Christmas 2009

We have made it to Boxing Day. This day in 2007 we were preparing for our big adventure ....

I would say that Christmas this year has been a quiet affair but with Josh on his new drum kit, Kirsty with a new tv and Peter racing around the kitchen on his new bike maybe I would be wrong!! They all appear to have been totally spoilt as normal.

Christmas Eve was great. We had a live satellite link to Datchet and managed to eat dinner all together. It was lovely to see everyone having fun and even better when we managed to get Tony online as well. The only problem was that Alex ate all of my kippers .............

Yesterday was spent entertaining M Le Baron and Gabrielle. We thoroughly spoilt them and they really enjoyed themselves. M Le Baron even had a go on the drum kit!! Gabrielle ate for France and was rather impressed with the Christmas pudding that Auntie Heather kindly provided us with again this year. It was the first time that she had ever tried it and I think she liked it. Her father was a very strict man and "foreign" foods were never tried in her house as a child. I was rather surprised to find out that she was born in 1922!!! OMG!! I am glad we were careful with her!! They left at about six thirty and I dont think they will need to eat again for a week!!

The dishwasher is loaded this morning with the last of the dishes and we are ready to go again. However, I think it will be leftovers!!! I am pleased to say that we will be eating leftover turkey!! Andrew has now found the perfect way to cook turkey. None of these horrible bone things to try and carve. Bone the entire turkey and roll half around some tasty stuffing. Wrap well and put in the oven for two and a half hours. It appears to work perfectly every time!!!

Anyway, happy Boxing Day to all and see you all soon we hope. xxxx

Safe at Home!!

Well, I finally made it home last night. Thankfully our managers let us go at 3 o'clock. Lee drove Trudie and I home, our hero!!!!! LOL!!!! Andrew met me at the end of the road with the Range Rover though for the last couple of kilometres. My car is still stranded in Caen and I am not sure if I will be reunited with it on Monday or not!!! The roads here are impassable to cars now after another 4 inches of snow last night. Toms car is almost buried in snow!!! OMG!!! What if they cant go home on Tuesday???????? Scary thought!!!!!

The kids are still enjoying the snow. It is the most snow they have ever seen. Peter likes to play for a while but the cold soon overcomes him. He is very sensibly sitting on the sofa with the blankets watching television. Unfortunately for him Grandma is asking him questions constantly about the programmes. Allegedly she is learning!!!!

Oh well, at least I managed to get the supplies back yesterday so we will be ok for a few days if we do not manage to have a thaw!!

Take care all. xx

More snow today

Day 2 of the great Siberian weather front. Although the kids love it in the snow, I get the feeling the kitchen will be overwhelmed with more clothes for drying. Fortunately the novelty of playing in the snow wears off very quickly as they get cold and wet.

Jane had a good night at her xmas party and we are keeping our fingers crossed she can get back home tonight, picking up essential supplies on route. I get the feeling the Range Rover will see a bit of use later.

Has Anyone Seen Peter?

The snow has finally landed in the valley. By some miracle Jane managed to get to work, even though she was a little late after sitting in a traffic jam for an hour. I ,on the other hand, did not get the kids to school, getting as far as the top of the hill before having to turn back and then I got stuck at the bottom of the drive. 2 kilos of salt later and I've got the car back in the barn.

Luckily Jane is not venturing back tonight as she's off to enjoy herself at the works christmas party before spending the night in a warm hotel room with heating.

More picture to follow shortly.

It would have been a good photo if ....

It would have been a good photo if the sun was not in their eyes, they looked at the camera, they smiled and Peter was not being a pain in the bum as normal and hiding .........

Marche de Noel and the end of another .....

Thursday night saw the arrival of Grandma Nett and Tom. They arrived with an empty car ..... If you believe that you will believe anything!!!! They have settled back into the routine of shopping, eating and sleeping!!!!

Grandma Irene arrived as the surprise guest for the weekend. Kirsty burst into tears. I am not sure if she can cope with two grandmas at once. She doesnt know which one to con first!! Peter and Josh were equally pleased to see her. What a nice surprise for breakfast!!

