Survival Skills for Grandad

We hade some snow and guess what josh and kirsty made. We made an igloo and we can go in it. To build it we only used a bucket and our hands. It took us at least 3 hours to build it. Its not that big but it is very hard to build. It was only us that built it, noone else helped us. We were a little bit cold when we came in but not too cold. We think that it was good. Josh says that new year when there will be more people we could make a bigger igloo. Or my idea was to go on the sledge. Anyway if you ever build an igloo be careful when you are building in it as the inside could collapse.

Nearly Christmas

Well, just as in the UK, we have loads of snow too. It is still snowing and apparently is going to be like this for a few more days. Thankfully I had the foresight to go shopping yesterday afternoon, instead of my normal Saturday dash!! I am so pleased that my brain was functioning well, as today it is impossible to go anywhere!! The children had their 'marche de noel' last night. They all sang well, a complete contrast to when they started a few years ago. Peter smiled and sang lots, whilst trying to give his friend Juliette something from his pocket. As they were in the front row everyone could see!!! I am still not sure what he was trying to give to her but she was a very sensible young lady and managed to ignore him!!! Kirsty could be heard over everyone else, no surprise there of course, and Josh was just singing because he had to!! The smiles were definitely not coming from his quarter!!! The drive home was distinctly hairy as whilst in the salle de fetes we had at least an inch of snow. I do admit to crying when we got home!!! Thank goodness we are all safe and sound now!! Josh and Kirsty are now trying to build an igloo. They have given up with the sledging as the snow is too soft!!! Peter, the sensible one, is sat in front of the fire contemplating what else he needs to ask Pere Noel for!!! Take good care everyone and stay safe. Hope to see lots of you soon!! xx

Three years and three days

I'm not generally one for keeping track of times and dates but, on this occasion, I do remember one. On December 10th 2007, Jane and I signed away our bank balance and became the proud owners of our maison francais. Two lengthy meetings with the noatire and a lot of paperwork first for the house and then for the additional land. We had been honoured earlier that day of meeting up with Bas, the previous owner, for a light lunch and and a glass of wine. It was a good opportunity to find out a few things about the house like where the water and electric meters were for a start. At the second meeting with the notaire we also met Madame Crozat, the lady who had owned the house before Bas and was selling us the additional land. That night was to be Jane and my first night in La Ferriere Duval, peace and quiet prevailed apart from the occasional scurrying of mice or the twit twoo of an owl. Three years on and all is well. Grandma Irene joined us for the weekend doing her annual Santa run so the kids have had a good time even though they will now be depressed until Christmas because Grandma didn't stay. We have the christmas tree and decorations up however I will be far happier when they are taken down and filed away for another year. Next Wednesday is the shortest day of the year after which we will be on the uphill road towards summer again and hopefully I will see an end to my depression and regain my mojo/motivation.

What to do when you can't get to work ...

I would just like to let everyone know that I have the best husband in the whole wide world. He worked out the other day that the bread recipe was very doughnut like and as we had nothing better to do today, we have tested the theory!! I have even managed to inject them with raspberry jam. I did have a slight technical hitch to start with though, when the nozzle was too small and when trying to clear the blockage I ejaculated jam all over Andrew!!! Oops!! Unfortunately the car was unable to make the hill this morning. I should have realised that it was a very bad idea when the brakes did not work going down the first part of the drive. Half way up the hill, the car could not go any further and so I had to reverse back down, or rather slide back down, and abandon the idea. Although I am feeling very guilty, as the office is rather empty, I am not going to risk having a bad accident. The one down side of an extra day off is that the kids are unable to go either. They are being quite good though so far and have enjoyed eating the doughnuts!!! Take good care everyone and hope to see some of you really soon. xxx

Well pluck a duck!!!

Suddenly realised that we hadn't updated the blog in a while so I thought I'd better get stuck in before Grandand complains. Well a bit like the UK, we've had a sprinkling of snow over here but life goes on as usual. Having said that, I have spent the last couple of days predominantly inside doing a few little jobs and brushing the dust off the squeeze box. With the consumption of the quail and 2 of the ducks, there is a lot less effort involved on the farm front now. Although the morning rounds of ice breaking and bucketing water out for the horse and donkey are starting to ware me down. I'm counting down the days to boxing day now when our next guests arrive and, by new years eve, we should have a house full. Still no news on the job front for Jane. The not knowing is getting most depressing but I am hoping and praying for good news this side of Christmas.I've spent a couple of days working in the gite kitchen and the cupboards are almost finished now. All we need is a cooker and a fridge and the gite will be finished, then I can move into the utility room to finish the next job on the list.

Lunch, Preparations and a Mouse!!

