The Clothes Peg

The Lowly Clothes Peg

I didn't reckon on clothes pegs coming into a blog, let alone provide the story behind a blog. They seem remarkably uninteresting even though they're useful. I would imagine that of all the items or gifts H.M.QE2 has received during the last sixty years, a clothes peg - gold plated or otherwise - is not amongst them. Clothes Pegs never warrant a mention at coffee mornings, are never included on Christmas present lists or birthday present lists. Who has ever seen a wedding present list with clothes pegs on it? But wonder of wonders the clothes peg, as of last night, became my heroine of the hour. I say heroine because in French, a clothes peg is a feminine noun - la pince à linge. This new found status is from my point of view very splendid indeed and totally unexpected.
 

I was born with double-jointed fingers, toes and thumbs. It's a common condition. The biggest problem for me are my fingers. They can lock like claws, and have to be massaged  back into a normal shape so they work again. I used to play saxophone and piano and didn't seem to run into any difficulties with either of those instruments. But I now play the accordion and it seems to trigger my fingers into such a locked position that I can't bend them or play anything. Last night was one of those moments. I've often thought about giving up playing, but I enjoy it too much, and being of a stubborn disposition I can't quite bring myself to do it.

In desperation I surfed the net and discovered a site, How to correct doublejointedness. It's written by a violinist Loralyn Staples, who is herself double-jointed and has had all sorts of problems during her career. There is a short video on her site which shows an exercise using a clothes peg, to help build up the muscles in those fingers which are usually the worst affected - the thumb, the little finger and the ring finger next to it. These fingers on both my hands are so weak, that even using two fingers to open and shut the clothes peg, as the video demonstrates, was impossible. So to start with I had to use the middle finger as well. Today however, I am already noticing the difference. I'm down from three fingers to two and will keep on going. This exercise really seems to be working. If there's anyone you know with a similar problem, please pass it on. Definitely worth them trying it.

Rain stopped work!

Cloud build-up yesterday evening

This morning - oh my. The rain just let rip. Torrential. Then thunder. Thick mist - couldn't see the end of the road. And so dark. It was more like 8pm than 8am. So sorry for the wine producers. The weather is part and parcel of their working lives. But even so. This was just hopeless. No way we were going for a walk in the vines etc as I mentioned yesterday.  




We drove into Chinon this morning as usual to the market. Nothing was moving. The harvesters were parked up, ready to start - whenever that might be. As for the hand-pickers in their tents. Cold, wet and depressing I would think. The market itself was very empty - of shoppers as well as vendors. Not a good start to the day.

So sorry everyone no photos and a very short blog.  

In the meantime a short entertainment provided by Mr. C. Chaplin.

At least the first version is short and the second version - full length.


Charlie Chaplin 1


Charlie Chaplin 2

Hopefully normal transmission will begin again tomorrow.

The vendange is underway!!!

Early stages

I had a coffee morning here last Monday for some neighbours - Jacqueline, Micheline, Emilie and little Antonin, who was born in the summer and is growing fast, and our immediate neighbour Isabel. Good fun. We were discussing when the vendange was going to start and it seemed pretty much everyone was beginning today, Weds 10 October. Others will start this weekend. It will be a two/three week period of intense activity. In an earlier blog I mentioned that the weather had been so bizaare that the vendange had been knocked back by nearly a month. So for it to finally get going was quite a relief.

We had another overcast day today. Fine for working on the vines I'm guessing. It's pandemonium on the roads though once forty wine producers get going. This means vans, tractors and trailers, enormous harvesters, pickers in various vehicles. There's a lot of traffic about. Add to that some local roadworks and . . . it's been an interesting time moving about. 

Mike and I had a ride on a harvester about four years ago. A wine producing family organised it for us. The vehicles in height are the nearing the size of a two-storey house. At the top is a little cabin for the driver. The frame that supports the cabin and does the work of harvesting is a huge lower case n shape. The harvester is positioned at one end of a row of vines and basically encases it, so that the vine is positioned in hollow of the frame. Then as the harvester moves along the row, it vibrates and shakes the grapes off the vine, which are caught by a container fixed to the machine. The harvester is an enormous piece of kit  and amazingly efficient, with steering control that can turn on a pin-head. It's quite something to ride on one and to see them in action. 

This evening we unfortunately had a massive rain burst. The last thing needed right now. Some roads were flooded. Muddy fields I imagine are not good for the machines. They might be big, beautiful and super-efficient, but they're also very heavy. Tomorrow (Thursday) will be interesting.  It so happens that we're going slightly further out in our region in the afternoon with a conversation group for a wine tasting. We're meant to be walking in the vines, but I'm not sure this will happen with the harvest going on. We'll see. Then we're having a wine tasting. I'm hoping I can get some photos. We're going into the market as per usual early tomorrow morning, so if the weather and light are good I'll try and get some photos on the way in and more in the afternoon to load on to the blog.