Grandma Nett and Tom were honoured guests at the marche de noel. Josh, Kirsty and Peter sung beautifully to Vive Le Vent and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Peter managed to stand on the stage and not do anything dreadful. Apparently he is very good at school!!! Shame he isnt at home!!

Josh has managed to grow another present for someone. It will be on its way tomorrow to a lucky recipient.

More photos tomorrow .....

2 whole years today

Two years ago today Jane and I, equipped with over laden Luton van, came over to France to sign the final papers on our French dream. Before the visit to the notaires, we joined the previos owner Bas and his partner for a very nice lunch and a glass of wine. It was a lovely way to be able to take ownership of a house. None of the impersonal english traits of dealing solely through a 3rd party. Lunch finished, we parted company briefly before meeting up at the notaires to do the official part of proceedings. And so the dream began. All I can say, looking back, is where did all the time go? We have no regrets and feel very much part of the local community here. Not only have we worked very hard, but we have also played very hard too. I'd just like to thank my loveley wife for putting up with me and taking all the stress off my shoulders. As a team, there is no doubt she is the owner, manager and captain, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I love you loads Jane and hope that we can keep our dream alive forever.

What can we do with 269 Kiwi Fruit???

Today I have harvested the last of this years produce. By some miracle our Kiwi trees that last year gave us 6 kiwis, have impressively this year produced 269. They will take 3 or 4 weeks to soften up but, once they have, what can we do with them?

Answers on a postcard please.

Christmas is coming .....

Christmas is coming

The turkeys getting fat

Mummys getting grumpy and

Daddys making KFC!!!!!

There is a rhyme there somewhere!!!!

Christmas has started in France. The Christmas cards should all be done and sent by tomorrow and the Christmas tree is up. Josh and I went shopping this afternoon for lights. Wow, I love CASA!!! (For you English peeps, it is a great shop that sells all sorts of great stuff!!)

Happy Christmas everyone!!!!!

Day 2 on the scrapheap.

Even with the 3 little horrors off school today, I have still made astounding progress with the smoker.

Did you know you can burn an entire bale of straw to nothing in 90 seconds just by putting it in the drum with an oily rag hanging from the bottom and setting light to it. All toxins now burnt away from the inside of the barrell.

The fire box is now attached to the oil drum, the doors are fitted to both, the shelf and hanging pole are installed in the drum, the whole thing is mounted on legs and, as we speak, there'e a sample peice of pork smoking away merrily.

As for utilising the chimney for smoking, by opening up the fireplace, the updraft from the chimney would take all the warmth from the house, hence the need for the smoker. Not only that, being the proud owner of so many other essential outdoor cooking tools, the spit, the paella burner and the double barrell barbecue, the smoker was an obvious addition to the collection.

Scrapheap returns to the farm

Since Tony and I last had a day of scrapheap challenge, the welder and grinder have been tucked away resting, just waiting for another opportunity to come out and play. Some of you may remember the amazing wine press that we built in a day out of an old washing machine drum and some bits of scrap metal. If you do remember the wine press, you may also recall that from 40 apples we managed to get an egg cup full of apple juice before destroying the press completely.

Anyhow, with our abbundance of pork at the present time, I felt it was time for a new scrapheap challenge. The home smoker.

Materials for this challenge include, the compulsory oil drum, a butane gas bottle that I can't be bothered to return, various bits of old metal and pipework.

The gas bottle will be the fire pit, with air inlet control, an ash box, a fire box and a shelf for the wet sawdust. The oil drum, soon to be mounted above will have a diffuser plate, shelves for meat or fish, hooks for doing larger lumps of meat and a flow control on the air outlet.

So far so good. Watch here for updates.

Fireplace Dilemma

Those who know me will know that I am a great sufferer of insomnia. Hence here we are at 4:00am trying to come to a decision on the fireplace for the kitchen.

When our house was built, the centre peice of the kitchen would have been a very grand, granite fireplace as opposed to the brick monstrosity and orange doors we presently have there. Sometime during the last 100 years, quite possibly just after the second world war when large peices of granite were taken from old buildings in the area to assist in the rebuild elsewhere, the once great fireplace departed from our kitchen.

