Starting a chambres d`hôte

22/10/08 The Taxman Cometh.......

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:54:00 GMT

October has been a very mixed sort of a month with not a lot of business, lots of nasty bills, a hectic visit to the UK and quite a lot of meetings and social events.

The nasty bit first – this is the time of year in France when the tax bills hit the post boxes and ours was a bit of a shocker really! However, after a bit of head scratching and a lot of humble pie eating Geoff went off to see the friendly taxman at the Maison d`Impots and discovered that he had not filled the tax form in correctly! Phew! He has just returned from another meeting with the friendly taxman and has managed to get the bill halved which is much better news! We find the French tax and social charges system a nightmare. The forms are really complex. The actual income tax bill is not quite as high as it would have been in the UK but the social charges( medical, retirement etc) are a lot more, so overall the costs in France are higher than in the UK. Fortunately, though, the people in the offices have all been extremely nice and very helpful. We will understand it all one day I’m sure – well maybe…….

We have only had one set of visitors this month – a couple for B&B one night – which is very disappointing. It is even more galling when you consider that we have had lovely autumnal weather with warm sunny days which has accentuated the beautiful tree colours this year. It gets really chilly in the evenings now, but I can report with a huge smile, that our new logs burn extremely well and there is nothing nicer than curling up in front of the TV and a log fire. One downside of the autumn is the colossal amount of leaves which are “decorating” the garden at the moment. I have had several “Canute style” attempts at trying to keep the drive tidy but have now given up! It has made me realise that we were so right in our decision not to install a swimming pool here as trying to keep it clean would just be an impossible task. We just have too many trees.

The good weather, coupled with the lack of visitors, has enabled us to get on with some DIY jobs in the gite. We have re-varnished the outer doors and shutters and the gite looks very smart indeed, now. Geoff has also done a bit of tiling around the sinks in the kitchen and the bathroom. We have got rid of the dreadful plastic splash-backs at last! The new tiles look so much nicer – really light and clean. Having done the shutters etc we got a bit carried away and re-varnished the well surround, windows and doors of the outbuildings and all the garden seats as well! We look very *** and span now!

Geoff has also been busy with his work and the English teaching has taken off again now after the summer break. He has several new adult students and two of his students from last year have resumed their lessons, which is good news. Unfortunately, the Café Anglais has not been so good recently. It is taking a very long time for word to get around that it is up and running again. We have been blitzing the car parks in Issoire with publicity posters in an attempt to get people to know that it has started again so we will see if this pays off in the next few weeks.

A lot of our other activities are now in full swing again after the summer holidays. My art class is bursting at the seams with a lot of new people which is really nice. The Croix Rouge afternoons have been very busy trying to clear the colossal mounds of donated clothes which accumulated over the summer. The extra sessions for the Christmas Market workshops begin soon too. Also I have completed the basic First Aid Course which all Croix Rouge volunteers have to do now. I found it easy – although that was mainly due to my prior knowledge of First Aid (I used to teach it remember!) rather than my being able to follow the French instructions! I am now the proud owner of my first French FA certificate!

I have also been to a couple of Amnesty International meetings and helped with an Amnesty organised ballade (walk) the other weekend. Geoff actually did the walk whilst I helped with the refreshments which are offered to the walkers at a half way point. It was a beautiful day, and although the walk itself was quite tough, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The group are now organising a “Bal Trad” (which I think is a sort of folk night) to be held next weekend and I am helping with that too. More about that next time.

We have also had a couple of really nice evenings out with friends. My involvement with the village library saw us invited to a talk given by one of our neighbours. He has the most fantastic collection of clocks and other timepieces that we have ever seen and the tour of the collection coupled with his very knowledgeable explanations made it a very interesting evening. The fact that we are down to do a “talk” like this in November which is now filling us full of dread. He will be a very tough act to follow!

Last Saturday found us experiencing one of those surreal evenings that we seem to have here from time to time! We were sitting in the English owned bar/restaurant near here, which has featured before in this blog, eating Irish stew, and listening to a (French) Irish band in full swing playing traditional Irish music! We could have been in the middle of Dublin – except that it is the only Irish night I have ever been to where not one person was supping Guinness! Our friends, Julie and Jean-Luc had invited us to join them at this Irish night, where their daughter, Alice, was singing. The whole evening was really good and Alice’s singing was fantastic. She has the sort of beautiful haunting voice which is ideally suited to Irish ballads. But remember that this is in the middle of the French countryside and you can see what I mean by surreal!

Oh and how could I forget - I have been to another Tupperware party! The ladies of the village seem to be obsessed with the acquisition of lots of expensive plastic boxes these days, unfortunately! This party was a bit more serious than the last but the poor lady demonstrator was a bit nonplussed to be confronted by two English ladies this time as I “persuaded” the other Geordie lady in the village to come along to help her meet some people! So far I am resisting all their attempts to get me to host a party but as most of the group have already done so, I am not sure how much longer my excuses will continue to work!

I have managed to fit in a visit to the UK this month. The main purpose of the visit was to see the family and to watch and cheer on Matthew and Christine as they ran in the Great North Run. They both did very well incidentally, finishing in less than 2 hours and I was really pleased to be able to wave them on as they “raced” past! It turned out to be a very hectic weekend. My mum hasn’t been that well recently so there was a family gathering to discuss her ongoing care whilst I was in the NE. To add to all the hassle, Geoff’s mum tripped and fell only an hour after I had left her, breaking her hip. So once again the weekend disappeared into a blur of driving cross country trying to fit in all the visits.We now have both the mothers health to worry about - one of the downsides of being so far away.I always come back exhausted after these trips, and I never seem to get enough time to spend with the kids or to see as many friends as I would like .

And, finally ….. This wouldn’t be an autumnal blog without the mention of the baskets of garden bounty which have started to arrive courtesy of our neighbour Paul. I am well into my “soup dragon” persona again. So far only one pumpkin though……..

24/09/08 Celebrations

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:26:00 GMT

It was fortunate that we had the celebratory lunch to organise and keep us busy for the first couple of weeks of September as we really have had a bad case of “end of season” blues. It was very sad realising that all our summer visitors were now gone and the gite is empty once again. We really must try and get more visitors here in September and October. The annoying thing is that the weather is really nice now and the countryside looks wonderful as autumn sets in. People are really missing out on all this. We are still eating lunch in the garden most days although it gets quite chilly when the sun goes down and we have been lighting the fire in the evenings. Also because nearly all of the holidaymakers have gone the roads are so quiet. It is truly idyllic – so where are you all????

Enough of the moans and groans and on to more interesting stuff! The lull in business has meant that we have had a bit more time to get out and about. We had a really good day at the big Foire d` Auvergne at Clermont Ferrand once again. This is the annual show which is a sort of Ideal Homes/ Good food/ Motor/Agricultural show all in one! It was good to look around but I have to say that one leather sofa looks very much like the next leather sofa and we really were not tempted to buy anything!

On a smaller scale we also went to the Fete in Sauxillanges. It proved to be its usual mixture of fairground rides and stalls and a strange cabaret type show performed in the open air during the afternoon. This year we were treated to a song and dance troupe who had an odd affinity for pink feather headdresses and strange sparkly costumes – and that was just the two fellas! The girls had some very skimpy outfits, so much so that we did get a bit worried that our friend Phillipe would have some problems settling down his residents at the Maison de Retraite!

Last weekend was the national weekend de patromonie in France when a lot of the local attractions and heritage sites are opened free of charge to the public. We spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting a few of these sites in the neighbourhood. One of these was a lovely old church in a tiny village near here which has the most amazing wall frescoes dating from the 12^th century. The young girl who explained them to us was very good and we enjoyed the opportunity to see them as the church is not always open. We also visited our big local chateau where there was a “tasty” exhibition of local food products. Yummy! Finally we ended our tour with a visit to the exhibition of local talents in the village where I go to my art class. Some of my paintings were in this exhibition and I felt proud to be part of this French national day!

