for a couple of days (to allow the insect bites to subside) the weeds have grown back almost to what they were before!  Our neighbour Peter came up with the solution: he, or Jo-Ann (our estate agent would you believe!)  will do the first slash of the season then it's up to us to keep on top of it.  He doesn't use his weed-eater any more as he uses Jo's monster, petrol driven, harness worn, and cuts through virtually anything.  So he's said we can take over his old one - in exchange I'll make him curtains for his bedrooms! Love this exchange system and neighbourly-ness.  I worried that I would get twitchy never being able to go outside without Peter popping out but he seems to know when I don't want to be sociable so at the moment all is fine.
Back to the pig roast: It was scheduled for 6pm but we only left home at 7pm (me thinking - how rude!) and got there 10 minutes later - in time to help put out plates, serviettes, etc!!  Peter, who seems to know EVERYONE, introduced us to a number of people and then we were off!  It seems everyone was excited to have new inhabitants and knew we were from SA and wanted to discuss the Tour de France, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome - our knowledge was sadly lacking and it was up to them to tell US!!!  We met Monsieur Le Mair who, when I could understand him, was interesting, telling us about the local chateaux of the area.  At about 8.30pm they decided the pig was done and took it off the spit and carved it up - it was HUGE but as there were 67 people to eat it there was plenty to go round but not much left over!  The local ladies had made a potato salad and a moroccan couscous (using mint from our garden!) and a carrot salad.  Very nice.  As the only ''table d'anglais'' we were slightly disappointed that there was no crackling.  The french have never heard of it!  We tried couenne, grillée to no avail.  Gilbert (local electrician) tried his best by rescuing some fatty bits and seperately grilling them while the rest of the pig was cut up but I have an idea that it is a very english invention.  After stuffing ourselves with pork we moved on to tiramisu, pear tart (a local specialty), forest berry quiche, madelaines, chocolate mousse and ice cream.  Then the dancing began - a bunch of ladies and one guy decided to demonstrate the local dancing - the man was so bad that they eventually pushed him out of the group!  The women danced wildly and it was charming.  Then there was a waltz to the tune that Morticia and Gomez, of The Addams Family, danced to!  It made even me want to dance, but I didn't as I just can't waltz.  Then they got Peter to teach them some line dancing which was hilarious as they were a clumsy, unruly bunch - yes even the ladies!!  There were some children there who also danced and one little girl, like a doll, who watched the adults carefully and then tried to dance by herself - arms out and dancing backwards like the women!  It was so cute!  No one made a fuss of the kids, they were at home and well behaved and not precocious at all.  If they got a bit wild then one of the parents would speak to them and they were as good as gold again.  I didn't take the camera as I had dragged it around every day and yesterday gave it a rest - what a mistake!  I took a couple of pics with the cell phone OAP had with him but it's an old one and I have no way of uploading them to the computer!  We came home close on midnight and our little ''village'' was peaceful with bats flying around the lone street light and a slight breeze stirring the leaves on the silver birches.  

Well here we are in the middle of a European summer in the rain!  I think we've had ab
out 5 days of sunshine since we have been here.  I don't mind but OAP gets a bit depressed and I daren't tell him that a friend has informed me that these crummy non-summers are forecast for the next 10 years!!  Poor OAP - we saw the house for the first time in sunshine, came back to show sis in sunshine and returned in September 2012 to sign the final papers in the sunshine, so he thought it was sunny at least SOME of the time!  Now, forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't it pretty obvious that if a place is as green and fertile as Ireland then chances are that it rains sometimes - MOST of the time?!!!!  I actually like the rain as I can have a wood fire and cook on it - see picture above!  I brought my Le Creuset pot with us and it is fantastic for cooking on top of the wood burner. 

When we arrived the house was damp, smelled funny and had mould growing on the furniture in the lounge where one of the walls has a damp patch bubbling through!  It was SO cold that we turned the central heating on as well as using the woodburners and within a week the house was dry and we turned off the CH as neither of us could bear the constant heat in all the rooms! 

Once we bought a TV we set up the Sky box and now pick up 80 english channels so have been able to watch Countryfile and Springwatch which informed us that this Spring/Summer is very unusual for Europe - hello?   Then we bought a bed, duvet and pillows for any guests.   Then it was a few bits of furniture and a weed whacker to tackle the invasion of nettles and cow parsley growing in the field across the road which I think is supposed to be an orchard.  OAP got stuck into the little forest at the back where he discovered an ancient rubbish pit full of broken glass and old tin cans.  He bagged them and hauled them off to the dump and we are now looking for someone to cut down a couple of trees that are not indigenous and make the forest dark so nothing grows there (except trees of course!).

