Needs must art creation

So, it was edging towards 40 degrees and I was preparing our B and B room to then discover that our vintage Calor fan was making not-conducive-to-sleep grinding noises. too late to trawl the second hand sites for a more tranquil model; it would have to be a SHOP. And of course, it's a canicule (full on heat wave) and there were no fans to be had, anywhere. Friends were of course using theirs, and my tiny 1950s one is really only good for cooling the area of an elbow. 

I hunted about, thinking we had hidden away a metal cage variety but then remembered its incurable rattling sound which had finally sent it back to the recycling emporium. During a previous heatwave, our cousin had left us with, amongst many lovely presents - such is their generosity - a small fan from afore mentioned emporium. A small fan with no 'leg' to stand it on. It would be better than nothing if a support could be found. A sally forth into the furnace-garage procured a lidless metal teapot, a chisel and some rags. The teapot was a good heavy base, the chisel fitted the fan's head, and with the application of black paint, well, it works and I rather like it as a piece of desperation-art.

Somewhere, and I know I have featured this before, we have a beautiful little book of Russian desperation-art; hand crafted multi objects for domestic usage - TV ariels made of forks and coat hangers, a doormat made from beer bottle tops, and many other ingenious objects using whatever could be found. Think my fan could have had its place in the book.

Later a friend came back to me and said she had a spare fan, so our guests will have something a little more normal, and powerful, and the art-fan is now in residence on this desk where I write.

Rafistolage

A delightful French word for 'bodge.' Apparently the origins of the word bodge comes from a bodger, or wood-dweller/forest worker who would have been very adept at making things and making do, so not really fair to throw the word around to imply something cobbled together badly.

We are good bodgers, probably veering more to the derogatory sense of the word, but still with a certain skill learnt over time, and an eye for making things look good - from my years as a stylist working to camera - hence things look good but you might not want to look too far behind or round the back of said thing.

The weirdest part of our new (old) fairly weird but lovely house was the area we now jokingly call the East Wing, which was a sort of laundry room with attached small and grim bedroom. By squinting and using my imagination I could see it would work as a B&B - for more quirk-embracing folks.

About eight months on, some help for the more tricky bits and much trawling of junk emporiums we're pleased with the result, and have had our first guests who were delighted (phew).

The building and especially the afore-mentioned wing, rather resembles a long boat, and as we are at the top of the hill, overlooking the river which, in former times, would have been filled with flat-bottomed wooden barges transporting all the essentials into town, I'm thinking about naming the B&B: La Péniche sur la Colline, or, the Barge on the Hill.

Ham corridor

Probably the weirdest and most unwelcoming bit of our new house (now a year new to us) was the strange long 'corridor' on the east side of the house that the previous occupant had decided to tile with what looks like, well, bits of ham, and certainly must have been a cheap deal from a DIY shed wanting to be shot of them. 

                                                                    Re-grouted ham corridor

We got a few quotes for retiling - terrifyingly expensive; or removing them and putting gravel down, or rather us removing them and lorry of gravel turning up, but then as a builder friend said - who know's what is underneath . . . and it's true, they are solid enough, drain water away on the slight slope and it would be an interesting challenge to make their appearance less hideous. So we went for the cheap option: me and a friend re-grouting them, rounding up of baths and containers from recycling places and kind donations from next door. The plants were the more expensive bit but as we'd saved thousands on redoing the tiles a couple of hundred seemed reasonable. Mark tuned up his creative woodworking skills by making surrounds for the plastic baths and training wires along for the rampaging vines which our neighbours have kindly allowed over our wall.

It's suddenly a really great place to sit, and the ham is fading to a slight recollection of the first February day when I saw the house on a freezing grey February day when it was impossible to imagine anything growing, and sitting outside would only be for if you had locked yourself out.

Sobriety and second hand

Or, sobriété, in French, and if you happen to listen to podcasts by Jean-Marc Jancovici, which we quite often do, this word often crops up in his lectures and echoes a lot of what I've had a creeping feeling of dread about for many years - hence the dystopian (with hope) writing. His broad theory is that we have to exercise sobriety or face enforced poverty, and when one thinks about the monumental amount of wastage of everything we as humans have achieved in the last decades, well, maybe it is time stop or at least drastically reduce the overconsumption. 

As our plumber said yesterday with a gallic shrug and wry smile - 'We've partied for far too many years, especially those higher up the food chain, and now we're going to hit the wall.' He drank his coffee and went off whistling to finish fixing up our water-collecting system, which - with my future proofing hat on, and now no well or river, like in our last house - I'd decided an investment was important.