I am pleased to say that the anniversary lunch went off very well and that all my worries were totally unfounded. I can hear Geoff saying “told you” as I type! We had a super day. We were fortunate to have our friends, John and Elizabeth, staying with us and also our friends Marc and Michelle, from Paris, came to stay for the weekend too. All of this was just as well as we would have struggled with all the furniture moving had we been on our own! We are really lucky to have the luxury of two houses and enough furniture for three when it comes to doing something like this! By putting three dining tables together down the middle of the gite we were able to sit all our guests down to a four course meal with ease. Geoff had asked a friend from the village (who is a retired restaurant owner and likes to do a bit of catering for friends now and again) to cook the main course and with the invaluable help of our visiting friends I did the starter, cheese course and one of the desserts – the others being supplied by some of the other guests. The meal was very good and got the thumbs up from all the French guests who I am sure are still wary of English cooking! The champagne flowed (well not to me of course – sparkling grape juice only!) and I even managed to make a speech – in French too – much to Geoff’s amazement as he had expected to have to translate! I had spent a very interesting afternoon in the attic and had managed to find my wedding dress, veil, wedding photos and some of the “good luck” stuff we had been given on the big day, and this little display caused much merriment! No-one could believe that Geoff had such lovely long curly dark hair! Or that I looked so young!! I must look really ancient now I think! Anyway a good time was had by all. I must say a big thank you to everyone who sent us cards, presents and messages – and special thanks to J,E,M&M for all your help on the day. If anyone had told me we would have been able to do something like this two years ago I would never have believed them.

As part of the preparations for the meal we made a trip to the big professional catering cash and carry outlet near Clermont with our caterer friend. What a place! My eyes were on stalks at all the goodies on offer. We realised that having a card for this place would be great for the B&B and gite supplies, as at the moment we have no way of really separating provisions for the business from our normal shopping, and therefore have no real way of claiming back any expenditure we incur. However it is not to be, as we are just not big enough to be able to get a card. Shame.

Talking of provisions, the good old jam pan has been working overtime again! We have a bumper harvest of blackberries and other fruit here at the moment and the jam cupboard is overflowing yet again! The vegetable garden is going mad too – courgettes and tomatoes galore so the freezer is filling up with soup and ratatouille. I just hope and pray we don’t get any power cuts now!

Finally, another first for us, here, in France. Geoff has made his first visit to the doctor! He had a bit of a pain in his side which was bothering him (he is a bloke after all!) so off he went to the local doc in Sauxillanges. Apparently the doctor had heard all about us (?) and the two of them spent a lot of time chatting about what we were doing here etc, etc! However Geoff came back with a bagful of pills and lotions – much to my horror! All for a little muscle strain! It did mean that we were able to test our medical cover though and we were pleased to discover that all the medicaments were “free” and half of the consultation fee was reimbursed. So we can go again….or maybe not in my case!

24/08/08 Shooting Stars and Asses

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:09:00 GMT

We do lead a very varied life here as this month’s title might suggest! We have had a very busy month both at home with all the summer visitors and in the community with all the excitement of the annual fete and other happenings.

The month started with a quite acrimonious general meeting to sort out the finer details of the annual Fete d`Anes which was held at the Marie. Geoff was there in his official role as “active member” of the Amicale Laique (fete committee) and I along with half the commune attended to see what was happening. The problem was that the hunting club were going to run a Bal-trap(clay pigeon shoot) on the same weekend as the fete and instead of the two things running for mutual gain, each side seemed to view the other activity as a threat! It was a lively meeting and tempers got a bit frayed at times. However, in the end both events went ahead very successfully. The weather was fantastic for the big fete day and there were lots of people there. Geoff took his judging role very seriously – although he still knows very little about asses, other than they have a head, long floppy ears and look cute! He was kept very busy helping with the cross country “marathon” in the morning (asses and carts on a timed tour of the country roads) and then judging the obstacle course (asses and carts driven around a course and awarded points for time, appearance and agility) in the afternoon. By the time we watched the firework display in the evening neither of us had any energy left to stay long at the dance which concluded the fete – which was no great loss as we still can’t get enthusiastic about accordion dance bands! There have been some changes in the committee since the fete with the appointment of a new president but Geoff has wisely stayed on the sidelines and refused to take on any more responsibility. It is very difficult for us to become any more involved as the fete occurs right in the middle of our busy period for the gite and chambres d`hotes and it was a struggle this year to fit everything in.

One of the other events which took place in the commune was the annual ceremony to commemorate the wartime resistance battle which took place here. We made a big effort to attend this year and we were amazed at how many people were there marching behind a band to lay wreaths at the war memorial and then on to the cemetery where there was a very moving ceremony. After speeches from all the local dignitaries (including the French equivalent of the local MP) the children from the school in St Etienne sur Usson laid a single red rose on each of the resistance member’s graves. We were very impressed by the sheer numbers of people present and they way that the whole community was involved from the small children up to the big wigs from the armed forces and politics. It was really emotional.

The Fete d`Anes did bring us our first “returners” in the B&B as we hosted the same pair of *** owners as last year. We have since had another guest staying for the second time too which is really nice. We have been very, very busy throughout the latter half of July and August with the gite and B&B practically full most weeks. We have had some super visitors and they have left us with some very good memories. We have had visitors from Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, England and of course lots of French people too. There is now a message in our Livre D`Or (visitors book)in Korean following the stay of a nice couple from Paris. I have no idea what it says but Oona (the Korean lady) has drawn a smiley face at the end of the message so I think she enjoyed her stay! We had one week when we had English visitors in the gite and an English family in the B&B. That was the week of the “shooting stars”. One week of the year we go through an asteroid belt and this creates the opportunity to see lots of shooting stars in the night sky. Because we have no light pollution here at Chabanol the stars are very clear and we were treated to a fabulous show this year. We had 9 English people with strange neck postures staring up at the sky each night – no wonder the French think we are slightly bonkers! Some of these English visitors also now hold the accolade for being the only people ever to get lost in Chabanol – remember it is a tiny hamlet of 8 houses! Our neighbour was very amused by them asking for directions at the end of their walk! We also had a sweet French couple who stayed for 3 nights who always referred to each other as Madame or Monsieur. She also came down for breakfast each day in her nightie! We have on two occasions also had to rustle up meals for guests when they have arrived later than expected or on a Monday night when all the local restaurants are closed. It never ceases to amaze me that all the restaurants (bar one) here close on the same night! I am not keen to do meals, as it is a lot of work, but it has proved that we can do it if necessary. We also coped with the unhappy morning when the workmen who are putting the electricity cables underground in the commune managed to cut the water main and all the water went off - just as the guests were waking up and wanting showers! Great! That we could have done without I can tell you! But all in all it’s been a really good summer for the business.

We did have another amusing incident one night – well it is amusing now in hindsight! We were settling down for the night and were just about to put out the light in our bedroom when in through the open window flew a bat. It has happened before and usually the bat flies round and goes out immediately. Not this night though, as seconds later in flew another bat and then a third! Now, I do like the bats in the garden and they do help to keep the insect numbers under control, but three bats circling round my bedroom was a bit unnerving to say the least! Geoff uttered the wonderful phrase “if you put the light out they will go away” – fat chance of that happening! My final words to him as I fled into the bathroom are unprintable – and got worse as one of the critters followed me into that sanctuary too! To his credit he did get rid of them, and to mine, I didn’t scream once (remember we had guests staying). But the window was firmly closed after that despite it being a very hot night!

We (or rather Geoff, as he has declared that “he will take charge of everything”) are in the midst of preparing a celebration of our 30^th wedding anniversary which is in September. We have decided to invite some of our friends from round here for a lunchtime meal and as the gite is vacant that weekend, it seemed a good idea to host the event ourselves. However I am a little worried at the size of the guest list now! Also, the idea was to ask people to bring a dessert or something for the meal but all the conversations I have overheard so far do not seem to include this request! I feel a long stint in the kitchen approaching fast! Watch this space!

24/07/08 Busy, busy, busy ..