Our final triumph is getting connected to the internet - the Tourist Bureau is going to miss our company as we normally parked outside their office in Bourganeuf and connected to their WiFi!

We have our first guests and they LOVE the house too - although she did give a pile of tumble drier sheets which are perfumed.  She said she takes them whenever they travel to put among their clothes and especially in musty drawers and cupboards - do you think she was trying to tell me something?!!  Anyway I accepted her idea with gusto as I have little bowls of vanilla essence everywhere trying to mask the musty smell in all the rooms!  That's not to mention the occasional whiff of the ancient septic tank which needs emptying!  No, I lie, not emptying but replacing, but at 10000 euros that will have to wait till another year.

Wine tasting with a difference

We have been showing Belgian friends of ours South Africa – beginning with Utopia and the Pilanesberg Game Reserve and ending with wine-tasting in Stellenbosch.

They loved everything they were shown and we were very proud South Africans as the weather was perfect, they experienced no crime in the 2 weeks they were here, everywhere we went the roads were clean with verges mown and the few restaurants we ate in didn’t let us down.

We could have just stayed in Utopia which they thought was heaven as they sat on the stoep with Gin & Tonic in hand watching the animals on the property across the river! To them this was “Africa” with bells on! But we went 10 steps further and took them to Pilanesberg where we virtually saw everything but lion, leopard and cheetah. They were in ecstasy over the troop of baboons we saw, never mind the vast herds of buck, zebra and elephants, and as for giraffe – positively orgasmic!

They were so interested in Kimberley, its Big Hole and history, that we were sorry we hadn’t organized a 2 night stay with a tour guide – something we did 6 years ago for OAP's Scots family. They loved Karoo National Park even though we only saw a few Red Hartebeest and a couple of enormous tortoises – to them it was the wilds of Africa, despite the Easter Weekend crowds that were there.

Orgasmic doesn’t even begin to describe their reactions to the Cape Mountains as we went up and over DuToits Kloof Pass and down into the winelands below Paarl. Our arrival in Cape Town (which had experienced a couple of weeks of rain and howling gales) was perfect with sunny weather and a light breeze. We had one day of scattered showers (would you believe it was the day we went to Kirstenbosch! ) But being Belgian they actually told us that that would be considered good weather for them back home!!! We drove up the coast to Hermanus in the hope of seeing a stray whale or two that had decided to stay behind in the Cape just to entertain tourists, calling in at Harold Porter Nature Reserve for lunch on the way home. She had Bobotie and then spent the rest of the week trying to recreate the experience – no luck! HP does the best bobotie in the world! They loved the drive from Cape Town to Hout Bay over Chapman’s Peak, they did the Open Top Bus twice, Table Mountain and the V&A. We drove them around to places we had had known from years ago (we are shattered at the amount of houses that have been built where once no-one wanted to live! And we are shattered at the amount of slums which are euphemistically called “informal settlements” which have popped up in once beauty spots such as Hout Bay, Scarborough, Kommetjie, etc. Who are these people and where do they all find work?).

Our last big drive was to Stellenbosch where they did a guided walk of the town while I pottered in the toy and miniature museum and R went off to suss out the wine farms. We all met back at the tourist bureau at lunchtime and then went off to Lanzerac (once in the heart of the country and now has suburbia built right up to its gates) for a wine tasting. 5 glasses were placed in front of each of us and a little cheese board on which 5 spoon things each held a chocolate. Then the young man in charge gave a chat about each wine in turn and the chocolate that went with it. At the end we were told we could have lunch in the main restaurant but we were happy with what we’d had and just walked around the hotel admiring the architecture and gardens. A wine-tasting with a difference!

Our last day, yesterday, was SO glorious that we decided to drive out to Simonstown via Kommetjie and Scarborough for a fish and chips lunch at Salty’s. As Jan has been connected with the sea for the last 50 years or so he just loves anywhere there are boats, so he was fascinated with Simonstown. Then we dropped them at the airport, breathed a sigh of relief and drove home to the flat in Tamboerskloof where we promptly moved our stuff out of the small bedroom and into the big one with the view of Table Mountain!!

Getting my ducks in a row

  I’m trying to get ready for our overseas trip as well as expecting Belgian visitors day after tomorrow. As usual I write out a long list of our assets which includes bank account details (pins, passwords, etc.) and I have come to the conclusion that it is just easier NOT to die!