We're still doing renovations at this house - smaller ones now, so inevitably there are trips to DIY places, but we're trying to cut down the trips, or at least join them up with other tasks. One thing we were missing was a pick axe, so after checking the local vide greniers (car boot sales) I found there was one about 6 km away - our new vide grenier rule - no going to any beyond 10 km, preferably even nearer. French boot sales are great for finding old tools, and usually ones that people have taken care to do up - a new handle, the metal polished or painted.

And it was worth the trip: a sturdy old pick axe for five euros, a young tree, a dog lead with Very Important Dog written on it (and she is), old handles for the cellar door Mark is reconstructing (see later post for door in all its glory), a small engraving of a horse by someone who had possibly never seen a horse, and a pair of elegant 1920s? hands which had lost their mannequin body somewhere. I need to justify this purchase really but they were only four euros - price of the hot dog I didn't buy.

Tutored by my mother throughout my early years about waste-not, want-not and making do, I've followed her advice throughout my life and am happy to buy everything possible second hand, although both me and Mark jointly decided that pyjamas might be added to pants and pressure cookers on the might-have-to-resort-to-new list, or make them ourselves - not a bad idea as Mark's leg length always poses a trousers of any sort buying conundrum.

Less stress and less expense

We are gradually 'doing up' bits of our new (old) house, no great changes but just finishing off uncompleted projects started by the previous owner and replacing vital things such as the failing ancient cooker. 

The second floor has long been a fairly dead space waiting to be be enhanced and fully used, the shower room undecorated and with a plastic shower cubicle which I disliked and wished to replace with a simple tiled area and glass panels. We allowed this within our budget and duly visited Leroy Merlin (planet of DIY/Hell) to find the simple glass panels, inexpensive tiles, etc, and leave with all that we required, happy in the knowledge we would be improving the house and it was all worth it....

Within five minutes of staring at the mile or so of shower exhibits, gawping at prices and then actually envisaging pulling out the exsiting shower, the cost and disruption . . . suddenly the idea of reusing what we had was an interesting challenge: no landfill, and virtually no cost.

  

The floor is the original basic mulched up wood flooring - whatever this is called, a tin of blue paint, two sheets of mosaic tiles, a new wall light and a mirror which was, I think, a grandfather clock face surround. The little cupboard came from 'Aspire' ace recycling emporium for 10 euros - quick sand and a coat of the white tinted varnish I used on the floor.

I think if we'd done a complete refit the cost would have been around 2000 euros including building/plumbing help, reckoning up the cost we've spent in all is probably more like 150 euros without tip trips and took two days rather than a week.

Next thing: the kitchen...

Fridge pie, hibernation, and buying nothing

Based on the meat version (mixi-beast pie) as invented in Londonia. 

Mark, inspired (or rather, anxious about wastage) by the trailing fridge remains created this wonderful pie. Sadly I forgot to take a before picture - old chunks of cabbage, parsnip, beetroot, pumpkin, radish, bits of neglected cheese, half tin of tomato paste and half a pack of tofu all chopped, mixed, cooked up with garlic and stuffed within and under his increasingly excellent pastry. It was delicious and there's enough for today - another grey and very cold day where pie is as important as keeping the fire in and knowing where one left the hot water bottles as night encroaches. 

I read somewhere recently that fossil experts have discovered evidence to suggest that people did in fact hibernate in certain frigid regions of the world, laying down body fat and lowering their metabolic rate. We're almost there as a species! Massive Christmas lunch, preferably a whole goose each, much pudding, custard, chocolates, etc, a few hours of gazing glassily at the TV and then bedding down in the cellar/shed amongst a ton of unwanted Christmas jumpers, festive tea towels and bubble wrap. Job done. Wake up blinking into the April sunshine with lots of loose skin and beyond lockdown-hair, ready to take on the no heating required portions of the year. 

My New Year's resolutions are holding up well so far (see last post) - only a bit of swearing yesterday, not much, and I'm adding a new one. Buy nothing - well, obviously not vital stuff like basic foodstuffs, but things that could be avoided. This was inspired by looking through my grandma's old housework/cookery ideas book. We forget that people used to make everything; no nipping to the supermarket to buy furniture polish, jam, socks, cup hooks, loo rolls, pillowcases or any of the million other things we seem to require. I was going to buy a mattress protector and above mentioned pillowcases today but we have ancient old linen sheets upstairs rescued from Vide Greniers (boot sales) sturdy and thick; one of those will protect a mattress from anything, and pillowcases . . . well, maybe matching linen is truly a thing of the past. 