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:57:00 GMT

Every month I wonder if I am going to have enough news to make the blog interesting and up to now I have been astonished at all the things we manage to fit into a month. This last month has been a pretty hectic one really – much more than usual.

We made use of the couple of weeks at the end of June and beginning of July to try and get some outstanding jobs done before the summer visitors began in earnest. The first task was to get the chimneys swept. We had tried to do this earlier in the year but an unexpected fall of snow put paid to that idea. However this time round the guy arrived, and after telling us he was a couple of months off his retirement, put us “youngsters” to shame by shimmying up his ladder and onto our roof in no time! There was absolutely no mess at all (I had been a bit worried at having this job done just before our first summer guests arrived) and both the gite and house chimneys were done in next to no time. I think the last time I saw a chimney being swept was when I was a very small child but here it is an annual requirement as part of your house insurance deal and is a common occurrence.

The second outstanding task was to get our winter wood supply sorted out. This year (thanks to our friend Jeannot at the bar) we have managed to find someone locally who would sell us proper logs. He delivered them with his tractor and trailer and stacked them as he unloaded them which meant that the previous year’s chore of making the woodpiles was negated. The fact that he was 80+ years old and that he was stacking a lot quicker that Geoff or I, again put us to shame a bit! They obviously breed them tough and long living here! So now we have a very healthy woodpile and squeaky clean chimneys an fireplaces in which to burn the logs.

These tasks out of the way, we had a few days to enjoy the good weather and the BBQs to which we found ourselves invited. One of these was at our friends Julie and Jean-Luc`s farm. It was a bit like a scene from “The Darling Buds of May” TV series with a long table set under a shady tree and lots of people tucking into wonderful meat, sausages, salads, cheese and puddings on a very warm summers day. Idyllic.

The arrival of the much appreciated Broadband also made it possible for me to enjoy a bit of Wimbledon coverage this year. We do get a bit frustrated – remember we still only have French TV here – with the sports coverage as the events only get covered if there are French players involved. This bodes well for the Olympics .. ! However, back to the tennis, boy what an exciting men’s final that was. Geoff was complaining that it was time to go to bed before it finished! (We are an hour ahead don’t forget!) I really enjoyed the radio commentary – and just wished that I had had the pics too.

We are well into our busy period now with both the gite and B&B. We have had some lovely visitors so far and are really enjoying meeting all the different folk who are coming to stay. It is nice to have children playing in the garden again too. We are picking up quite a few wedding guests this year as there have been some big weddings locally – and there are more to come. Our last lot of these guests hardly used the beds at all as they didn’t get in til 5.30am! Needless to say they were a little subdued over a very late breakfast! We have also had some English visitors who really enjoyed their brief stay with us and even took the trouble to send an e mail when they got back home telling us how good it was. That was much appreciated. We have just had a visit from some friends who decided to have a week here and a week at the coast. It was lovely to see them and to show the place off a bit. I can tell people how beautiful it is here but it needs to be seen to really appreciate it.

One of the really exciting events locally has been the Tour de France stage which finished at Super-Besse. Our daughter, Hazel, and her friend Rachel came out for a few days to experience the excitement! We set off early in the morning – well early by Hazel’s standards – and managed to drive to the end of the final bit of road leading into Super-Besse itself – much further than I had thought we would get. After a relaxed picnic, we were able to install ourselves on the roadside just before the last 1km sign and had a fantastic view back down the road to watch the riders approach the final killer slog to the finish. The atmosphere was great – totally crazy but such good fun! We enjoyed all the daftness of the “caravan” as it passed and managed to collect lots of useless articles such as caps, key rings, giant foam hands etc, not to mention several much appreciated bottles of water which were thrown out by the girls and blokes on the floats. They cyclists were quite split up when they went past as it had been a very hard stage so we were able to get a good look at them all and take photos. All in all it was a great day and great fun. The girls went to Brioude the next day to watch the start of the next stage but said it wasn’t as exciting. They did enjoy the atmosphere in the town though.

I am experiencing an empty nest syndrome at the moment! No not because my daughter has gone home again, but because our one and only nestful of fledgling birds this year flew the nest last night! They were a family of redstarts which had nested in between the shutter and the window of one of the outbuildings and we have been actually able to see into the nest and follow their progress by climbing up on to the mezzanine. We were able to get some good photos of the chicks without disturbing them and it was lovely to see them fly last night – even if one of them did get stuck on our bedroom windowsill for a bit. I’m missing their constant chirping already! Sad or what???

22/06/08 Flaming June – well it is now!

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:47:00 GMT

The Auvergnats have a lot in common with the British when it comes to talking and moaning about the weather. The hot topic of conversation here for the last month has been the unusually “mauvais temps” (bad weather). That is bit of an understatement as we have had continuous rain for over a month, breaking all records for rainfall levels! We have also had to light the fire every evening – another first for June. The locals say that they have never seen anything like it in living memory – and of course our neighbours take great delight in pointing out that it is only since we arrived that the weather has gone wrong! The garden was looking like a bog garden at one stage with mini lakes outside the front door and the well which we had thought was dry suddenly was full to the brim. All the “dry loving” plants which I’d just put into the tubs and pots drowned and for a while the only thing that was thriving were the slugs and snails. Our (mostly male) friends were telling us how lucky we were to have all the snails and that we should profit by the bounty and collect and cook them! Other friends (mostly female) said that they are dreadful to clean and prepare and if we really wanted to eat snails we should buy them ready prepared from the supermarket! All of this is academic anyway as I have absolutely no intention of sampling the delights of snails! The good news is that the rain has finally stopped and we are now having a heat wave with temperatures in the 30s. It is one extreme to another here.

At the end of May, as a sort of mini treat for my birthday, we treat ourselves to a couple of nights away. I have always wanted to see Carcassonne and so off we went. The weather was awful – I have never been as wet as we walked round the medieval town when we arrived. However the next day was a bit better and we really enjoyed seeing the “cité” and walking round the walls. We explored the Cathar countryside a bit too and Geoff nearly killed the dog by taking him to the top of an old bastide castle perched up high on a hill overlooking a very picturesque village. The rain returned for our drive back home which was a shame as the countryside looked very pretty. I also went on the annual Croix Rouge bus trip last weekend. We had a fabulous day – the ladies reckoned that God obviously supported the Croix Rouge as it was the first day without rain for over a month! The trip went to the Gorges de Tarn, about 2 hours south of Issoire and I really enjoyed the wonderfully dramatic scenery and the walks round the pretty villages there. There were some very “hairy” moments on the narrow bendy roads as the bus forced several camper vans to back up to allow it to pass. I bet there were some very naughty words being uttered by their drivers! It was a very long day – I set off from home at 7am and got back at 9.30pm! I pay tribute to the stamina of the ladies some of whom are well into their 60s and 70s and were looking a lot livelier than me at the end of the day!

We have been quite quiet gite-wise this month. We did have a lovely family staying at the end of May. They were relations of Jeannot and Doly who run the tiny bar in St Etienne sur Usson. They really had a great time visiting all their family – and having all the family visit them in the gite. This was great for us too as it got several local people here and they were able to see where we live and the gite and B&B rooms too. All good publicity for us! There was one anxious moment when one of their three dogs – a tiny, almost blind, Yorkshire terrier – decided to go walkabout and got lost! The combination of the very long grass in the fields and the size of the dog made it really hard to find him. I was also a bit disturbed by the circling buzzards that were looking very hungry! However Geoff was the hero of the day and restored the beloved mutt to his desperately worried owners! The whole family were real dog lovers and Chester got thoroughly spoiled when they were here. He just about lived in the gite and really enjoyed all the attention (not to mention the tit-bits) which was lavished upon him! I swear he had tears in his eyes when they left! We have noticed that Chester gets almost as many mentions in our Livre d`Or (visitors book) as we do!