We were in Chinon this evening for the AGM of one of our Anglo/French groups. As we drove along, we saw a lot of the pickers just finishing. They were staying in caravans, under canvas etc, all positioned next to the vines they're working on.

Anyway we'll see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully a good day for the vignerons and the harvest and a good day for me to get some shots in.

The Photographic Egg Box

'Spot the Clanger'

We get our eggs or have been getting them, from our cheese producer over at La Roche-Clermault who also has free-range chickens and eggs available. But as of a month or so ago, some very near neighbours (the next road) began selling their free-range chickens and eggs. So ever keen to support a village enterprise, we've started buying from them. Chicken and eggs were excellent.
Over time I've collected a pile of egg boxes (cardboard), which have been sitting on the side in our kitchen, waiting to be taken round to our neighbour. Emilie, the neighbour with the eggs and chickens, in fact came round yesterday with some others for coffee, but it was pouring with rain so the egg boxes stayed put.
Quite fortuitous as it turned out.

It had been a pretty grey day today which had left us feeling slightly 'out of sorts' as grey wet days sometimes can do. Then early evening, the most amazing sunlight burst through and caught the egg boxes in a golden spotlight. Of course - out came the camera. It was a really fun exercise to try and take photos of cardboard egg boxes, starting with an obvious edge of boxes shot. The light wasn't going to last very long, so I began moving the boxes around and finding more interesting angles and textures on the insides. I'm so used to the smooth outer appearance of an egg box, while the inside I don't really take a lot of interest in. It's just a piece of practical product design to hold an easily breakable item in place.

The 'Madonna' landscape

But this afternoon with the help of some wonderful light and a macro lens, the rougher, lumpier inside of the egg boxes became a real landscape. Or several landscapes.  Sometimes they took on a slightly 'lunar' appearance. Sometimes they were 'clanger-ish' and sometimes, 'Madonna-ish'.

The whole thing lasted about ten minutes.

Tours and other things

Into Tours last weekend. We went primarily for an exhibition at the Château de Tours and for lunch with an Anglo/French group at La Maison Coté Sud. But to begin with the two of us were wandering around trying to get to know the city a little better. Our introduction to Tours was about four years ago with an annual event called L'Art au Quotidien - a big crafts fair - at the Vinci Centre   that can take about 3000 people. We can't get to it this year, but the link is to the site, advertising this year's show.  There are all sorts of different cultural events going on throughout the year, but the Vinci Centre also hosts major conferences. At present we mostly come in for exhibitions and special festivals, but Tours is also our connection to Paris via the TGV (Train à grande vitesse), which door to door, takes about two hours. 

At present Tours is in a state of upheaval. A new road system is being installed involving trams, which began three years ago and won't be finished till September 2013. Travelling in by car therefore can be a bit of a trial. We go mid-week from Chinon by train, which is quick. But this time, being a Saturday when the trains are infrequent and stop early, we drove in. At 9.30am the roads were easy, no problems parking, but an hour later, phew - the traffic was just chockerblock.

Tours is the 'capital' of the Indre et Loire region. Historical and contemporary districts with their mixtures of architecture sit comfortably alongside each other. Side streets and squares are buzzing with cafés and restaurants.  As well as a vibrant cultural life, it's a very good food produce centre. Tours like most places these days has larger stores, but it also has a great array of smaller shop fronts, which give it more character and individuality. 

There are also two markets - one indoors and one outdoors. They're more or less next to each other and both cover large areas. Milling around with the Saturday shoppers was quite an experience. A lot of people were out. The markets are very well supported and the range of foods as well as the quality is exceptional. In my travels probably the only other one I've come across that is on a similar scale, is in Málaga, Spain. Cravant is slightly too far away for us to use Tours as a regular shopping centre. But we've both said that once we're here, we want to use it more often than we do. Perhaps that means the markets as well.

The Anglo/French group I mentioned is called English Connection. We weren't sure about the name at first, but there is a really good mix of French and English people.   The group meets fairly regularly, probably once or twice a month. We share cultural events which generally are as useful as they are interesting. I'm not sure how many members there are, but they seem to be based more in Tours and its surrounding area. Occasionally events are in someone's home, or we meet for lunch, quite often somewhere new. This last Saturday we met at La Maison Coté Sud which was very good. Great atmosphere and busy! We were upstairs with a table for fourteen people. Then we headed off up to the Chateau de Tours which is well established as an exhibition venue.  We'd come to see a photographic exhibition by Pierre Bourdieu. His link is in French but there are images which were taken during 1958 - 1961 when the French/Algerian conflict was in full swing. Every now and again and major power comes face to face with an aspect of its colonial past. This exhibition focussed on such a moment. The images were all in black and white and gripping in their simplicity. There is also a film, eventually released in 1974, having been banned since it was made in the 60s. It's called The Battle for Algiers. Quite superb and is regarded as one of the foremost commentaries on guerilla warfare. It's out on DVD and very much worth seeing. 