We have had a lovely three days being very busy and having some 'us' time as well. On Friday David and Marilyne took us to a wonderful restaurant about twenty minutes away, the Auberge du Pont de Brie. I think we had about seven courses in the end, thank goodness the kids were not there!! It was a thank you to Andrew for all of his hard work during the summer and birthday presents for us both! What a lovely day!! Andrew and I even managed some Christmas shopping in the morning. I think I managed to cross about four names from the list, now only another twelve to go!!! Yesterday afternoon was spent at the school helping to make things for the christmas fair. I am not sure how I end up doing these things, must me mad. I spent three hours chopping and painting corks and turning them into Father Christmases and his elves!!! Today has been spent making sure everything is tidy and making sure our new house guests do not get any comfy spaces. We appear to be having a little issue with little creatures. The dogs are useless, so we have resorted to good old fashioned traps and chocolate raisins. They love them!! Lets hope we get rid of them soon. I am sure they can find a warmer house somewhere close!!! At least it keeps Peter amused though!!

We need Grandand!!!

After the recent rain we believe that we are in need of some flooding defence procedures!!!

Cork Man and More .....

We have had another busy few weeks at Chateau Larcombe. The kids are now on another holiday and thankfully I am too this weekend. It is a bank holiday today for Armistice Day and I have a day off tomorrow for my birthday. Quite scary really, 38 seems far too close to 40 for my liking!! The kids are already preparing for Christmas at school and at home. They are already starting to make their Christmas lists as well. Josh is quite simple with his needs, a DS game and some chocolate. Peter has a list as long as the junk mail that arrives every week and Kirsty wants a sister, although she may settle for a rabbit thank goodness!! I am mourning the departure of our goats this week. A nice couple have taken them away to live with some alpacas. We decided that they were extra mouths to feed over the winter and we need to feed the big beast lots so that she survives the winter. Thats Surprise in case you were wondering, the big horse!!! Andrew has also been thinking about Christmas. The school needed ideas for things to sell at the Christmas fair and "Cork Man" was born. Maryline was not that impressed though and decided she could use all of the corks for something else!!! Cork Man will be the only model for now!!! Andrew is busy making cakes and biscuits for my birthday surprise tomorrow!!! We have people coming for afternoon tea!!! The house is now undergoing dusting in preparation!!! Kirsty may even tidy her bedroom!! Anyway, I must go and do some more cleaning now. Hugs and kisses to everyone.

Another year older

I can only apologise for the long delay between blogs. Due to a miner glitch and potentially a dead laptop, we were off line for a little while. Fortunately we managed to revive the beast from the dark side and have now backed up 4 years of photos that we thought we may have lost. Anyhow, since my last post, not a lot has gone on here as I decended into post party depression. I've brewed up 40 pints of dark ale that will be ready to drink in a few weeks and I have also harvested and pressed all the grapes which has left us with 15 litres of juice fermenting away in the kitchen at the moment. My mum, Hollie and Adam have come over to celebrate my birthday with me and, as always, good fun has been had all round. The goats are due to leave us soon, just waiting for their new owner to finish the fencing and then there'll be 5 less mouths to feed this winter. We will still have the Billy but he will be officially retired as a baby producing maniac and will spend his days playing with the donkey and stinking out the valley. My olives have started to change colour but I think the weather may have chilled too much for them to ripen out properley this year. Hopefully next years crop will be more successful. We have a few more apples to harvest and the kiwi fruit and that will then be the end of our season for 2010 and work can then start prepping the ground for 2011.

Another party is over

I feel now that I have discovered my destiny in life. I'm going all out to be a party monster and stretch our occasional weekend gatherings into an all year round rolling party. Our latest event kicked off with the first guests arriving on 2nd October and the last ones leaving on the 11th. With the extra labour on site, and Dave wanting to learn about hedge laying, we knocked out another 25m of hedging. Although it was a smaller event than normal, we peaked on Saturday night with 27 people helping to consume chicken and duck paella. My new recipe went well but still needs a small amount of tweaking to reach the same brilliance of the sea food version. We had a couple of a deaths over the weekend, one suicide by a young chick who decided to swim with the ducks and one brutal murder of a toad. Lucy had put her welly on and wandered around for 10 minutes before deciding there was something in her boot. On removing her boot and screaming like a girl as the dead toad landed on the floor in front of her she exclaimed "I thought it was a plum". Now if you had a plum in your boot, would you wander around for a while before dealing with it? We managed 2 games of softball for the weekend, a new record I believe. Next time we might see if we can get down to 1. We also invented a new game of softball using a frizbee which was excellent and far more demanding on the players. The usual night hikes took place and we managed not to lose anyone. We also christened the new tarmac at the top of the hill, lying down for half an hour and star gazing. Big kirsty, not to be mistaken with little Kirsty, also christened the new tarmac but that's a whole different story. Jane and I loosened the reins for this event allowing others to do the cooking. We were honoured with Dave and Kirstys crispy duck starter, beef wellington followed by chocolate orange pudding, Russels chicken pie and chilli, Lucys array of apple based puddings right up to her toffee apples at which she tried dipping her finger in the toffee rather than the apple, finishing off with Sues upside down cakes on numerous occasions. All in all a great and filling feast.