Buy nothing, or at least buy it from charity shops/online second hand sites. Our fabulous old double lined curtains I got from Le Bon Coin are waiting to exclude drafts in the hallway, the pole, found at Emmaus,  ready to be put up, just need the rings which I hope I'll find at another charitable outfit near us called Aspire. At one time, especially in my styling days, odd curtain rings would have been unthinkable, now, if they hold up the curtains, fine.

Buy nothing was also inspired by the thought of the twenty euros I might earn doing an 'Upwork' writing article being spent on something that would give a five minute satisfaction and then a lasting regret at no longer having the twenty euros. The exception to no buy, certainly at this (Covid) time, to my mind is nourishing food; nothing fancy, just the good stuff. The stuff, if our governments had any long term ideas would be giving out to all families along with instructions on how to cook basic immune system-boosting food. I was talking to one of our local veg growers who does the nearby town market and he said people increasingly have little idea of what even the most ordinary vegetables look like - carry on through another generation and tomatoes, potatoes and broccoli will be mysterious raw things that transform through the cooking process - I recall early evidence of this ten years ago or so when dear Mr Oliver was doing his school dinner programs. 'What, chips come from that thing . . .'

Anyway, I ramble. Here's a little tour of my grandmother's recipe and household tips book, the fridge pie and Londonia's glossary containing the mixibeast pie.

  

Fridge pie with hopeful dog in background

The book

great headline from the Mirror! and advice on picking jam fruit in yr best 20s clothing...

camouflage pudding featuring soaked crusts, and Brown Curry

how to make ointment for chapped hands, without a trip to Tesco's

carefully guarded useful tips

Glossary

Some words and terms for readers who might pick this book up in another time (or not Londonians)

A plus—see you later (French)
Abt—shortened from à bientôt (French)
Allez—let’s go (French)
Alors—so/right (French)
Anytruc—anything
Babriana—mess (Polish)
Baden-poked—rape, (Londonian origin) 

Bedswerver—from Shakespeare, meaning unfaithful 

Branz—more value than silvers
Ça va?—is it going/you okay? / Ça va—it’s okay/I’m okay (French)

Chaudy—warm and cosy (French-ish, from chaude) 

Clashers—Londonia’s most feared gang Clockface—minute/hour
Coaka—brown drink of varying contents
Cycle—element of time, approximate to the old hour/year depending on the situation 

D’accord/D’ac—Okay/all right (French) 

Darking—anytime during and after dusk 

Death-cart—Large wooden horse or man-pulled cart (depending on collection) for bodies 

Dechet—(to take a) crap/poo 

Felty—cloak-like recycled woollen garment

Foiteling/Foitling—general Londonian swearword, origins not known

Fragter—one who creeps up on persons 

Freeforall—occasional and spontaneous giving away-events held by benevolent, richer members of Londonian society.

Froidly—cold (from Froid—French)

Genial—brilliant, wonderful, great, nice (French) 

Glorypye—fruit tart of anything available
Glorys—coins with an element of gold
Gosses—kids (French)
Great-hound—mixture breed (possibly London zoo input) but BIG with overriding greyhound genes 

Hepping-forrist—large area of woodland known for supplies of brilloak (best firewood) 

Homono—homosexual (also, gay-way/gayster) 

Hooch-stick—tobacco mixed with any sort of found drug 

Jins—jeans

Jubberknowls—oldy English for bastards, twats, idiots, etc...

Knapper—generic term for garment made of boiled down wool

L’enfer—Hell (French)
Mec/Gar—man, guy, bloke (French)
Merda—shit (Italian)
Mirror-Dame—Fortune teller 

Mixibeast—rabbit/squirrel/hedgehog pie with potato crumble top

Moonfull—month
Mutapigeon—result of the common pigeon feeding on streetpeeza for cycles

Nippering—to be pregnant (to be in nippering) 

Nosudor—no sweat
Orjordui/t-dui—today (French-ish)
Parler—to talk (French)

Pepedi—Italian-ish swear word

Psubraty—bastard (Polish)
Putainfuker—‘coagulation’ of French and English 

Rammaas—collect/pick up (French-ish)
Recule—to go back from something (French) but mainly used as ‘withdrawing’ in a male sexual context 

Saaffend—island off the south coast

Salut—Hi there/hello/bye (French) Sevday—week

Shouting-house—auction rooms
Silvers—ancient money system useful for very small trades: drinks, etc

Snash—rare and sought-after oblivion drug concocted from marsh weed and absinthe 

Somelieu—somewhere

Sometruc—something
Streepeeza—dubious peddled food, often circular breads containing food and non-food 

Swagger—someone who combs the Thames mud for objects to trade

Toot-sweet—straight away (French-ish)
Troove—find (French-ish)
Truc—thing (French)
Tue—kill (French)
Tuffard—tough and hard
Va—go (from French)
Vrai—true (French) 

Weld-up/weldage/splice-up/spliceage—marriage 

Zaraz—soon (Polish)
Zeitporn—any type of pornographic written/illustrated material causing more than a sharp intake of breath

Making do, exchanging, and farming methods.

