Last week was pretty busy; the weather has been glorious recently, so we tackled some outside jobs, such as lasuring the colombage beams on the garage front and crepi-ing between them, painting inside the roof of the balcony and starting construction of some new compost bins. The old compost bins were such a raging success that, built of old, slightly rotten floorboards from the grange, they composted themselves. The new ones will be built of breezeblock.

The highlight of the week, for me anyway, was Saturday night, when the band had been asked to play at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Adrian agreed to provide a mixing desk and play the role of sound man, so we arrived at the salle des fetes in Izotges at 4pm to start setting up. The evening was organised by the village line dancing group; tickets for the meal were sold out by the previous Monday and when we got there, the ladies were shredding lettuce, grating carrots, making mayonnaise and putting the finishing touches to the Guiness casserole for 130 people, while the men were decorating the room and the tables, all in green and orange.

By the time we started playing at 7.30, the room was filling up; those who had left it too late to book a meal came along to sample the large selection of beers and to listen to the music, while those who had booked tucked into a lovely meal. Once the dinner was finished, lots of people made use of the space in front of the stage to dance. Having a “professional” sound man made such a difference to us; not just in the way you’d expect, but it seemed to make everyone raise their game a notch or two and I think we played really well as a result. Certainly everybody was very complimentary.

By the time we finished, at 1.30 this morning, we were tired but elated; and having had just a couple of short breaks from playing during the six hours, I don’t think I was the only one with very sore fingers!

Pendant le beau temps qu’on a eu recemment, nous en avons profité par faire quelques travaux exterieurs, comme lasurer le bois du garage, peindre dans la toiture du balcon et commencer construire des nouveaux composteurs. Les premiers composteurs, construit des planchers un peu pourri de la grange, ayant auto-composté, les nouveaux seront en parpaing.

Mais pour moi, le moment le plus marquant de la semaine etait samedi soir, quand on avait demandé à notre groupe, etCelterra, de faire l’animation pour une fete de St. Parick à Izotges. Notre ami, Adrian a accepté de faire le mixage; donc nous sommes arrivés à 16heures à faire notre préparation. L’association de country d’Izotges avait organisé la fete et quand nous sommes arrivés les dames etaient en train de préparer le repas pour 130 gens, pendant les hommes decoraient la pièce et les tables, tout en vert et orange. Tous les billets pour le repas etaient vendus en avance, mais ceux et celles qui ne pouvaient pas manger sont arrivés à gouter la grande selection de bières et écouter la musique.

Nous avons joué de 19H30 pendant que les gens mangaient un très bon repas; plus tard ils ont dancé jusqu’à nous avons fini à 1h30 dimanche matin. Je crois que les gens etaient bien amusés; certainement ils etaient très flatteurs à propos de la musique.

Nous sommes tous rentrés heureux et fatigués, et apres six heures de jouer, je crois que je n’etais pas la seule qui avait mal aux doigts!

Friends have recently made suggestions for two changes to the blog; one is that I use it to advertise gigs that the band is doing, for folks living locally and, of course, for our world-wide network of fans (well I can dream!) So below is the poster for our gig for St. Patrick’s day – Kate and Rob; this is for you!

The other suggestion is that I write in French as well as English, so I’ll give it a try when I’ve got time and am not too tired. It’s a good way for me to improve my language skills if French speakers will correct my many mistakes.

On m’a demandé faire quelques changements à mon blog; le premier est que je l’ecris en français aussi qu’en anglais; donc, je l’essayerai quand j’ai le temps et je ne suis pas trop fatiguée. Je sais que je fais pas mal d’erreurs, donc j’espère que les français qui le lisent me corrigeraient; comme ça je me perfectionerai en français. Mais pour mes etudiants qui le traduisent de l’anglais; ce n’est pas une traduction exact.

L’autre suggestion etait que j’emploie mon blog à faire des petits annonces à propos des concerts que fait EtCelterra, le groupe avec qui je joue. Donc, ci-dessous est une fiche pour la fête de Saint Patrick – venez nombreux!

We needed some stuff – house stuff, mostly, but especially lights, wall cupboards and a door for my workroom and outdoor lights for the terrace and balcony. Pau has the best selection of shops, not to mention great views of the hills; so we set off early in the morning.

First stop Castorama; nice outdoor lights, OK workshop lights, but they didn’t have a door. We’d look elsewhere for lights too (well, you can’t buy the first thing you see!)

Then Decathlon; Nick got some new cycling shoes, but they don’t sell many doors!

Next stop the troc (second hand warehouse; lots of tat but some decent stuff too). They had a lovely chair, but closed before we got as far as doors.

Lunch; met a great French couple who love Irish music and play and dance Flamenco!

Back to the troc; bought the chair, which had been reduced by €10 over lunch, and a fish kettle. They didn’t have a door though.