For most of the details I’ve said “look in my Little Red Book” (OAP calls it my Bible!) but then suddenly I realized that I take the Little Red Book with me so if the plane goes down so does the book! Likewise the cell phone which also has all my details of everyone I know and which is a back up for the Little Red Book. And writing out all the pernickety details of how to get into a bank account just goes against the grain! What if Eldest Daughter’s house gets burgled and the baddies get all my details? What do we do about the properties not in South Africa? I think the kids are supposed to go overseas taking with them proof that they are my kids and carrying a copy of our death certificate!

My tendency is to say “Oh bother, it’s too much trouble” and just leave it for another day, but part of me says “Just put it down on paper and let them deal with it when the time comes”.

If we can just hang on for another year we will have consolidated a bit and it will be less awkward, but having said that, OAP has just opened yet another bank account – this time with Capitec (the people’s bank!) because, hmmm, not sure why but it made him happy so what the heck!

So I have decided to stay on for another 20 years until I am an old, miserable git that they can’t wait to get rid of! Maybe they could incarcerate me in the cellar of You Know Where with the Flaming Salamanders and leave me to haunt the house for the next couple of hundred years!

The Leg

I walk again! In my whole life I have never known what it’s like to be unable to walk! Since breaking my fibula at the end of January this has been a total frustration. After 4 weeks in a plaster cast I was sent to an orthopaedic surgeon because the fracture wasn’t knitting, in fact it was further apart and now slightly displaced. He operated and inserted a screw from underneath the “knuckle” bone (I think that’s the malleolus) into the upper part to hold the fracture together and correctly aligned. This was done in the dismal Rustenburg hospital called Ferncrest which could really use a makeover! Us orthopaedic day patients were put in a windowless ward in the maternity section which was so freezing cold that I worried more about catching cold than about the op! Actually I don’t even remember being taken into theatre! Whatever they gave as a pre-op knocked me out and I had to ask OAP a couple of days later what happened!!! I don’t remember coming round or going home and yet I am informed that when he came to fetch me I was sitting up eating supper and quite chatty! Apparently we had to wait hours for the only wheelchair the hospital owns to take me out to the car. It was painful but not in plaster, just bandaged and with a splint to stop it moving and strict instructions NOT to put any weight on it. A week later I went back to the orthopod who removed the splint and dressings and put the leg in a fiberglass cast with by ankle now bent at 90 degrees. All concerned, including me, was amazed at how black and swollen the foot still was so I left with instructions to keep the leg up higher than my heart to get rid of the swelling and to get a “boot” fitted to the cast which would allow me to begin walking. Apparently walking will encourage bone growth – but after every walk I have to lie down and raise the leg for a couple of hours!! Anyway for one reason or another it was another 4 days before we could get to the “boot” place where I was fitted with a neoprene shoe that velcros around my foot. An ingenious device that enables me to walk with ease!!!! I still have to be careful only to put a bit of weight on the ankle but what a relief to have my “other” leg back!! I can stand while unbuttoning and unzipping my shorts to get to the loo, I can stand while I wash up – which is about the only housework I can do with ease, I can even, with some trepidation, get up and downstairs which means I can revert to our upstairs bedroom (when OAP has got rid of his ghastly head cold – poor man!) so that our guests from Belgium will be able to have the guest room! Meanwhile, I, for the first time in my life, have a MAID!!!! I am totally in love with Paulina who arrives on a Saturday morning and whizzes through the housework and leaves a few hours later with R100. I know, minimum wage hasn’t hit here yet and I was told not to rock the boat by everyone else who employs her! OAP still puts the washing in the machines in the laundry and hangs it on the lines he’s strung in there but Paulina, like a good fairy, goes in and takes it down, folds and irons and leaves it for him to collect in the wash basket. I think I shall employ her forever!


The day I had the boot fitted I walked from one end of the shopping mall to the other ( in Woolworths I realized that I couldn’t carry any of the stuff I’d bought so had to put most of it back and fit the rest into a little backpack I was wearing!) and then met OAP for lunch in the food court. I was shattered and sweating like a horse after running the Derby. I know I overdid it that day but it was such a break through that I was elated.

Each day I walk up and down the driveway to get stronger and in a weeks time will be able to put a little more weight on that leg until I can just walk normally on it. Unfortunately (for the leg) we are off to Cape Town with the Belgians on the 2nd March and this cast is supposed to come off on the 11th so I will have to have XRays and find an orthopod in Cape Town who will take it off and fit me with a sports brace which I then have to wear for the next 6 weeks.

So, a very expensive lesson has been learned: Birding is Dangerous!