One of the spin offs from this family’s visit has been that I have been asked to help with the biblioteque (library) in the village. It is run by a lovely lady (another cousin of the family) who also writes books and is a local historian. She has a small team of people who help her run the library – (actually it’s only a couple of bookcases) – and organise little guided walks around the villages. I seem to be becoming a career volunteer round here somehow, but it all helps with getting to know people and my language skills. Another exciting event of the month was an invitation to a Tupperware party! I extended this invitation to my good friend Julie who amazingly turned me down! Well I have to say she missed a treat as it was a real experience sitting in the middle of French countryside looking at a new range of plastic boxes! The only difference between the Tupperware parties of my youth and this one was the baking of a chocolate cake (using a Tupperware dish of course). This also was not to be missed as Evyline`s kitchen is tiny and there were six ladies crammed into it watching her (poor soul) make this cake along with lots of chat and laughter – much to the demonstrator’s dismay! She obviously didn’t think we were taking it seriously enough – and she was probably right!

Fortunately, although the gite has been quiet we have had some B&B visitors. It seems that people are beginning to discover us as a good place to break their journeys to the south coast and Spain. We have also taken several bookings for the summer months, which mean that we will be very busy especially in August. The washing machine will be working overtime! Another bit of good news on the business front is that we were asked to go to the Marie and look at the new information and direction signs the other day. We are to get a sign to Les Hirondelles in the village and at the end of our access road at long last. The bad news is that they won’t be in place until September, effectively the end of the season!

I have some excellent news to report – Broadband has finally come to Chabanol! Geoff was off like a rabbit out of a hat to the France telecom shop to get his Livebox and with only a couple of minor hitches, we are now connected to fast internet at last! It’s fantastic – I can download photos, communicate, and connect to all my favourite sites now with ease! But the best is I now can access all the UK radio stations. I listened to The Archers (I am an official Addict after all) whilst typing this – and with no crackly interference either! I now have a new definition of happiness – lying in bed, with the windows wide open (it’s hot remember), birds singing and my beloved Terry Wogan twittering away! Sheer unadulterated bliss!!

Finally a little bit of amazing news! I wrote way back in December about a fig tree which Geoff had planted and which got totally decimated by the frost and cold. He left the remains of this disaster in place as a sort of memorial to his folly and we have affectionately referred to it ever since as the “fig twig” as all that was left was a brown dead stick. I have to report that the afore-mentioned fig twig has defied all expectations and now has some very healthy looking leaves sprouting from the base! Miracles do happen then!

20/05/08 A bit of May Madness

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:13:00 GMT

May in France seems to be just one long sequence of Bank Holidays! We sometimes wonder if anyone ever works during May. Firstly there is May 1st (Fete de Travail), then May 8^th(end of WW2) and this year we have had Ascension Day and Lundi de Pentecote in May too. The French have a neat way of making these Bank Holidays into long weekends by taking a “pont” (or bridge day) if the actual BH is on a Thursday. So all in all we have had a lot of long weekend holidays this month. Not that I am complaining, mind you, as we have been very busy with B&B guests. It would seem that people are beginning to discover that this area is a good halfway stop when travelling from Paris, the north of France or Belgium to Spain or the south coast. Good news for us! We also profited from a last minute booking for one of the BH weekends which could prove to be a lucky break for us, as the young couple who came are involved with a drama school in Lyon and they want to use the gite for some theatre workshops next Spring. That will be interesting and appeals very much to my thespian background! I might even get a part in one of their rehearsals! We have also had a return booking for the gite from our friends the tri-athletes. A gite, it seems, of many uses!

Talking of the theatre, my trip back to the UK at the end of April reminded me of just how much I miss going to the theatre. I went to see my daughter who was performing with her opera group in a production of Orpheus in the Underworld. Even though it was just a small theatre it did make me very nostalgic. One day, I hope my French will be good enough for us to go and see a play here in France but we are not at that stage yet. The rest of the UK visit went well and I was able to catch up with the family and some friends too. I still do not miss driving on the British motorways though!

Continuing with the driving theme, I had the unfortunate experience of my first minor prang in Sauxillanges the other day. I was coming down the “main” street when this old guy in a “sans permis” car emerged from a side road without stopping and ran into the side of me. I was a bit incensed to then discover that it was all my fault ..”prioritie de droite” of course! Fortunately there was not too much damage done and no-one was hurt (well if you exclude my hurt pride that is!) and with the help of the local restaurateur who was on the scene we managed to exchange insurance details. Our car has scratches and a dent in the door and is now in the garage being fixed. The elderly gent’s car (which bore the sticky tape evidence of prior bumps) had a damaged bumper and sidelights but all is in the hands of the insurance people. It does worry me a bit though, that these old guys can drive until they drop, because unlike with a normal driving licence where the usual things such as eyesight checks are done when you reach a certain age, these restrictions don’t seem to apply to sans permis cars.

The Auvergnats have a bit of a reputation (a bit on the same lines as the Scots) as being very careful with their cash. I now think that we are turning into true Auvergnats (well Geoff is anyway!) as I have just spent a week restringing our beaded fly curtain ready for the summer. To say it was a labour of love would be a complete lie – it would have been much easier to buy a new one!

Finally, a mystery! We have been busy getting the garden up to scratch these last couple of weeks. I have been planting up the tubs and pots with geraniums and bedding plants and Geoff has been planting up his “potager”. Already the green beans look set for a bumper crop again (oh bliss, oh joy)..but I digress. We were inspecting the progress of the said veg patch the other day when we noticed that one of the little fir trees we had moved to that part of the garden last year, had completely disappeared. It had been doing quite well in its new place but now there was nothing to be seen of it – no branches, no stem and no signs that it had been dug up either. It has just vanished! That prompted us to check the veg patch and sure enough a lovely newly planted parsley plant had also disappeared. The next day the pepper plant had gone and one of the tomato plants. Our gardener neighbour, Paul, thought it might be rabbits but we have never seen rabbits here, as the ground is just too rocky for them to establish burrows and besides all the lovely sweet new lettuce plants are so far still there. And then again there is still the mystery of the fir tree – would rabbits eat that? So if any of you can shed some light on this please, feel free to post a comment. If it is rabbits, they better watch out as Geoff is a big fan of the Mr McGregor approach!

20/04/08 A very good month

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:01:00 GMT

As predicted we have been busy and have had a very good month all told. We have had a visit from friends who really enjoyed their long weekend with us and went away, happy to spread the word about how beautiful the Auvergne is. They were followed by a group of tri-athletes from Clermont Ferrand who rented the gite for a weekend to do some cycling and running training. They wisely declined Geoff’s suggestion to do some swimming practice in the lake at Vernet la Verenne mainly due to the fact that it was freezing! It was quite a shock to my system to look out of our bedroom window and see several hunky lycra clad young men flexing various muscles in the garden! Not the usual garden view here! We have also had a nice young French couple in the gite who enjoyed the week they spent here and managed to catch up on a lot of much needed sleep! Chabanol seems to have that effect on many people – it must be the mountain air! Last week some friends of our daughter and their friends were here and again went off relaxed and promising to return. All these visitors have given us a very good start to our main letting season. Also we have had quite a few bookings these last couple of weeks for the B&B which is good news. We even have three days in August where the gite and both B&B rooms are booked. I will be able to put the “complet” sign up for the first time!

The weather remains cold and rainy unfortunately. We have had a bit more snow too and the mountains have still got snow on them. Geoff managed another skiing session before the ski resorts closed which he enjoyed very much again. I have a horrible feeling that he is becoming hooked! Personally I am looking forward to some warmer weather now as I am longing to get out into the garden a bit more.

My new kitchen is finished at last. It is fantastic! I am really enjoying using all the new work surfaces and the new cooker is a dream! The tiling was finally completed this week and it is just so nice to have a bright light space to work in at long last! I love it!

Geoff has had a good month work wise too. He had a very promising meeting with a guy from the Chamber of Commerce last week and hopefully this will help him to find some new clients for his consulting work here in France. He also has a new student for his English lessons. But our big news is the success of the Café Anglais. We are actually “famous” now in Issoire as the local paper ran a full page article about the venture, complete with photos. It is absolutely amazing how many people have read it too. We went shopping as usual in Issoire on Saturday and loads of people in the shops and around the market said they had seen the article! We had quite a few new people at the session on Wednesday too which is what it is all about really and it looks like we have a good chance to make the whole thing a success. We are really enjoying doing it too which helps a lot!