You may be wondering what the dilemma in all this is. About 8 months ago, I found a stunning example of a 17th century Norman fireplace. As with all things I have learnt through life, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. Well we had to ask the price and were willing to snap it up at 1500 euros. Turns out they want 6800 euros so it was a non starter. Last Friday, I found another one, this time with a price. To give you an idea of size, this beast is 2.5m wide at the lintel, and from the floor to the underside of the lintel is 1.7m.

The first good bit of news is that, at a push, we can afford this beast. The second good bit of news is that, in Norman terms, it's local at only 35km away. The final good bit of news is that it's both the right size and right period for our kitchen. Now for the down side. It's located on the side of a slope in a muddy farmers feild. It weighs in excess of 6 tonnes. In order to install it in my kitchen, you have to knock almost right through the centre wall, over 3 foot of stone, in order to install the cantilever stones that support the front lintel.

Very few jobs have ever daunted me in the way this one does. I try to look at it with my lottery playing hat on, "the potential gain far exceeds the potential loss" but really this logic does not work here as I could lose our home in exchange for 6 tonnes of granite. Could I achieve the grandeur required using a couple of facing stones and a railway sleeper?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.........

All advice greatfully recieved

Kitchen Pictures For Credit Agricole

So there they all sit, in their ivory towers, allegedly working when in fact they spend there time surfing the internet and reading this blog. Just to add insult to injury, I then get complaints that I only put up one picture of the kitchen. So I'm now waisting valuable kitchen completion time, bowing to the needs of the masses. No doubt when I've finished the kitchen you'll want more.

Well Tough

Surprise visitors and new kitchen

Never a dull moment here in the Normandy countryside. Yesterday saw the surprise arrival of Alex, Wob and the kids. For once we didn't have a clue that they were coming and it made for a very enjoyable, alcohol consuming, evening. As the evening progressed, Jamie and Laura arrived as well, delivering the new dishwasher so it's been all go here ever since.

I started work at 3am yesterday morning ripping out the old kitchen and installing the new one. Barring a few leaks in the pipework, all is going well. Tomorrows mission will be to get some new fittings and hopefully resolve the issues.

Hallowe'en!!

Taking Josh shopping today was almost as bad as taking Kirsty!! However, between us we did remember to get the pumpkins at a bargain price of a euro each .... After preparing them this afternoon it is now time for the witches to be scared away ............

Grandma and Grandma come to visit ....

We have had a lovely weekend playing with two Grandmas!!!! Grandma has played very nicely and has not argued or fought once!!! She has even mended my trousers!!! So far this weekend we have been shopping, done a tour of the grounds (slowly), watched Phantom of the Opera in the cinema, seen the local sights and visited the church..... M Le Baron was honoured to meet Grandma and even opened the end doors of the church to let us in. Gabrielle tried desperately to talk to Grandma and could not understand why Grandma was not answering her. When I explained that Grandma could not speak French but only Polish she thought that was very funny and said that she could only speak French or Spanish!!!

Andrew has been working hard still and we even managed to cut Surprises feet this morning. One day we will not have a fight every time.......

A week has passed ...

This week seems to have lasted forever. It has only been six days since the last guests left from a most fantastic weekend but it feels like a month. The good thing is that Dave is busy organising the next one in August. Lets hope that he can pull it off.

Peter has had another great week at school. I am sure it will not be long before he is talking French instead of English. He was singing the days of the week in French at dinner time and he told me the other day that his picture of a pomme was well coloured in!! Hmm, think I better start improving now.

Kirsty and Josh have had a busy week culminating in Maeva and Ophelie coming for the afternoon yesterday. Ophelie and Josh spent at least two hours in the valley and came back soaking. Not sure what they were doing all of that time but apparently its ok because she is not a girl, she is a tomboy.

There is only one week left of this term and then a week and a half holiday. The term seems to have gone mighty quick. Two more sleeps and it will be Christmas at this rate.

Anyway, love to all and enjoy the photos. xx