property

November 13, 2016 Aside

Call Scotland Yard!!

Accomplice or perpetrator??

So who is it, or should I say what is it? It can’t be my wife! She only visits at the weekends. Being the good husband I do the washing I take it out of the machine and hang it on the line to dry. I had 6 months of intense training with my wife then I am getting weekly feedback on my cleaning performance. Besides why would she?….. to play with my mind? Make me go crazy??? I am not a rich man, I have no money to speak of and I have no life insurance anymore so she couldn’t want me “out of the picture” so to speak…. So who is it; what it is; Halloween and the Day of the dead have just passed so perhaps is it an entity that is trying to speak to me??? However if it were, why wouldn’t they just pick up the phone? Why steal my socks!!!!…..To be precise one sock out of a pair…. in my sock draw there are 8 single socks. That’s 8 socks missing since I arrived in France..

I recently looked in my sock draw; sort of to investigate, Hercules Poirot I am not (he was from Belgium and I am an Englishman of Italian origin living in France!) but the little grey cells have been working overtime this week, I have to find out where they go??? Back to the drawWhat did I find, there evidence of a crime?? Well no, not really I only found a pair of my wife knickers. They were soft and lacy.

Mmmm I wonder what they feel like on…hang on, man up Dan, no don’t. It took a while, I did think and think but my bum is huge compared to my wife’s, so they probably wouldn’t fit anyway. However this got me thinking, over a cup of Invigorating Peppermint tea I hatched a cunning plan! I explained it to the only other person in the house. She wasn’t the slightest bit interested and yawned then barked at me, and went back to her basket. I sat at my computer and contemplated the issue I will steal all of her knickers and hide them. That would teach her for stealing all the covers at night!! No don’t lower yourself to that level of evil. Solve the crime… solve the crime!!

the little grey cells working overtime

I looked out of the window, the sun had just broken through the clouds the leaves carpeted the floor and the trees swayed in a light wind. My wife’s return will be in the morning, should I confront her, tell her I know of her plan??? Explain about the knickers? I look over to the entrance to the other room. Gilly Bum was standing there a missing sock protruding from her mouth and her tail wagging profusely…. a search of her basket revealed the 8 missing socks. But did she do this alone? Or does she have an accomplice….. an arch enemy of the Moriarty variety……..the plot thickens…. and the knickers are off!!!!

October 30, 2016 Aside

Double, double toil and trouble??


Nuts! So many Nuts! The leaves are turning yellow and gold, some leaves have even turned a fire coloured red! I was driving to Bergerac the other day when the wind picked up, the leaves dropped in slow motion right in front of me. Magical… But back to nuts….My nuts! or as I should rightly say our nuts! You see in our front garden there is a very large walnut tree. As tall as the house and half again as wide. For a few days now it has provided us with a crop of its fruits. But what a crop!! Now when the apple trees bared fruit, I spent a week making apple cakes, an apple flan and on occasion just poached apples!! With the walnuts this was an entirely different story. Iwona has claimed them for herself and has crushed them up for her early morning Muesli. Rumour has it that walnuts are very good for the brain, enhancing higher brain function and all that. The rumour came from my wife! It must be true, half the time I haven’t got the foggiest what she is talking about so she must be a genius!…….all thanks to the walnuts?!?

As it’s nearing the 30th of October, Halloween is upon us and the Ghosts and Ghouls are poised to roam the halls so to speak! With this in mind last weekend we went to a Medieval Village, Issigeac. We had heard tales of a pumpkin festival! I have to say I was impressed by the show of fruits, (yes fruit, pumpkins are fruits not vegetables!…. I looked it up;) We were inspired and Gilly Bum, our dog, loved sniffing around all the Pumpkins, until she met up with the two cows on show and all hell broke loose! The Bum barked and the cows moo’ed; a Mexican stand-off ensued. But if you are worried don’t be, Iwona’s quick thinking saved the day (must have been the walnuts!) A treat was produced and the dog backed down…