I have been trying to broaden my interests too in the last few weeks. I have always been quite interested in the work of Amnesty International mainly due to our daughter, Hazel’s involvement with them in England. I have helped her by writing letters and cards etc in the past. I had talked to a lady in Issoire once who was manning a stall on the market , which was encouraging people to get involved and although she had been very good in sending me information about the work of the local group I had not really had the courage to go to a meeting. However, I now feel that my French has improved to the point where I can just about cope with something like that so I went to a meeting at the beginning of April. I really was made to feel very welcome and was pleased to find another English lady there who helped me when I got stuck with the translations. It will be a bit difficult to go to all the meetings as they clash with my art classes but I am determined to try and attend whenever I can. I also did my bit this month by writing to the Chinese ambassador and a minister in China – much to the amazement of our post lady when she saw the addresses!

We got very excited last week when some France Telecom vans arrived in Chabanol and they started to put the cables in for ADSL (Broadband). There have been several articles in the news lately saying that all of the “outlying” communities (of which Chabanol is one) in the Puy de Dome should have Broadband by the Autumn but as this has been promised before we were taking it all with a large pinch of salt. However Geoff and Bernard (our neighbour) got talking to the France Telecom guys and it looks like we should definitely have Broadband by the summer. Oh bliss, oh joy! It has been very difficult having to use the dial up system again and even with a booster device we still can’t download big files or photographs. It will be fantastic to be fully back into fast internet connections mode again. Here’s hoping!

24/03/08 New Experiences

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:33:00 GMT

Easter Monday and we have several inches of snow! All the seasons seem to be topsy-turvy at the moment. Last week I was enjoying all the primroses and violets in the garden and watching the birds beginning to look for nesting sites and now the poor birds are so cold and hungry they can hardly wait for me to move away from the feeder before swarming all over it desperate to get at the seeds. We are suffering in the cold too as we trek to and fro between the house and the gite across the snowy garden. However the end kitchen wise is in sight now with just a bit of painting still to be done. The kitchen looks great and I can’t wait to get back in there to start playing with it! All the work went quite smoothly with all the workmen turning up on time and working really quickly. Maurice (the kitchen fitter – or "poseur" as he called it!) was a great character who talked to himself all the time It was really odd working in our bedroom and hearing French naughty words drifting up from downstairs! Geoff chose to lay the laminate flooring himself in the living area of the room and he has also done the tiling on the walls of the kitchen. One small blip there as the shop got the order wrong and instead of supplying two boxes of picture tiles, presented us with two single tiles! So the tiling will not be completely finished for another week when the rest of the tiles are delivered. I am hoping to get all the stuff put back into the room tomorrow and then get the gite back to normal ready for our next guests.

The return of the snowy weather has meant that Geoff was able to go and try out the ski slopes for real. Well when I say “slopes” I mean the beginners enclosure! He was able to use his birthday money to pay for a private lesson with a very bronzed weather beaten looking instructor who taught him how to balance and glide down the gentle slope. He really enjoyed it and after the lesson finished he spent a good hour and a half playing and gradually getting a bit faster. We were quite surprised at how cheap it was – the lesson, ski hire and lift forfait only cost about 60 euros. So all of you who want a cheap skiing holiday take note! There is even enough money left in his birthday kitty for another go this week – but only when he has finished the painting!

The municipal elections have been and gone now and we have a new mayor in St Etienne sur Usson. As I predicted in the last blog post it all got very interesting – and a bit nasty too. We had a corbeau (anonymous letter writer) in the village who sent out nasty letters to some of the candidates and their supporters. We didn’t see (or receive) any of these letters but they upset a lot of people. In the end the election resulted in 5 members of one list and 6 of the other list being elected as the conseil. We found it incredible that in a commune with a population of about 200,there were 22 people willing to stand in the first place,90% of the population voted (including us), and roughly 50-60 people turned up on each of the two Sunday evenings to watch the count! Would that happen for local elections in the UK? I think not!

We have always known that the gite and B&B alone would not provide a living for us both and to that end Geoff always has intended to work here. He still has some clients with his business consultancy work, and he has been steadily building up the English teaching side of his business. We have also now decided to take the English teaching in a new direction as we have met a lot of French people here who seem to want to improve their spoken English but who don’t have the time or the inclination to take a formal course. So we had the idea of offering people the chance to come to a café in Issoire and to practice and improve their spoken English with our help over a cup of coffee. At the beginning of March we launched the Café Anglais Issoire and it is beginning to take off! As with all things here it often takes “word of mouth” to get messages across and each Wednesday we seem to be getting another one or two people turning up. It is actually good fun and I am enjoying the opportunity to do a bit of teaching again! (I never thought I’d say that for a long time!) The idea of holding the sessions in a café means that the atmosphere is relaxed and so far all the people who have come are willing to try and speak so all is going quite well. We are hoping that if it really takes off we might try the idea in other places – but it is early days yet!

April is going to be a busy time for us, what with the Café Anglais plus the real start of visitors in the gite and B&B. We have three weeks of bookings. I’m not complaining mind you – the more the merrier!

22/02/08 A quiet time

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:58:00 GMT

Things have been very quiet this month really. We have been going about all our usual tasks with out much excitement. We have our first visitors of the year in the gite at the moment – a very large family consisting of parents, 5 children and a dog. There were also 3 extra grown up children there at the weekend too. Goodness knows where they all slept! They have all gone off today to visit Mont Dore in search of some snow. They brought their toboggan so I hope they have a good day there.

They also asked us to provide some “produits de terroir” for their arrival so I had fun doing that. I found a great local produce outlet in Issoire which satisfied most of my needs and it also gave me the chance to visit a little biscuit and gateau factory shop which we have driven past many times but not really explored fully. It was wonderful, the smell was fantastic and I came out with a bag of biscuits for the guests and some extra tasties for us – of course! Geoff also asked Jeannot at the bar if any of the farmers ever had stuff to sell direct. Mistake! He found a farmer for us who had some ham he would sell us – a whole leg of cured ham, all 10 kilos of it! We declined politely!

After this week though, we will be closing the gite and B&B for a couple of weeks whilst we have our new kitchen fitted in the house. Our plan is to decamp into the gite whilst the work is being done. We have chosen the kitchen. It’s all nice and light as the back of the house is quite dark with only one small window giving any natural light. We have now also chosen the floor tiles and we are in the process of choosing tiles for the walls. Its quite a logistical nightmare to get all the components and the workmen here at the same time as the kitchen is coming from one place, the floor tiles from somewhere else and I suspect the wall tiles from another place again. Plus we have to buy things like the taps (I never realised how many types of taps you can get) and gas pipes for the cooker, ourselves. Hopefully though it will all come together in the next two weeks…………watch this space!

Last week saw the Croix Rouge elections and I got my first taste of being part of French democracy as I registered my vote alongside all the other volunteers. It was different to voting in England – what a surprise eh? – in that instead of putting your cross beside the names you were choosing there was a long list of names and you had to put a line through those you did not want to vote for. Out of 18 candidates, 11 have been elected to be the “conseil”(committee) and those 11 met the other night to vote amongst themselves to elect the president, vice president etc. Apparently it is the same system as in the municipal elections which will take place next month. In St Etienne sur Usson there are now two lists of possible “conseils” – although it seems that you can choose names from either list, and the final conseil can be a mix of people from the two groups. They will then decide who will be the new mayor. We are looking forward to this election and we think we know enough of the people on both the lists to be able to vote properly. We are not allowed to vote in the Presidential elections – you have to have French citizenship for that- but we can vote in these municipal elections and European elections.

This month is proving an expensive one for us as all the tax and cotisation (medical cover, pensions etc) bills are arriving. It’s quite complicated trying to work out what is due when, so Geoff has gone off to the tax office for a chat today. We have also the problem of all the various monies having to be paid to different tax offices. Sometimes I get all nostalgic for good old PAYE and NI contributions going out of my salary without any input from me!