A couple of weeks after we arrived in our new locality I tracked down all local suppliers of organic fruit and veg. Jean-Paul's place is a short bike ride away from us and his veg is simply incredible. He, his brother and mum have been honing their craft for the last 40 years here, sadly increasingly surrounded by monoculture as local farmers let out their fields to the big factory farm corporations. Their work is hard, and I know - or know fractionally - as we have been helping out a bit, but the satisfaction at the end of a day must be better than what the average factory farmer experiences. 

Our farmer neighbour has decided to let all his fields to a massive supermarket-supplying company based miles away from here, so vast machinery is brought, the fields flattened into sterile lines, mountains of sand and fertiliser imported and eventually crops such as mâche (weird, small salad thing) are sowed by special tractors after which another wheeled machine puts in metal bowed struts, after which plastic is stretched over, (by machine) after which another machine punctures the plastic to inject a dose of insecticide/herbicide... and so on. It seems an awful lot of effort/waste/environmental damage so that people can eat tasteless small bunches of leaves (which most French leave on the side of their plate anyway).

Up the road, Jean-Pauls place is a seemingly chaotic jumble of fruit crates, old poly-tunnels, tools, chickens, antique tractor parts, horses, germinating seeds in trays and his patchwork of small fields striped with carefully tended crops - currently, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, various types of cabbage, lettuce, the end of the tomato crop, coriander, parsley, beetroot, leeks, a few late strawberries, fennel, celery... all of it non-treated and mulched with leaves, mowings and horse dung.

                             Not J-P, or his crops as it was raining when I went to take a picture

Recently, when buying veg, we mentioned we'd like to once again have chickens, after leaving 'the Gladys' at our old house (with the new buyers caring for them). Jean-Paul said there were four sister chickens available and so we prepared the hen area: a fenced pen and part of an outbuilding with an old sideboard re-purposed as egg-laying place with straw-filled fruit crates. Mark made a ladder out of found wood from the out-building's window down to their pen. The making do element was further extended to repairing the glassless window with one of those see-through plastic 'lampshade' dog collar attachments to prevent hound-extremity scratching. I was slightly peeved as I'd already re-purposed it as a leaf collecting device. A minor detail.

We went round to the farm at dusk when the chickens would be sleepy and he bagged the four up, literally into a large heavy duty potato bag and invited us in for an apero. We sat in their kitchen and drank herby spirit of some sort and discussed chicken behaviour, making ponds and the inevitable end of our particular civilisation. When retrieving the bag, Mark asked whether he would like cash or an exchange by way of work time. He opted for the latter and two days later we were pulling carrots in the sandy loam that makes up J-P's fields.

Carrot pulling is very satisfying; a gentle rocking and twisting motion but not too hard or the carrot will snap; then a determined grip on the top and out it slides sandily from the carrot shaped hole. Or not. These are highly organic legumes and a few develop into whole carrot citadels which take a little more work to extract. We filled wooden crates for two hours. Mark pushed them back to the farm headquarters discovering new muscles, after which I learned the art of broccoli cutting with a scarily sharp knife.

We left at lunchtime feeling happily tired with a bag of misshaped carrots, broccoli, and herbs for drying above the fire. That was just a few hours but added to the large amount of gardening later . . . well, we slept very heavily. I now regard carrots, broccoli and radishes (from a previous morning's work) with a different eye in supermarkets, thinking of the physical work involved, or in the case of the plastic bags of salad, the amount of machinery involved.

The chickens, being wilder than our previous flock, have ignored our re-purposed sideboard, outbuilding and window and have taken to roosting in one of the nut trees, as they did back at Jean-Paul's farm. And that's fine, although we may have to hunt the eggs as he does - alerted by the chicken's egg-laying song as he put it. Rather poetic. 

Making do

 The weather has turned into a true autumnal phase and hanging washing out is largely a waste of time so...a new challenge in our house with no central heating and therefore radiators to drape undies over, and a tumble dryer is not something on our budgetary list, or any other list. Then Mark reminded me of the old 'above aga, wood-burner' wood and metal dryers - great invention. Of course, no shop has them, or not here anyway, many on the internet at around 80 euros so I thought I'd have a crack at making one with found stuff in the house.