Emmaus; a sort of village-sized charity shop! Loads of doors, but none we liked in the right size.

Leroy Merlin; found some lovely lights for my workroom and spotted a wash basin we both like (you wouldn’t believe how difficult that is!) But no doors that suited.

Brico depot; finally found a suitable door, along with wall cupboards for which Nick will one day make decent doors.

By the time we’d loaded up, it was 6.50pm and we didn’t know what time Castorama closed, so a frantic, or as near as you can at rush hour, dash to Castorama, which is open till 8pm, phew! Outdoor lights purchased.

A very successful shopping trip; but after 12 hours, I understand the term “shop till you drop”!

Today marked the opening of the cycling season in the departement of Haute Pyrenées, so the Nogaro club set off early to ride to a village near Tarbes. Nick joined 15 other hardy souls who left Nogaro at 8am to cover the 88km in time for the lunch provided by the St Juillan cycle club; ventreche (belly pork) sandwiches, cake, prunes, chocolate, wine, coffee….. then home again, 166km in total. After the weather we’ve experienced recently, today was amazing – warm and sunny, with not a drop of rain.

The all day bike ride coincided very nicely with the walking club’s raquette (snow shoe) walking trip to the Pyrenees, cancelled three weeks ago due to lack of snow. There was fresh snow this week, so we were able to go. Not many people were available because of the school holidays, so we were a small group of eight who set off from Nogaro as the sun rose this morning.  We set out from the ski station at Hautacam, where you can do downhill or cross country skiing or raquette walking, and hire the equipment if necessary; there are paths marked for several routes of varying distances. We did a 12km route, amid acres of virgin snow, stopping on the summit for lunch and to take in the amazing scenery all around. In the area used by the downhill skiers, their individual tracks were still evident, making the hillsides look like lace! The forecast had predicted heavy cloud all day, so I didn’t take sunglasses or sunscreen – bad mistake; it was glorious all day, so I now have a badly sunburnt face! I won’t make that mistake again.

I’m sorry about the quality of the photos; I took the small camera and couldn’t see anything on the screen in the sunlight!

At the end of the monthly cycle club dinner at the gite (which doubles as a clubhouse) the president stood up and called for quiet. “Last summer I was talking with Nick and Jackie when they offered to cook for one of our dinners” he said. “We agreed it would be in February and they suggested making a curry. I think we’d all agree that they’ve shown tremendous prowess; not only did they prepare an entire meal, including the bread, for fifty people, but it was an excellent meal too.” He asked for a show of appreciation and they gave us a standing ovation!

It started last Tuesday when I did the shopping; 10kg beef, 18 litres milk, 5kg rice, 50 chicken portions, 8kg onions, 4kg bread flour, 3 litres natural yoghurt and 12 extra large tins of tomatoes, amongst other stuff. Philippa had agreed to help, so she’d brought back from a trip to England the most enormous tubs of Patak’s curry pastes I’ve ever seen, along with an equally huge tub of mango chutney and Kieran found a shop in Dax where he could buy gram flour and cardamom pods. We were ready to roll.

On Wednesday Nick and Philippa spent the day at the gite, making beef curry and chicken tandoori. I went down between lessons, to put together the rice pudding, take photos and, in Philippa’s opinion at least, generally be a nuisance. On Thursday we started making the dough for the naan breads, did a veg curry and Nick made carrot halva. He went back on Friday morning, while I stayed home to wait for a parcel delivery, and made 100 onion bhajis – well that’s how many were left once he’d finished the quality control! Adrian arrived Friday afternoon and helped us decant the rice pud into dishes, make 100 samosas, prepare the salad and roll out the naan breads. The team who set out the tables arrived and transformed the room while we finished washing up. Time to go home to have a cup of tea and change; one of my students had lent me a sari, so I did my best to tie it correctly. I don’t think it was right, but at least it stayed in place for the evening and it certainly provoked a few comments!

Once I’d been round and explained how things were meant to be eaten, (most people had never tasted curry before!) the assembled cyclists tucked into onion bhajis and samosas with salad and raita for starters. Then beef curry, veg curry, chicken tandoori, rice and naans for the main course; I was amazed to see people going back for seconds and even third helpings! By the time we served the rice pudding, then coffee with carrot halva, everyone was pretty full, but I think they all thoroughly enjoyed themselves and I suspect this may become an annual event. We’re just glad it’s over for now; it’s been a very hard week.

I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t had a winter this year – well not yet, anyway. Loads of rain and floods, yes, but apart from a couple of nights’ frost in November, it hasn’t been cold. The plum and cherry trees are all covered in blossom and there’s even a magnolia in full bloom in Nogaro! But I don’t think I’ll ever get used to days like today in February; deep blue sky and warm enough to work outside in a tee-shirt. Not that I’m complaining, mind; we’ve started clearing the potager of weeds and planted loads of tomatoes, lettuce, roquette and chillies under glass, as well as spinach in the potager, to join the mangetout and broad beans that have over-wintered there. We’re looking forward to eating well on the proceeds of our labours.