The enquiries for the gite and B&B are still coming in steadily, thank goodness. However we are also getting lots of scam e-mails too which are a pain in the neck. The lengths that some of these folk will go to is amazing. We had an “enquiry” last week supposedly for four doctors from an Indian infertility clinic who “wanted somewhere to stay whilst they attended some research event”! Just why they would want to stay in the middle of the French countryside surprised me a bit!! Of course the messages all then follow the same pattern – they will send a cheque for the accommodation plus car hire or air fare, etc, etc and we are supposed to send the difference to a third party! It’s a scam of course but it does take up time and a lot of my patience!

22/01/08 Ups and Downs

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:38:00 GMT

Happy New Year!

We have had a mixed start to the New Year with several good, and a few not so good, things happening. We spent a splendid New Year’s Eve with Angele, Phillipe and their sons Lucas and Georges, at the house of their friends Lynne and Jean-Pierre. We had started the evening by having an aperitif with our gite guests at 6.30 and eventually stopped eating at 3am! We were assured that the meal was traditional fare for Le Reveillon and boy was it good! We ate aperitifs of parmesan biscuits and olives, then had three types of home made fois gras, then oysters, and a plate of different types of seafood, lobster, salad, cheese, dessert (one of which was my contribution- a good old fashioned trifle)and finally coffee and biscuits and mince pies (me again!). All this was accompanied by plenty of champagne and wine – and of course some non alcoholic stuff for me! To say a good time was had by all would be putting it mildly! Back at the gite our guests had also had a good time and were very happy bunnies the next day – when they eventually awoke. They were a group of friends from Clermont Ferrand and had rented the gite so they could celebrate together. They left, saying that they would like to return in the spring which would be nice as they were lovely people.

After that good start, things took a bit of a downturn. Before Christmas I broke one of my back teeth and have spent each Tuesday morning of January so far in the dentist’s chair as she endeavours to crown what is left of the tooth. Those of you who know me will also know that I am almost phobic about going to the dentist so all this has been a great trial for me. The dentist is very good and so far has not really caused me any discomfort, but I hate having things done to my mouth – I’m basically just a big baby! Somehow, too, it seems far worse this time as I don’t always understand what she says to me. But as one of our friends put it once you have your mouth full of instruments it doesn’t matter if you can’t speak any French as you can’t answer anyway! This is also our first real use of the French medical system. We are both now fully part of the state system and also have the almost obligatory “top up” private insurance which is going to pay for most of the dental work so it will be interesting to see how efficiently the system functions when it comes to paying the bill.

We have also spent quite a few hours at the vet with the dog who was attacked by farm dog on one of his walks with Geoff. He (the dog that is – not Geoff!) was badly bitten and eventually after the infection died down had to have several stitches in the wound on his back. He has the same look on his face when he arrives in the vet’s car park as I do when I arrive at the dentist! All this costs a fortune too so we are feeling the pinch a bit at the moment!

We are in the process of giving the gite a bit of a fresh coat of paint and getting all the bedding and curtains washed ready for the new season. It is not too bad a job as there are great expanses of plain walls which mean that they can be covered quite easily and quickly. Also we have had some lovely weather lately – almost spring like which has helped everything to dry nicely.

We took advantage of the nice weather to have a trip across to the ski resort of Super Besse, (about 50 mins drive) on Sunday. We had been looking at the snow covered mountains which are part of the view from the house, for a while and really wanted to see what it all looked like when it was in full ski season. It was really great – very busy with all the pistes and lifts going full swing. We enjoyed walking around soaking up the atmosphere and although I don’t think I am ready to try skiing yet, Geoff quite fancies having a go and wants some lessons for his birthday. I hope that will not result in February being punctuated by more tests of the French medical system with visits to fracture clinics!

One of the goals we set ourselves when we moved here was to try and integrate into the local community. Just how successful we have been at this was brought home to me when I went to the traditional mayor’s “good wishes” ceremony last week. I was really amazed at how many people we do know now and by how many people actively came across to talk to me. Geoff has been even more successful at this integration and this was made clear when he was asked last week if he would put himself forward for election onto the local “council”.

Our friend Phillipe is standing down as mayor this year so the whole council is up for change. It seems that whoever wants to put themselves forward as a mayoral candidate puts together a list of people, who, if elected would then be his/her council. Geoff was very flattered to have been asked, but, after a lot of soul searching, has decided to say no, as he feels that the request has come just too early for him to cope with council meetings. Also he is not really sure he wants to be embroiled in local issues which might mean him “taking sides” at a time when we are still trying to build up relationships with people in the commune.

We have been pleased with the response to our new advertising for the gite. Already we have a booking for February, one for April and a possible one for May, all of which is helping to meet our targets for expanding the holiday season to more than just July and August bookings. We are also beginning to get enquiries for the summer months too. So far though we have not had so much interest in the B&B which is a bit disappointing but I suppose it is still early in the year for that. We feel that B&B is more of a “spur of the moment “thing rather than something planned a long time ahead. I hope so anyway!

One last “up” moment before I finish for this month – we have our first snowdrops in bloom! There are also the first primroses and violets flowering here and there and the daffodils are poking their leaves through the grass too. No doubt that means that we will have two feet of snow next week! We shall see!

20/12/07 Joyeux Noel

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:33:00 GMT

I’ve just got time (I think) to get a quick post done for December before we leave to spend Christmas with the family in the UK. We have just managed to get all our preparations done in time – we lose a couple of days due to travelling and it gets tight to have everything finished by the 21^st instead of Christmas Eve! This year saw us putting up the tree and decorations later than ever before – partially due to Geoff having booked the chimney sweep to come and sweep both the chimneys the week before Christmas! The sweep came, took one look at the bit of snow on the roof, decided a roof visit was not appealing and left saying he would return in the New Year when the snow had gone.

We did manage to find a carol service this year though. Geoff saw an advertisement in the local paper for an English carol service in Clermont Ferrand at the Protestant Church. We really enjoyed it – it was a traditional service with readings and carols - all in English too. We found ourselves sitting next to a couple who live in Sauxillanges (the village near us) and have subsequently been to see them for a meal. Another nice friendship I think as we all got on very well together.

We also went to the Christmas Market in Clermont but found it very disappointing so next year I am going to treat myself to a trip to one of the big famous markets in France. We did enjoy all the Christmas lights in Clermont and Issoire though. Issoire in particular has some stunning displays this year.

I have also been helping with the Croix Rouge’s fundraising activities by spending a couple of afternoons gift wrapping presents at a toy shop in Issoire. I have to say that some of the toys these days are very odd shapes and wrapping them is not easy! The guitar was particularly challenging! All the buyers got a very good deal having all their present wrapping done for them – and some of them were not very generous in their donations I can tell you!

I mentioned in last month’s blog that we were going to see Isabelle and Jean-Pierre’s bread oven in action in the village. We had a very interesting evening – peering though the billows of thick smoke at times – with some other neighbours. We had all taken something to cook in the oven (Geoff made some bread which was delicious) and a good time was had by all as we waited for the stuff to cook. It was fascinating to see how the oven was prepared and how the whole process worked from the lighting of the fire in the oven itself, to the clearing out of the burning embers, the cleaning of the stone chamber and then the actual baking itself. We found it all very interesting and it was great to talk to some of the older people who remembered all this as an everyday event. The food and drink wasn’t bad either!

It has been very cold here for the last couple of weeks with temperatures as low as -8 some nights. The mountains look fantastic though, all covered in snow. They have opened the ski pistes already, which is very early for this region. The garden is totally frost bound and the poor old fig tree which Geoff had such high hopes for, is a total goner, I’m afraid! Geoff has also declared war on the moles in the garden as they are becoming a menace. In some parts of the lawn there are more mole hills than grass at the moment so he has taken steps to try and reduce the numbers of the little furry things. I am not asking or involved in this process – I just hope it works!