Starting to Relax

Fortunately my mother and Tom finally managed to get back to the UK on Friday! We are now starting the preparations for the next mad weekend at Chateau Larcombe. Russell and Lucy have already arrived and Lucy looks almost as if she might relax at some point this week. She has already filled up Lucy several times!!!! Dave and Kirsty are due to arrive tomorrow and Keith, Sue and Emma on Thursday. We will then be well on the way to another weekend of madness and mayhem. The little darlings are well into this half term at school. There is only three weeks left until the next holiday. Thank goodness I am back at work!!! Josh has had his first egg from his quail and we have eaten a very healthy crop of sweetcorn!!! Next year we will plant loads more!!

Venturing out of my hole

Mother in law and Tom have been here for a week and a half now so I have taken to hiding during the day at Maryline and Davids. The end of the roof is now in sight and David has set a deadline of 7th October, Marylines birthday, to complete all works. It's only a couple of weeks until our next softball event and things are not quite going to plan, The mower has totally given up the ghost so I have a half mowed field and am waiting on 2 spare belts that have alegedly been dispatched from the UK. We are incredibly short of players and I haven't got a clue what we'll be eating this time. We managed to escape last weekend to the UK for my cousin Sabrina and Ross's wedding. It was a fabulous party and great to catch up with family and friends. Best of all was that the darling children were in France whilst Jane and I partied until the early hours.

Returning to normality

After all the excitement of a fantastic weekend, as always, we had to return to normality. I call it normality for us however onlookers may consider our life style anything but normal. As the guests slowly departed, so the smile disappeared from my face. Then I would think of shadow rape, ping pong, or lesbian wrestling and once again I'd be smiling from ear to ear. With the kids back at school, I've been back working on Maryline and Davids roof. I feel now that the end is in sight with only 15000 tiles to go. I've also pushed on with the green house, slowly populating it ready for the winter. Today, no expense spared, I went out and bought an olive tree as the main central feature. Although I was toying with the idea of buying a 200 euro monster, I settled for something far smaller and bordering on affordable for a poor french farmer. We also picked up another 18 strawberry plants in the hope that they will thrive in the warm humid environment we have created. Last weekend Jane went out and bought Christmas dinner. We were a tad late getting them this year but I'm reasonably confident we can fatten them up in time. It's only 10 sleeps until we come back to the UK for Sabrinas wedding, a flying visit to say the least. We will be without the kids though as mother-in-law is coming here to look after them.

Saturday & Sunday

We're still on last weekend and, the more I think about it, the less I recollect. After lunch on Saturday we returned to the diamond with some revised teams, knocking out another couple of games of ball in amongst vast quantities of humour and beer. After a few drinks, Kim had completely lost her fear of dogs and was getting on well with Sasha and Zorro. She also agreed to a peice of my pork which saved me having to cook chicken for her instead. Although the pig was one of the biggest we have cooked to date, we managed to demolish a fair amount of it. We were joined for dinner by some of our expat friends and the night just flew by. We went for a little night hike to loosen up a bit and help the beer go down, after which people slowly dissapeared off to bed. Sunday morning and crepes all round, as per usual for thos regular attendees. There was every intention for an early start on the field Sunday, and low and behold, we manged an 11am start again. The teams had been carefully selected for an even match up by Dave. For some reason we had about 16 players and he had 9, so a quick reshuffle and off we went. Somebody won, I think, and lunch followed shortly afterwards. Barbecued burgurs and sausages, nothing undercooked and no food poisoning that I'm aware of. The after lunch game brought a tear to my eye as Dave suggested reforming Thames Valley to take on the rest of the world. All of a sudden red shirts kept appearing from bags, and one sad player even found his old grey strides, no names hey norm. Thames Valley stormed to success at an amazingly slow pace, but we got there. A quick break and the arrival of some early dinner guests. On the menu for the evening was Paella and, fortunately for me, the girls had done all the prep so I returned to a stress free kitchen ish. Jane had been checking out who liked fish and who didn't and was rapidly knocking up a curry like substance to fill the shortfall. As I don't do stress anymore, we headed back to the diamond for a game of 3 hit rotational softball, which like most of the weekends games seemed to go on a very long time. It did mean that everyone got to play lots of different positions and get a couple of good hits of the ball. To be continued.........