This area is well known for the quality of its food; there’s always lots of local produce on the markets, from large and small producers alike. And people take a keen interest in the quality of their food; usually when we’re invited to dinner, always at least four courses, the meat is from a local producer, known personally to our hosts and the fruit and veg are often home grown.

But last Friday didn’t follow the normal pattern. Thierry, who’d cycled Mont Ventoux with Nick last year, invited the other cyclists from that trip round to dinner, which he would prepare with the help of another of the group, Philippe, giving Thierry’s wife an evening off. The aperitifs were fairly standard, while we watched a slide show of photos taken on the trip. Then we moved straight on to the main course; a bowl of pasta, a jar of carbonara sauce, a jar of tomato and basil sauce, a plastic packet of grated cheese and a bag of mixed salad (though this they had managed to put into a bowl). We’d taken a pudding, so everyone tucked into that, and we had a brilliant evening, but it just goes to show that not all French are great cooks, especially the blokes!

Didier’s not quite finished, because he’s been called away to a couple of emergencies; but we now have electricity in the new house. Never have bare bulbs looked so good! And, by way of celebration (?!), we worked till it was thoroughly dark outside tonight, Nick tiling the chaufferie floor, me taping plasterboard joints.

Today was my English class at the CLAN, where I work as a volunteer one afternoon a week. For the last few years there have been four English teachers, so the work was divided between us. But this year, due to various factors, there’s only me; so my ever-increasing class, nine today, squeezed into a room that comfortably holds six, has everything from absolute beginners to those whose command of the English language is very impressive. As someone whose practical teaching practice comprised two 10 minute lessons given over two weekends, it’s fair to say I’m struggling to keep everybody happy; I’m constantly worried that the lower level students won’t understand, while the better ones will be bored. So if there are any “proper” teachers out there, reading this, any suggestions on how to cope would be gratefully received!!

Our band’s rehearsal room is in a large building, run by an association whose aim is the promotion of “culture” within the community; there’s yoga, qi gong, traditional dance, art classes and us. A few weeks ago Stephane, who manages the building, came to a practice to tell us that Madame P, the deputy mayor of the town, who is also the “cultural” representative at the town hall, has taken a dislike to us and wants us out of the building, which the town hall leases to the association.

It was the association’s AGM tonight; Madame P was to be there; so we all went along to fight for our cause. We can see no reason why we shouldn’t use the room and Madame P accepted our money when we paid our dues for use of the room for 2014, just a few weeks ago. There were plenty of people at the meeting, but Madame P didn’t turn up; nor did she send a spokesperson; no reason given, just a message that she’d meet our representative sometime next week. Everybody was furious, both those in the band and everyone else present; nobody can understand why we’re no longer welcome and all suspect that she has a hidden agenda, not to mention that she must have known how much opposition there’d be to her stance. So we held the AGM, everybody getting very hot under the collar about the unfairness of the decision and wondering who’ll be next for the chop, but unable to do anything about it.

Electrics are done very differently here from in England; first you run lengths of flexible plastic piping, in several different primary colours – it’s very pretty, a shame to cover it up, really! Then you hide it all away, covering it with plasterboard or pouring concrete floors onto it. Once that’s all done, you take lengths of wire, the different colours on different spools, and pull them through the piping; then, of course, you can put in the plug sockets, light switches, etc.  Didier, our electrician, is well named; he must be all of 5 feet tall; but a lovely man, quiet and hard-working. He expects to finish the wiring on Monday, so we’ll have no excuse not to continue working when it gets dark then!

Apart from that, the main news item of the week is that Nick’s cleaned his workshop! As a result, the compost heap is about a foot taller with wood shavings from the floor. I’m continuing to fill the plasterboard joints, but hadn’t realised that the bits we did with Adrian last week were the easy, quick bits. Now I’m taping the corner joints; you mix some sloppy joint filler, trowel it either side of each corner, stick special paper stuff onto it and smooth out all the excess sticky stuff, leaving a neat finish. Once that’s dry, you then put on a second coat, covering the paper with a layer thick enough to hide the paper edges, but fine enough not to show. When the second coat’s dry you sand it all to a smooth, perfect finish. Well, that’s the idea anyway. I’m only at the taping stage so far, which looks likely to take many weeks of  “I’ve just got a couple of hours between lessons” time. Apart from that, we’re just pottering on with bits and pieces; tiling the chaufferie floor, crepi-ing the chaufferie walls and finishing off some plasterboarding. Kieran only appears on request now, turning up when there are big jobs to do, requiring two strong men – none of this filling, or painting or other “pinkish” jobs for him. He moved his computers to Dax this week, so I think he’s moved out.