There are lots of festivities going on in the area to celebrate Halloween. With Iwona at home working, I stumbled across a Puppet show for the children in the local village the other day. There was a lot of traffic in the village (about 3 cars!) so I stopped off to watch, a glass of wine appeared next to me. After all, reliving your childhood is always helped by the glass of the red stuff! The show was good and left me with a glowing feeling as I went home. Another glass of wine washed down a few walnuts whilst I cooked dinner. I chatted with Iwona merrily and I must admit I understood quite a lot of what she was saying! But was it the wine or the walnuts that enabled this, I wonder?

July 11, 2016

So what happened on the way to heaven???

I love my Wife, she may not think it sometimes but I really do.. She is the best of me keeps me level headed, always in the right direction. But there are couple of issues.

She steals my pens, no seriously I have a home office and there on the desk we share, I leave pens for me and her to use. However whenever she goes back to the UK to work, yup that’s right no pens. Not one. I have scoured the house from bottom. They are nowhere to be seen….maybe she eats them??

There are other issue too. She is always right..  There you go I have said it.

Take for example the pool. The main draw, we hope for you, our future clients, you know who you are! When we first moved here, Iwona took some time off of work to help get everything in order. On day Two of us sleeping on the floor, why! Well..er  we had no bed. Iwona said to me that we would have to empty the pool and jet wash it out.

“WHY!” . Says I,  “It’s only a little bit green….”

” You do realise that you can’t see the bottom and it looks like a 1000 year old pond!”  She said.

“You don’t understand, this is something technical leave it to me” I told her “I will get some Chemicals….”

Off I trot to the local pool place for advice and help.

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1000 year old Pond!

 

Well all I can say is that, she told me in the later part of May. It’s now July. The pool shop’s owner? I am now his best friend having spent a small fortune on Chemicals, new tubes and Sand for the filter… The pool I hear you ask….

Well it’s not green anymore, no in fact there is very little water in it at all! I have spent the day with a “Deck Scrub” in hand, rubbing the walls down, the jet washer came in handy, Iwona told me to buy it!.

The deep end still has green water in it and a very dark green color it is. Whenever I attempt to brush it down swathes of leaves come up and I am unsure as to weather the brush is actually touching the ground. Could I have discovered an entrance to the underworld??

I am not asking my wife! The truth maybe known.
But I should appreciate my wife more. Maybe I should throw all to the wind. A grand romantic gesture,  should I write her a note for her return.  Tell her that I appreciate her and how I should listen to her more often…..

Nope!  I am not going to ……I can’t find a pen!

 

July 11, 2016

All that Stuff….

I have been thinking about writing this blog for a while now. Except I don’t remember thinking about actually writing it..Its been a subconscious thing….Perhaps even the reason why we wanted to move here in the first place? The thought at the back of your mind “What is important in life?”  is it to have stuff that suffocates us. Or should it be the experience of our lives, that make us who we are. It is important to remember whilst reading this that I formulated the way I wanted to write it riding  on my Motorbike, I am writing it whilst listening to music on my stereo and I am sitting here in my Levi 501’s sweating profusely, so believe me I still have my share of stuff..

Stuff, yes that right stuff, all the crap we accumulate during our lives. At the point of purchase it’s the only thing we need to make us happy, it is the holy grail if I get this all of my dreams will come true!! Then a few short months, weeks even in some cases, it’s left discarded, our thoughts turn to the next thing, the next holy grail. The item is consigned to the back of the wardrobe,  corner of the room or even our garages. Only to be thought of at dinner  one night with friends, when you say yes I have one of those, it’s really cool isn’t it. But your friends don’t know that the dust has settled on that sunrise for you already. It’s ok though because they have that “Stuff” as well…

Here in France I would like to think that “Stuff” is looked at in  a different way. Things are so much more expensive here, much to our surprise. So much so that we have lots of 2nd hand kit. My fridge for example is lent to us by a friend who wasn’t using it for the time being. Is this why here,  they appreciate things more? Well maybe. But maybe its me….

