Sunday 30 August 2020

Home is where the heart is

 Hm, dunno. The word, discombobulated seems to hover this morning. However, moving into a new house and new area and all family disappearing immediately might well allow me to feel thus. At least for a few days while I figure out where I am, and one of the family members returns.

This house certainly has heart, and I think mine will become very attached to it as I hope Mark's and our son's does too. After living in a relatively new house (40 years old or so) this abode has much history. Most recently owned by an incredible lady who has now moved on to another enormous gardening project at the sort of age many people might be planning their day around naps and a possible trip out to look at new slippers, the place was probably a farm house although built for someone with certain ideas of grandeur. I would like to find out more as much must have happened here since its construction in 1860. She bought it as a ruin back in the 80s and turned a treeless field into a veritable paradise of plants - certain responsibility to keep in all going!


We have a wood!


Is this the place?


Seems all right...

The house interior is still a massive mess of boxes, misplaced shoes, musical equipment, books, and furniture, some of which fits and some that will have to be replaced. But that's to be expected after only four days of being here. I'm still acclimatising to the certain creaks, dripping tap, trains passing, the neighbours dogs but it's already becoming familiar.

Things I miss . . . familiar faces, of course. Our pool. I never expected to own a house with a pool and we certainly made very good use of it over the years, but here we have a small river and one of my objectives is to make a large pond, possibly to slide into along with the frogs and fish on very hot summer days - of which there increasingly more of in the Loire as well as everywhere else . . . The hills. Oh yes. It's very flat here, but I'm trading enormous skies and distant forest views for the vine covered slopes, although the familiar stripes of vines are here too for which I feel a certain affection. Here I will be able to cycle - something I never did much of in the Aude, despite the fact that serious cyclists come from all over the world to work their thigh and calve muscles out on the hill roads. There are cycle routes everywhere and its a few minutes leg work to the Loire itself. I don't miss the heat or the mosquitos, or the lack of customer appreciation in shops - here, so far, people seem genuinely more friendly, pleased to see you; we had become rather accustomed to 'bof' the peculiar indifference displayed by shop/restaurant owners/workers back in our area of the South.

This morning I took the dogs - or they took me, pacing around waiting to explore by eight o'clock - on a walk around the small roads that surround us. It's very odd not to encounter an incline, and before one realises, the kilometres pass. We must have done about six, taking in the distant views, rustling poplar trees, picking blackberries. Well, I was. Dogs do what dogs do, their interests being lower to the ground... No one was about, not surprisingly as it was early Sunday morning but I would have liked to ask what we do about bins. Our 'Tax Fonciere' is extremely low (hurrah) but I assume there must be a rubbish collection at some point during each week. I returned, surveyed the chaos in the house and went to plant an olive tree.



                                                                    Very different soil - sandy and very fine

In some sort of last minute panic at leaving the South I had visited our local garden center and bought several cypress/olive trees and assorted other mediterranean plants only to find on closer inspection this vegetation exists here. On my walk I saw the afore-mentioned trees growing happily as well as Oleander, flowering sages and all the other stuff I had purchased. We already have two peach trees in the garden here, trees I hadn't imagined seeing in this region. Sadly, many of the indigenous trees that our house seller had put in over the later years such as silver birch are suffering from lack of water and I envisage the dryer part of the garden developing into a try-out Southern landscape with much of the vegetation I had included in our old garden. 

After a tricky start after the dog walk: severely burning toast, melting the plastic dog food bowl on the very ancient electric stove and falling up the stairs over a pile of stuff waiting to be re-housed I feel energised for more sorting, more garden investigation and possibly a knock of someone's door to ask about the rubbish bin business. 


                                                                    Peaches from one of the trees

                                                          If the sofa is there, any dwelling is good.

More from the Loire soon. 





Friday 28 August 2020

On the move...


 Fourteen years in this house, nearly twenty in this small Southern french town . . .we've seen our boy turn into a young man here, welcomed numerous dogs into our lives, met wonderful people, walked wonderful walks, learned a language, made a whole garden, bought and sold lots of interesting old junk and cooked a million meals from the abundant regional foodstuffs . . . and it's time to try somewhere else.

The new house in the Loire Valley, about seven hours north of the old one.



dog readjusting to sofa in new house


piano moving angst


New garden to explore

Moving day was, as most peoples', chaotic, exhausting and emotional, but the removal people were incredible and we had extra help from an energetic and positive-minded friend so all was good - more than - great, in fact. A strange time for us as a family as Ezra (son) having just experienced the moving in is off again to start a new course in woodwork (mainly traditional roof construction) half way back down the country. Sitting at our ancient kitchen table which used to occupy the terrace in the Southern house, I feel a mixture of emotions: excitement at this whole new area of France to explore, sadness at the departure of our son - but happiness that he is doing something so useful for his future - angst at the amount of stuff to be sorted out, and that sight trepidation of having thrown ourselves again into a new region without knowing anyone. I will now sort a few more boxes and step out into the lanes of around here to investigate the very beautiful architecture, the much flatter landscape, the birds and beasts of the area and possibly a cake shop if I get that far.

More soon.  

Friday 14 August 2020

Sifting the past

 Well, down to the last couple of rooms in this moving house process. In our case a very large process after nearly fourteen years in the same abode, and we have taken on much of Mark's parents' and my mothers stuff. I say stuff, most of it consists of wonderful books and cherished bits of furniture - un-throwable. I've gone through my manuscripts (last post), Mark is attempting to discard old compostions, vinyl, harboured but unused instruments, etc, and slowly we are getting there. I think...

Amongst my material 'purgings' have been many paintings; some sold, some given to friends; pictures I made during a phase of painting on huge panels of wood about a decade ago (mostly). I wish at the time I'd made them on panels about two thirds smaller - I might have sold a few more... however there's only a few left, one or two reserved by potential buyers, and a few I'll take with us as a reminder of that era.


Made for an exhibition on the theme, The French Revolution


Today Is Disorganised 


Carcassonne airport principle runway


Slice of the Earth


Yesterday, I recalled a series of photos from a few years back as I was wrapping my stuffed crocodile, a top hat and  ship in a bottle; an extraordinary record of the planets inhabitants and their worldly possessions, or rather some of them - a record of everyone would presumably take about a thousand years and fill 40 billion books, or thereabouts...

The images are from a book titled Material World: Family Portraits by Peter Menzel. Below are two good comparisons - sadly I couldn't load up better quality - and one of our dog Gala narrowly missing packing up a greyhound-size box. (Not really...)







Thursday 6 August 2020

To throw or not to throw...

Think I must have blogged this before, possibly twice, but here I am again at the same point . . . massive clear out and assessment of what to keep, work-wise.
I don't need to keep old manuscripts; everything is now in a self-published or traditionally published book, and if I had kept every first, second, third, fourth, etc draft I would now have a large room completely full of spiral bound white paper books. 
There's something comforting about them sitting there; some visual reminder of all the millions of words and phrases sweated and grimaced over. But there is nothing like a good purge, so a revisit to the dump was decided upon this morning. Nothing like moving house to highlight the importance of not hanging on to stuff...



unsuspecting manuscripts