OK, time has run out! It just remains for me to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and best Wishes for 2008. And, please keep the comments coming – I do like to know who is still reading.

30/11/07 High Days and Holidays

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:38:00 GMT

I have been struggling to find the time to get the blog up to date recently. It is our quiet season too – I don’t know where the time goes but it seems to fly by. My kids will say that it is because I have been spending too much time playing with my new toy – Facebook – but I deny that allegation!

Anyway, back to reality. We really enjoyed our holiday – cruising around the Greek Islands. We have spent many years saying that we would never do a cruise but we needed to take a holiday well out of our busy season and this option gave us an easy to arrange break with the chance of some warmish weather without breaking the bank to do it. It is all down to our hairdresser here who waxed lyrical about the joys of cruising in November (much to Geoff’s horror initially!). I have to confess that in spite of all our scepticism we had a great time and really enjoyed the contrast to our lives here in the heart of the French countryside. It was also nice to wear some of the “posh” clothes again. They usually languish at the back of my wardrobe now.

We returned to the shock of some freezing cold weather –there we were, walking around Rhodes town in T shirts and two days later we were at -3C here on the hill. Then to add to our woes we had a storm with winds of 100k/h which took down a power line leaving us with no electricity for over 24 hours. Let me tell you candle light is all very well and romantic but it was not very easy to see to cook by! We managed to keep warm virtue of our wood burning stove but I hated not having much light. Geoff of course went off to a meeting in Claremont on the first evening, leaving me sitting like the little match girl trying to think of something to do! I went to bed and read my book by torchlight!

We have been taking part in some more of the life in our village. The annual Fete de Cidre took place a few weeks ago and Geoff once again completed the shorter of the two walks arranged by the Fete committee. It is a lovely walk (apparently – no chance of me doing it- its 10k long!) and the weather was fantastic on the day, which meant that the views were terrific. We enjoyed the lunch in the Salle de Fetes where we were “entertained” by my friend Angele`s boys doing Star wars impressions! Light Sabres have made it, even to rural France!!

On a slightly sadder note, we have also attended our first funeral here. My “language improver” friend Yvette’s daughter sadly died after a long battle with cancer and we, along with most of the village, crowded into the little church at St Etienne sur Usson for her funeral. Angele kept us right re the protocol as there were some differences between the way funerals are conducted here and we really didn’t want to do anything wrong. Yvette has been very affected by Dominique’s death so I haven’t really seen very much of her since then. However she is going to come to the art class with me next week so I hope she is feeling a bit better.

The other village “happening” also involves Yvette’s family. Her daughter Isabelle and her husband Jean-Pierre have restored an old bread oven which is attached to their house. They have started to light it now and then, and they invite people to take something to cook in it when they do. We are going there on Saturday – but we are not entirely sure what to take! Geoff is determined to try and make some bread – but as he has never done this before I say “watch this space” for how it turns out!!

We have been quite busy since we got back from holiday trying to get all our marketing for the gite and B&B sorted for next year. We have changed some of the website and have spread our wings a little by getting on to more and different advertising sites. I think it is starting to pay off already as we have had quite a few enquiries for Christmas - including one guy who wanted to accommodate 18 people in the gite for a week! We said no – there are only 9 beds maximum and 1 shower and loo! As we intend to go to the UK for Christmas too it has given us a bit of a dilemma as to whether we want to let the gite while we are not here. It is good to know, though, that our advertising seems to be working.

Last week the kids came to stay for a few days. It was really great to be all together again as it gets more and more difficult due to distance and their busy lives. It gave us the chance to take them to some of the places we have discovered since they were here last time. They were particularly keen to see the route which the Tour de France will be taking next year which includes a couple of stages near here. They have already booked their beds for that – but were warned that if we had paying guests they would have to sleep in the attic! We also tried out the bowling alley in Issoire which was good fun and gave us something else to recommend to our guests. It is very quiet here now that they have gone back – but it won’t be long until Christmas will it?

19/10/07 Season of mists and......rugby!

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:52:00 GMT

I enjoyed my visit to the UK at the end of September. It was great to see the kids, my mother and my brother again. I even managed to get to see some friends this time which was good too. Once again though I found the traffic very difficult to cope with – especially as I found myself “driving” (I use the term loosely) to Matthew’s house just before a big match at Old Trafford! It took over an hour to cover 5 miles! I really don’t miss that! I brought Geoff’s mum back with me for her first visit. As she finds walking and standing for too long a bit difficult now, we had arranged a wheelchair and some help at the airport and I have to say all went very smoothly. She particularly enjoyed the help of the nice young fireman at Limoges airport who helped her off the plane! She really enjoyed her week with us - spending a lot of the time just sitting in the garden watching all the birds and wildlife. However the highlight of her stay had to be the visit to Julie and Jean-Luc`s farm where she got to gaze at the cows and calves and even watched Jean-Luc do the milking. All her farmers daughter instincts were in full flow!

We have also just had my brother, Brian, and his friend Clare to stay. Again they had a good few days although the weather didn’t behave and we spent a lot of the time trying to show them the views through a persistent veil of low cloud! The weather was good for the walking they wanted to do though so they enjoyed exploring some of the many paths and tracks round here. I was quite sad to see them go yesterday, but I have a feeling they will be back.

My friend Angele seems to be on a fitness drive at the moment and unfortunately has decided to include me too. She dragged me to an exercise class in nearby Vernet La Verenne last week much against my better judgement. It was terrible! The young guy who was leading it was able to put his legs and body into positions which they were never intended to go! Fortunately since all the instructions were in quite rapid French I was able to ignore most of them pleading that I didn’t understand! I won’t be going back! Instead Angele and I are going to do a weekly walk with the dog – much more to my taste!

France is in the grip of rugby fever at the moment and our little section of it has not escaped. We have been following both France and England’s progress with vigour. When the French played New Zealand we had Angele and Philippe here for a meal and they were very happy bunnies when France won. I have some very good photos of our illustrious maire (Philippe) resplendent with little face paint tricolours on each cheek! We watched the France/ England match chez Julie in the company of several French friends. We were helping to support Julie as she has always been in the minority on these occasions in the past. It was a great evening with lots of light hearted banter, flags of both teams and face paint galore. Needless to say the mood changed a bit with the final whistle with the French half of the room looking very downcast whilst nous Anglais celebrated with huge smiles! Julie had had an article written about her support for the English team published in the local paper that day so she was particularly pleased and reckoned she was going to have a really good week at school now that they had triumphed! We are all invited back for the final on Saturday and it will be interesting to see if our French friends can bring themselves to support Les Blancs! I somehow think not!

We have discovered a new English couple who have moved into the village. I went to say hello when I was walking the dog the other day and was unbelievably greeted by another Geordie accent! Vivien is from Wallsend! I can’t believe that in this tiny area in the middle of rural France there are now three Geordies! It seemed very strange for me to be telling them all about the area and where you could buy things – I am obviously one of the locals now!

On the business front, we have just had the tourist office lady to inspect the B&B rooms ready for their inclusion in next years brochure. I’m glad (and relieved) to say they passed with flying colours which is good. I am very proud of them and had she pulled them to pieces I would have been a bit upset! We also have a booking for the gite for New Year which is great news. A couple have booked it and will be joined by other family members on New Years Eve for a family get together. That will be a bit different from last year when we were all alone here in Chabanol! And to complete the good news – we have our first booking for next year too so things are definitely going well at the moment!

17/09/07 La Rentree (back to normality)

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:41:00 GMT

Things have gone very quiet here as our summer influx has now ground to a halt. It is very strange having the place to ourselves again. We have really enjoyed having guests in the gite and B&B, and especially enjoyed seeing the children playing in the garden. It has turned out to be an ideal garden for playing hide and seek and now that we have moved some of the shrubs there is a good place for football games too. We have had some lovely families staying this summer and they all have commented on how comfortable (and big!) the gite is and how much they have liked the countryside. The other thing which seems to be a recurring theme in the guest book is how much they have appreciated our “warmth” and how welcome they have felt – which is particularly gratifying for us as this was one of the things we really wanted to achieve. We now have a chance to have some friends and family visit, starting this week with the arrival of some friends from the NE of England. Of course, typically, the weather has improved big style since our summer visitors left so I hope it continues for our friends visit.