Back in the Uk I had a very nice well paid job, but no time, no real life, no time to enjoy anything, not even spending time with my boys. But i could afford things, Stuff lots of Stuff.

I am not saying I would mind it if my cousin, no pressure here Jon,  were to ring me one day and say have the Aston Martin I think you would like it.  Well I wouldnt say no, after all whilst I am a little crazy I am not Stupid!!

But if he were to ring me and say, you know what I have a great Job for you, huge salary etc. Woud I jump at the chance?? I am not so sure. Would it mean that by accepting a very gracious and generoius offer like that, I would be back. Back in a place where Stuff ruled my world. Where the merry go round just well kept on going round.

Dave Courtney, I have never met the Man, I am sure we wouldnt have much to talk about were we to meet. In a world where one line snippits tell us more about ourselves than reading whole books. A book title of his inspired me. “Stop the round I want to get off..”

No Aston Martin for me then, and I am very happy that I wont ever have one, because here in my little world that my wife and I are building together stuff just isnt that important. I look at the sky and appreciate it, I have space, time to write, time to cut the grass (unfortuantely). I got off the merry go round and I am in a place now where  whilst many of my friends and family don’t quite get what I am doing, or even why we are here, I am truly happy.

Mr Courtney thank you for that…… Now back to that bloody grass!

 

 

July 6, 2016

This way to the exit…..

The sound of a well-known airline message as we landed resonated in my ears. 90% of the flights, it told me, were on time. Well we were bloody well late!  Two years ago we had an appointment with an Estate agent to view properties in the Dordogne area of France. This was the culmination of a yearlong conversation as to where our lives were headed and what we wanted from them. Itchy feet and the desire to get out of the humdrum nature of our lives pushed us to looking far afield.

My name is Dan, in my life there have been many ups and downs, 1st married in ’98 and after two teenage boys, many different mortgages, a divorce and different jobs later I am now married to my 2nd wife Iwona. The lady in question with whom I am embarking on this adventure.

They say that if the dream does not scare you it is not big enough. Well our dream scares us shitless. We are embarking on the new life that we don’t know anything about. We wanted a house with a garden somewhere quiet and beautiful – be careful what you wish for! Now we have the house mainly (ruin), in the middle of nowhere with the huge field attached to it. I think you call it a farm (less the animals, unless you count the dears). And what do we know about the farming?

Well this week we learnt a lot. We know now that to cut the grass we need a big tractor, that instead of garden tolls we need the heavy duty farming tolls. We know that the roof tiles are very slippery when you try to walk on them during pouring rain. Why would you do such a thing you may ask? No reason other than a hole in the roof that lets the water in where the electric wires live. This in process cutting our power off. Us trying to find temporary solution hence the climb on the roof, the foil and the random bricks to hold it in place yes at it worked!

We know how to use a big oil boiler and how to get the hot water although we are still the the dark as to how to top up the oil or how will we know when it is almost finished. We also know that when there is no power our front gate remains locked and that we don’t have the key for it.

We know that we will not get the golden tan while doing the garden because we will have to be covered head to toes or otherwise end up bitten and eaten alive by various crawling or flying creatures. We will get the weathered look very soon and we will smell of fire. Our fingers will get yellow from the garden gloves and grass will be attached to everything we wear.

And rural France is a little bit less of a mystery now. We know that Sunday is the day to rest because no matter what you want to do you will not be able to do – everything is closed. We know that the bank holidays are days to rest as well, that everything shuts down for a two hour lunch break and that if they say something will happen tomorrow they probably mean next week. We know that with hands gestures and right expressions we can get understood and that there will always be someone who speaks English even in the most unexpected places like “decheterie.”

This was a very productive week. We are probably wiser and definitely more tuned into the French lifestyle. Our mentality still needs to adopt but one step at the time. A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step. Our journey began.