Four bamboo poles, some red string that Mark had bought for 'Gamelan' reconstruction and two cup hooks that I borrowed from our wardrobe and we now have a very bodged but reasonably effective clothes airing system although I think 'phase two' will be worked on using two triangular pieces of ply wood drilled with four holes in which to pass the poles through thus keeping the clothes further apart...

Think my heroine Hoxton (Londonia) might have come up with something like this to dry clothes in the vestry in 2072

Small gestures to save the planet

Very small, but if we all stopped going to Ikea et al, a few million acres of forest could be saved and landfill seriously slowed down...

The area we have recently moved to is blessed with a fantastic Emmaüs (recycling center par excellence providing jobs, giving people with a small budget the ability to buy pretty much anything, and fighting against wastage.) France doesn't have many high street charity shops - in fact none that I've seen but most big towns have an Emmaüs and/or a similar organisation.

On this trip I arrived ten minutes early and queued with about twenty other people (all wearing masks and chatting happily about what they were looking for). The doors opened, we were welcomed graciously and shown the way in via the hand gel area. There must be about thirty people, paid and volunteering working in that one shop and everyone I came across was helpful and friendly. I shall be back, at least once a week!

So, the findings... a tall thin cupboard with two drawers which we have taken the doors off (to use in kitchen renovation) and used as the office storage place; a lovely old fish kettle to use as a bread bin ( baguettes fit in perfectly); a 60s boat-themed table for the printer, a 30s bed-side table for a bathroom cupboard, an ancient wooden trolley which must have been part of a child's pull-along toy for a TV stand, lots of jam kilner jars, and an unused wicker shopping basket, all for under forty euros. 

Yesterday we experienced once again the usefulness of Le Bon Coin - a site rather like Gumtree on which, again, you can find just about anything secondhand. I'd been scouring the site like a total addict (which I am) for a few days looking for an old dresser to put in our very old kitchen. After giving up on one which was owned by a particularly uninterested seller - never available for us to collect - I found a really unusual piece needing a bit of TLC but a very good price. We went to see it, said yes and the much more motivated seller said they would deliver it for us the next day. It is, as he said, VERY heavy, solid oak and hand carved by someone a very long time ago - I'm still trying to identify anything like it to hazard the age of it. They duly turned up and after a lot of struggling and sweating it's now happily installed in the kitchen as if it's always been there and always will be there, unlike something made of ply and plastic...

Making do

Now more than ever this seems relevant.
I've always been a jumble sale/boot sale/charity shop addict - coached well by my mother and she by her mother. Nothing was ever wasted, things that our society would now hurl bin-wards would be picked undone, glued back together and re-purposed.
My book, LONDONIA, is largely concerned with such practices, the populace left to fend for themselves outside the copper walls of the inner sanctum, getting by and making do.
I've just rounded up all black leather articles in the house and used up the leather dye I bought last year to do Mark's All Saints jacket which was beginning to look more than a bit faded . . .
The messenger bag was bought in Spain about twelve years ago and was expensive but it shows how well-crafted things last; a quick sponge down with the dye and it's ready to go again, possible Bag-for life? The shoes are Churches brogues which he bought about thirty-five years ago and were a rather unpleasant tan colour; the dyeing from two years ago is still good but I topped it up a little.
The jacket is looking better again and a bag I bought years ago, used countless times but again a good brand has been dye-rescued.
A friend recounted an interesting statistic yesterday . . . there is enough clothing on the planet to last for six generations. As mentioned by Patrick Grant on 'The Great British Sewing Bee.'
Makes one think...

         

             

1971....2018

Spot the difference.

The Lorax, by the inspirational Dr Seuss was first published in 1971 and is apparently one of many banned children's books in the USA - too subversive, the wrong message, anti-consumerism. I think he had incredible powers of observation, possibly the ability to see into the future?









We must have read The Lorax to our son Ezra about two hundred times and we/he never tired of it. In the early 90s the message was all too clear especially for someone like me, being involved in the shoddy world of advertising as a stylist.
I worked with companies who produced the equivalent of Thneeds - useless, of-the-moment items that would be produced in sweat shops to then be added to land-fill as soon as the interest wore off/the items broke/or were deemed to be 'so last year' or actually, month, more likely.
I've just read a review of the Lorax film. The story, from this account would have poor Seuss weeping in his grave - sugary, pathetically unfunny jokes all the way through, the message lost under a whumph of Hollywood 'business as usual'.
The book should be brought back and be issued as standard early-school reading along with subjects such as: where food actually comes from, how to cook it; how to garden and nurture food-plants, how to reuse what you have, and how to adapt to a possibly very near world where what colour your next smart phone will be is of absolutely no consequence.