Starting a chambres d`hôte

29/12/09 Our first French Christmas

Having just read the end of the previous post I can’t quite believe that Christmas has already been & gone. Where does the time go? We did have a great time though – more of that later. The month of December has been quite a busy one with one thing & another. The first week was taken up completely for me by the Croix Rouge’s Marche de Noel which as usual was a great success but very time consuming & tiring. The ladies had surpassed themselves this year with all sorts of lovely handicrafts, jams, conserves, wines, biscuits & cakes on offer. It is impossible to be there for three days & not spend money – which is the whole idea really I suppose! I was put on the knitwear stall again & did my bit flogging numerous hats, scarves, slippers & jumpers. Overall I think the actual number of people who came to the market was down this year but those who did come seemed to buy a lot so I suspect they will have made a handsome profit once again. The calendar season has been in full flow throughout the month. Our first visitors with their calendar, were some of the kids from the village school (yes, the famous one) who arrived one afternoon when I was in full mince pie production mode! They were duly rewarded for their visit with a donation - & a mince pie each! Then came two very nice young pompiers,(firemen),who nearly frightened the living daylights out of me, by knocking on the window. It was getting dark & the luminous glow of the reflective stripes on their uniforms looked very eerie indeed! Calendar number three was that of our intrepid post lady, Brigitte. I don’t begrudge her the money though – it’s the same as giving the postie a Christmas tip in the UK, & she delivers our post to the door in all weathers & takes & posts stuff for us too at times. As well as these, nearly every tradesman, bank, shopkeeper etc also gives their regular customers a calendar, so by the end of the year you have enough to paper a room! The annoying thing is that most of them are no good whatsoever for writing our bookings on which is the only time I actually use a calendar! Fortunately, our friends Ron & Muriel give us one which is suitable for that. So if any of you are short of a calendar this year you know where to come! I was inspired by all the nice things on offer at the Christmas Market to make some very nice holly wreaths & decorations for the house & gite. It is great having all the raw materials in abundant supply here – all it takes is a 5 minute walk down the track to get enough holly & mistletoe to keep several florists happy! The holly this year was fantastic too with huge scarlet berries which prompted my daughter to comment that she thought we must have been giving the trees steroids! I really enjoyed “playing” & was very pleased with my creative efforts. Mind you my fingers nearly dropped off with the cold as I worked outside making the wreaths. This brings me neatly on to the weather! It has been very, very cold this month. We went from it being very mild to night time temperatures of -8(&less) practically overnight. Then, the week before Christmas along came the snow. We ended up with several inches but nothing we couldn’t cope with. Geoff enjoyed playing on the toboggan but our efforts at building a snowman were pretty dire! We just get the wrong type of snow here – where have I heard that before?? It doesn’t stick together so making snowballs & snowmen is virtually impossible. Our Christmas week gite visitors were delighted with the snowy conditions & took full advantage of our offer of 3 toboggans to play with! The gite has been in use again over the holiday period I’m glad to say. The first lot of visitors arrived on the weekend before Christmas when the temperatures really plummeted. They spent the first day in the gite adjusting to the cold (the gite is not the easiest place to heat especially when it has been empty for a while) but soon got the hang of the fire & heaters & then really enjoyed their week. The family who are in the gite this week are proving much more of a challenge as they have moaned about everything so far! They wanted snow but it has all gone now. However they but don’t want it to be cold & consequently are going through our woodpile at the rate of knots at the moment. The big problem here sometimes is that people who live in centrally heated houses & apartments in towns just can’t adjust to the fact that this is an old country house half way up a mountain & in winter it is often very cold here. We exist by wearing multiple layers of clothing, closing doors & shutters & generally keeping moving in the house & garden. If all you do is sit around, you do get cold here very quickly. We haven’t got that through to our present visitors yet! I don’t think they will be back somehow! Despite all the adverse weather both here & in the UK, the kids & Geoff’s mother made it out to Chabanol for Christmas. They had a bit of a nightmare journey out, with flight & train delays but made it in the end. Geoff’s mum enjoyed being pushed in her specially hired Red Cross wheelchair through the airports & stations en route & was full of praise for all the help & attention she got throughout the journey. We were a little perturbed at her disappearing down the platform at Clermont Ferrand station in the company of a railway official to be taken across the tracks to the main entrance hall, but she took it all in her stride! The kids deserve a medal I think for bringing her out with them. Not many young folk would volunteer to bring an 81 year old lady with mobility problems on that journey. Once they were here we all had a fabulous family Christmas together. Christmas dinner was a halfway house between French & English traditions with Fois Gras, oysters, prawns, duck with cherry sauce (last of the cherries from the bumper summer crop),cheese (of course!)Christmas pudding, Buche de Noel & mince pies! And very nice it was too! Pere Noel came with some lovely presents – although someone (she knows who I mean) had managed to leave my present from the children on her kitchen table in Carlisle! Because French TV does not interest Matthew or Gma, we played lots of board & card games over this holiday period which has been good old fashioned family fun. We all went up to the Salle de Fetes in the village on Sunday afternoon to watch a film which had been arranged as a community event, by the Marie. Because it was an animated film, (UP – I highly recommend it!), even Gma managed to follow it & we all had a good time there too. They set off home yesterday & I was my usual miserable self when they left. The house is getting back to normal again now but I miss them so much. So, now, on to the New Year. We have a couple arriving for B&B tomorrow & staying over the New Year weekend - well actually only bed as they are visiting friends in the next village & so will be breakfasting there. As yet I am not sure what we will be doing on New Years Eve. My dearly beloved is in charge of that – which probably means that we will be doing very little as usual! However I hope everyone has a good time & I will be back with all the news from Chabanol next year!