Boy what a weekend.

Apologies for my absense over the last week but I have been otherwise engaged, aka drunk lol. I have so much to say that it may well be spread over a few days. For those out of the loop, we have just had another weekend party, this time stretching into 5 days of non stop drinking and laughter. The head count for the weekend topped 30. As for the bottle count all I can say is a trailer full and some more. Due to the wasps I am going to refrain from attempting to count the whole lot this time but, from experience, we have more than ever before, even when we had over 100 people here. This is even more impressive as we also managed to demolish a 72 pint keg as well, cheers PJ. The run up to the weekend was most depressing as the rain started on Monday and only stopped Friday evening. In between showers Steve and I managed to sort the field and get the white lines done even though the ride on mower died. The first guests, not including Laura and Steve who virtually live here now, arrived Friday morning. Darren, Lee and Fin, newbies to us but what a great family. Lee is our new domestic goddess to compete with previous dishwashers like Lucy. Fin was in his own little world and pottered round everywhere all weekend, and Darren, in his first year of softball, demonstrated great expertise as a clean up hitter. Throughout the day more and more people arrived giving us our biggest Friday night party to date. Lasagne all round and much humour and drinking followed. Saturday morning I had a lay in and the cerfs sorted breakfast. First arrival Saturday were Gooner and PJ, supported by Tammy and Trish and heavily weighed down with a keg of real ale. Being a serious softball tournament as well as a social event, the first game kicked off around 11:00am once the shoppers returned from the market and super market, seriously stocked with beer. Game one was a gentle warm up, using the names out of the hat technique, the 5 innings were stretched out over an hour and a half. Well done to the winning team whoever you were as I forgot the score books. Lunch of French sausage, various cheeses, fresh bread and salad followed. Well done girls for making sure we were fed. Whilst the starving guests feasted on lunch, I mounted a pig. (you know what I mean) and dinner was put on to cook. To be continued...........

Happy Birthday Adam - 14 Today!!!!

I will let Andrew do the proper blog from the weekend but we must just have a birthday photo for Grandad!!!! Happy Birthday Adam - we love you!!!

Softball - August 2010 - Part 1

Well, the party started yesterday morning and is continuing .............. Much beer has been consumed and it was very wet yesterday. That is all the excitement that I can muster right at this moment!! The pig is cooking well and is possibly the largest that we have cooked to date, 63 kg to be precise!!! I hope that I have listened properly to all of FiLs advice as I seem to be the only person cooking at the moment!!! Anyway, couple of photos to keep you going .....

Mud and ducks

Possibly for the first time this summer holiday the kids dissapeared off and played together nicely and quietly. It will however be bath time at the zoo shortly as they decided to spend the afternoon playing with body and face paints. Well in fact it was wet mud. Apart from that not a vast amount is going on here. We are busy preparing for yet another party, this time on the bank holiday weekend. There should be about 30 softball players this time and as usual vast quantities of alcohol will be consumed. The ducks have settled nicely into there new home and the quail are at point of lay so we could have eggs any day now.

My huge erection

It's been a busy week this week as I progressed the polytunnel, greenhouse, summer house, detatched conservatory, on heaps and bounds. Fortunately my mother was here to keep "mon petit merde" out of my way. Monday I built the window frames, Tuesday Josh and I put the roof on in the pouring rain and, yesterday, I fitted all the glass panels. Todays mission is to get the stairs concreted which will make access so much easier. We had a party last night to see mum off. She's heading home to look after her other baby, Donald, who is in need of more swimming lessons. Jamie and Laura arrived yesterday with baby Chloe for her first holiday. The kids are all desperate to play with her and they're getting in plenty of cuddle time.

Cafe creme pour moi :-)

It's been a while since I blogged, sorry folks been a busy bee. Our trip to the UK went very well culminating in my dads party weekend. It was great to catch up with loads of people we hadn't seen in a while and also participate in the biggest Larcombe meat fest to date. The big decision now is how I can better this event, perhaps by building a giant spit and cooking a whole cow or a horse, now there's a thought. Anyway, since our return to France I have been continuing my work on Maryline and Davids roof. Progress is good and we're past the half way point now I think even with the recent rains that have made work very difficult. I have made a small amount of progress with the green house but need to get some more materials in before I can progress further. Last night I cooked up a meal and a half for our friends, samosas for starter, dauphinoise potatoes, champignons, carrots and flambeed pork loin, all topped off with Raymond Blancs cafe creme. I think this retirment life is really suiting me well.