We have also been able to get out and about again in the last couple of weeks and do some more exploring. We have now found the lakes over in the Sancy Mountains which we have been wanting to investigate since we came here. We have had some really good Sunday afternoon walks with the dog around these lakes – and bonus – most of the walks have been flat!(I am not good at hillwalking) The other place we have visited has been the St Flour region which is south of Issoire. It is quite different countryside round there, but very pleasant. We also had a great treat this weekend when we took our friends to the big medieval festival (Le Foire de le Roi d`Oiseaux) at Puy en Velay. It was fantastic! The whole town – which is pretty enough normally- was completely made over into a town in the renaissance period with a very good medieval market and lots of stalls and side shows in the streets. There were loads of people in costume and the highlight of the day was an immense parade through the streets with hundreds of people in really superb costumes. All walks of life were represented in this parade from royalty and nobility, through to soldiers, peasants, pilgrims, beggars, monks and all the various trades and professions of the period. There were also horses, goats and donkeys. Apart from the spectacle of the costumes, we were entertained by jugglers, stilt walkers, dancers and music all afternoon. We were most impressed at the way that all age groups were taking part, from toddlers and teenagers through to grandparents – and they all looked as if they were thoroughly enjoying it. We did speculate on the response we would have had from our children (especially the boys) had we asked them to don doublets and hose and parade through the streets! Not favourable we thought! All in all, we had a marvellous day and I would recommend this festival to everyone.

We have been amazed again at all the fuss which accompanies La Rentree (the grand return to school and work after the vacances).Unlike the UK, where the summer holidays are staggered, France tends to come to a standstill for the majority of July and August, and consequently the return to normal everyday life is pretty dramatic. The advertising campaigns on the TV for things like school books, paper, pens and other stationary items, (which of course are not supplied by the schools here) are as big as the Christmas advertising back in the UK. There has also been a lot of fuss regarding the cost of these things. To be fair, if you have a family of two or three children the cost would be quite substantial and of course all the kids want “designer” stuff which boosts the cost up quite a lot too.

We have not been idle though since the visitors left. The garden has responded to all the rain (and now the sunshine) by producing bumper crops of vegetables and fruit. The jam pan has been working overtime and I am at the point of never wanting to see another green bean or courgette for a very long time! We have also had a bumper crop of plums and peaches and I have had a chance to make a delicious fruity cake /flan called clafouti with those. I can recommend it big time and if anyone wants the recipe, contact me! We had to give in the other day and buy another freezer to try and cope with some of the excess produce as my freezer in the kitchen was full to overflowing. I’m not complaining mind you – all this stuff will be very welcome during the winter months especially if we get the kind of winter everyone keeps telling us to expect this year.

The hunting season is with us once again. It began last Sunday and I was dismayed to see all the men with their florescent caps and nasty big guns spread out in a line in the fields round Chabanol. I was particularly concerned for the lovely young deer we see often just by our turn off, but, fortunately, it didn’t put in an appearance this weekend. Geoff reported that all the hunters were in the bar when he went up for the Sunday paper (and his aperitif of course!) and they were weighing a hare that they had caught. I think I will have to give the bar a very wide berth for the rest of the hunting season as I detest it all and will never get used to the destruction of these animals in the name of “sport”.

14/08/07 One Year on

hazmattmum@merseymail.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:34:00 GMT

We have been here for a whole year now. I still find it hard to believe that we have made this great change in our lives and we are still surviving and loving every minute of living in this lovely part of the world. We have learnt such a lot and really feel part of the community here now. The fact that we owe four different couples (all French) dinner chez nous shows how well we have been accepted by the locals. For me the biggest breakthroughs have been finding Yvette and Angele (my French language improvement teachers), discovering Julie and her family nearby (a nice link with Geordieland) and joining the Croix Rouge which has opened so many doors for me. Geoff has also benefited from his involvement with the village fete committee and the local Syndicate d`Initiative, his trips to the bar (“to buy the Sunday newspaper”) and his Pilates classes. Also finding his first French client has proved to him that he can find work in France. Business wise, the gite is running nicely and we are starting to get B&B visitors too now, so although I might not reach my targets money wise for the business this year, I have exceeded the number of clients we expected to have by quite a bit. We feel that we have achieved everything we set out to do in this first year including making the improvements to the house and are very content with life in general.

It was the annual fete in St Etienne sur Usson - the famous Fete D`Anes (asses or donkeys) - this weekend and this year we were fully involved. We had set ourselves a target last year of knowing and talking to at least ten people and I have to say we far exceeded that! Geoff was quite an important person – well - he was on the jury judging the donkey competition! The jury was a fully international one this year with Geoff, our friend Davy (French), and an Italian guy who was the only one who knew anything about asses as he keeps nine of them at home and enters competitions like the one at the fete. He kept the other two judges on track, thank goodness, as they were totally clueless! It was a beautiful day and we had a really good time. It was very tiring though and by the time we had watched the fireworks we were ready for bed!

As I mentioned above, we have had our first B&B clients. The very first lot were a real baptism by fire for me as Geoff took the booking and then disappeared on his monthly trip to the UK leaving me to cope on my own. Fortunately the couple were very nice and spoke some English so all went well. Last week we had some friends from England staying with us as well as a French family in the gite, so it was all go! We had two of the competitors in the Fete D`Anes competition staying with us at the weekend too so we were pretty busy.

We are very keen to try and involve our visitors in any events which take place in the local communities, if they seem that way inclined. We had a lovely couple from England staying in the gite two weeks ago, Alan & Catherine. Catherine had told us that she enjoyed listening to some of her native French music but could only do so in her car as Alan was not a fan. Being good hosts, we invited them to accompany us to a concert of French songs and music, which was staged in the church at St Etienne sur Usson. It was dire! The guy who was “singing” would have been very much at home in a boozy pub in England and worse than that, he had a light show which had to be seen to be believed! The blood red face of the statue of the Madonna and the rainbow light and smoke effect of the finale will forever stay in my memory. Needless to say, Alan was less than impressed. When asked for a quote which Geoff could use when the locals wanted to know what our guests thought of the concert, he said he could honestly say that he had never seen anything like it before in his life!

Since my last blog we have also experienced our first Bastille Day celebrations. We watched the little military parade in Issoire and then in the evening we had our friends Julie, Jean-Luc, and their daughter Alice round for a pizza (not very French I know!). We all congregated at the end of the drive to watch the many firework displays which were going on in Issoire and all the villages in the valley. We all reckoned it was better value than going to just one of these displays – true Auvergnat thinking that i.e. too tight to pay entrance fees!

My recording of the English commentary for the church in Issoire went well and the church now has two sections of the commentary running daily on DVD in English and French. Geoff and I went to see it the other day and we were really impressed. The whole DVD has been done by amateurs but it is very good indeed. The photography, music and commentary all blend together really well. It is very worthy of a visit if ever you are in Issoire.

I have not had a chance to do much in the garden recently – mainly because of the torrents of rain we had at the beginning of August. Consequently all my tubs and flower containers look very bedraggled. I did manage to cut a lot of the lavender before the deluge and now have a very sweet smelling attic as I am trying to dry some of it. The rest is hanging in one of the outhouses where it is shedding its seeds into paper bags. I intend to give these to my friends at the Croix Rouge for putting into lavender bags for the Christmas market.

On a slightly sadder note, I have to announce the demise of my beloved Basil. Some of you will know that Basil is (or was) my lovely old rubber plant which I have had longer than Matthew! He got a bit neglected during all the bathroom work as he ended up in an inaccessible corner of one of the rooms and went into a terminal sulk from which he never recovered. As I write, I can see him in the corner totally leafless but I am still wondering if I put him into a sunny spot in the garden whether he might just revive! I am very unwilling to just throw him away!