There was also a smaller photographic exhibition by Norwegian artist Per Barclay at the chateau. Equally engrossing, the images were a series of optical illusions in industrial spaces, created through reflections using oil. If you go to the link and check under exhibitions there is some reference to the exhibition and some images. There are many similarities to the work of highly acclaimed British artist Richard Wilson, which personally I love.

The final exhibition of the day was in Chinon and yet another photographer, Arnaud Vareille.
The work on display concentrated on landscape and textures, but his portfolio is much wider. If you have a moment to look at the link you'll see just what he can do. His work is terrific. 

We had a really brilliant day. It couldn't have been better. By the time we got home, we were both totally exhausted. At least I didn't have to cook anything!

Who do you think you are?

HMS Paddington Bear

We had some friends round last Thursday evening. Not for an  apéro, which I've mentioned in a previous blog, but for what's known as an apéro dinatoire - a hybrid between an apéro and dinner. It's a 'sitting at the dinner table' arrangement, with lots of small bite sized savoury dishes, cheeses and if you want to,  a small bite sized dessert, such as a macaron. I must remember to do a blog about macarons - those little mouthfuls of heavenly gooey almond meringue.    Moving on . . .

We only met Jim and Francoise for the first time earlier this year and then again in July. We just clicked. They're such fun. He's English and Francoise is obviously French. They live in Tavant, about twenty minutes away from Cravant and - small world etc - they also have an apartment in Bath, which by train is about fifteen minutes away from us in Bradford on Avon. They'll be in the UK for Christmas and New Year, so we'll be getting together at some point. Anyway, we shared language duties, so switched between English and French and chatted about this and that. Somehow we got on to the fact that Mike and I both have a lot of Celt floating around in our family histories. His family are from north of the border. Mine are from the other side of the Irish Sea.  Now there'll be a few of you, I don't doubt, who'll be thinking ' . . . aha! That explains everything'. Well don't be so sure. According to Francoise, I also have a touch of the Peruvian about me. It was the hair and face shape that convinced her.

If my friend Lesley Hayward is reading this blog, she will hopefully remember an exceptional evening in her house - circa the late 80s. We were all involved with an amateur drama group called The Hatch End Players (H.E.P.) and for this particular social event, a few of us put on a performance of Paddington Bear - when he first arrives from Peru and goes to live with the Browns. I always wondered why I was cast as Paddington. Now I know. Thanks Francoise. That really does explain everything!

Getting organised

on board

We've reached the moment when the UK starts to gently filter back into our heads. On 31st October, Hallowe'en, we take the boat back to Portsmouth for not quite the last time. We're travelling on the Normandie which is our favourite boat in the Brittany Ferry fleet. It will probably be decorated with bats, pumpkins and other Hallowe'en paraphernalia.  Just hope it doesn't creep into the dinner menu. Fricasée of bat doesn't appeal. Or maybe they'll have that for the children.

We're not seriously getting ready to go back, it's more a 're-engaging' with what we've got to do when we get there. In any case there's still another three weeks to go here and a lot is happening during this time. 

New wine barrels

Usually 'returning to the UK' means a car full of bags and boxes. But there's nothing really to take back to the UK this time except wine in various quantities - orders for friends, presents for others and a supply to cover Christmas and New Year. It's the first time ever we've thought of Christmas this early on. We're not into the business of  '. . . it's September so let's start getting Christmas presents' or '. . . it's October let's start planning Christmas Day lunch'. Usually nothing happens with us until a couple of weeks before and the decorations never go up until a few days before. But out of necessity Christmas  is on the radar. We're going back this time for a slightly longer stay in the UK as we've things to sort out in the house, and legalities to put into place - exciting things like Landlord Insurance, touch-up painting on doors and bannisters and loft clearing.

Cravant vines

I'm starting a blog in French for friends and neighbours here while we're back in the UK. It will be good practice for me while we're away. One of the odd things about travelling backwards and forwards is the language changeover. My brain does the splits. I get so used to talking, writing and listening to French every day. And then suddenly it stops. But my brain doesn't adapt immediately so I go into a stuttering franglais mode. The number of times I catch myself answering the English phone in French. Eventually it settles down.

The funniest thing of all when we get back, and this happens in both houses, is that we simply can't remember where anything is. Or we think something is in one house when actually it's in the other. It takes another few days to find our way around. The kitchen remains the biggest challenge. I know perfectly well that all the drawers and cupboards in the French house are the automatic type, that gracefully glide shut with the gentlest of touches. I've known this for four years. The English kitchen doesn't have this system. I take out what I need, gently nudge the drawer back to close, turn round to do what I have to do, turn back and then get whacked on the shins. You'd think I'd have learnt by now!

Panorama at Cravant

Anyway in the three weeks before I acquire a new set of bruises, we've got to finish cutting back the garden, summer and winter clothes need to be re-organised. There are some exhibitions and lunches with anglo-french groups coming up. Meetings, dinner parties, drinks parties, coffee mornings. Turquant is having a book festival and concert and there are couple of things over at Fontevraud. Then we go back to the UK and start all over again. We love every minute of it.