England

I'm visiting England for four days as the flights with Ryan air were 24€ return and I though it would be nice to spend a couple of days with my mother. The flight over here was really fine. I got to Poitiers in plenty of time and had a really good book (Patrick Graves) which Pippa sent me. What an eye opener! It was heaven to be in plenty of time and not get stressed about missing the flight. I'm going to try and get to Stansted  in plenty of time on Sunday so that I have the same ease going through to get the plane.

It's been fab to spend some time with Tana - poor thing, she's in so much pain. I really hope I die before I get to the sort of stage that she's at. She really doesn't want people to come and visit her

Jill and David's party on Easter Sunday

Well, I had to start a new post because I can't work out how to carry on on the old one. Anyway, as I was saying, some lovely people there : Rob and Karly who bought the Byron's house in Moussac, some friends of theirs called Carl and Clare who had two little children, Helen, who I adore, Hedley and Liz, who had just broken her arm the day before , so we were sling-twins! Nigel and Pauline, who I don't really know but apparently I had shown them some houses before they bought out here a couple of years ago. Karly was singing French nursery rhymes with Harriet and Freddy and they haven't stopped singing them since: bonjour Monsieur, bonjour Madame, bonjour Mademoiselle, je me presente, je suis Hélène Dupuis! A really lovely gay couple  called Nick (who Toby was convinced was not English) and his French boyfriend. I felt as though I had met them before but as it was all rather drunken I can't remember! Jill showed me their bedroom which is finished and looks amazing. Anyway, it was all good fun.

Gardening

We had a few cold nights in the last week so I had to put all my plants in the shed overnight. I'm really pleased with the progress of my butternut squash and lots of melons although I only have one honeydew and I'm not sure how successful that one is going to be. Plenty of cantaloupe and charentais and water melons though. Only one courgette plant so far, but a maybe that's good enough. Toby is growing tomatoes from slices of tomatoes on the landing windowsill. We're going to plant them out along the wall of the outbuilding with the south facing wall beside the swimming pool. It's all rather exciting but we do need to fence the chickens in before the tomatoes ripen, otherwise they eat them all. I have planted some pepper seeds indoors, really nice small red and orange peppers but they are not sprouting yet. I hope they will - I guess we should wait till after the Saint Glaces which I think is 15th May before planing anything out, but I think I might risk it and put the melons in the ground before I go to England on 10th.

I just read Still Alice, a brilliant book by Lisa Genova about a woman who gets early onset Alzheimer's disease which was terrifying and really sad. I think I'm pretty philosophical about death in general, but what is scary about Alzheimer's is the way it changes your character and you just can't make your brain work. I would rather die younger than stay alive not recognising all my loved ones and just being a pain to them. Thinking about my father, I wonder if he would have found it easier if he had known about Alzheimer's and could have recognised the symptoms he had as being a part of the disease. I think he still knew who we all were more or less when he died, although I remember Tana being very put out by the fact that he thought she was his mother sometimes! Casey said that his mother didn't know who any of them were, some time before she died. That's really sad. I think Julian doesn't recognise his children any more either. Makes it so hard to still love them. I really went off my father quite a lot towards the end of his life, and he still knew who I was, but he just became more bigoted than ever. It is such an effort to try and understand. I'm also reading Submission, a book that Alex sent me about the Muslims taking over French politics in 2022. I'm going to try and finish it today as today is the first round of the French elections and I have got to supervise the voting this evening - part of my role as conseilleur elu! I really hope Marine Le Pen doesn't get in as this could make our lives much more complicated after Brexit. It doesn't look likely but who knows? After the Brexit vote and then Trump anything is possible and these mad votes have taught us to expect the unexpected.

We went to a brilliant party at Gill and David's on Easter Sunday. Really fun and some lovely people there

Too much work

Well, it's been absolutely manic lately. Really busy with work and doing viewings twice a day at Lisa and Malcolm's house in St Martin L'Ars. I had Carl Jenkins and his wife on Wednesday afternoon who are coming back tomorrow for a second viewing. I hope to god they buy it because I am really fed up with it.. We are having to lock the gate and the key I have doesn't work from the outside so someone has to climb over and unlock it from the other side! It's a bloody nightmare. Especially for me with my arm in a sling. Toby has said he'll take me there this morning and we'll try and work out how to open it from the outside so that I don't have to ask the clients to climb over the gate. On Wednesday morning I had a wonderful couple who wanted to buy the house at Queaux that Debra and Les have just sold. They looked at the house at St Martin L'Ars and were making really positive noises, talking about adding windows and taking off the render - two jobs that would make a huge difference to the prettiness of the house, but they texted me the next day saying that they had decided to buy a tiny little house in the Dordogne from James Scott.  Meanwhile, Kate Ryle from Beaux Villages is doing lots of viewings there too so it is just a race. I think perhaps I should stop doing viewings for a while as I'm not positive enough at the moment.

In other news, Theresa May has called a snap election on 8th June. She thinks she is strong enough to win by a landslide, and listening to Any Questions yesterday, I suppose this could be the truth. I was hoping that the Lib Dems would come out all guns blazing and have a manifesto based on putting a stop to this whole Brexit nonsense, and winning! But I think that's wishful thinking and it doesn't look as if they've got the balls , and perhaps now that article 50 has been triggered, everyone is resigned to Brexit and the people wouldn't vote against it anyway. So we need to get on with getting French citizenship. I need to find my parents' birth, marriage and death certificates when I go back to UK to see my lovely mother in the middle of May. Also, something rather exciting about that trip is that I have arranged to have dinner with Dave and Fiona and Alfie on the Saturday night. I haven't seen Dave for about 13 years so that really is exciting. I do need to lose some weight though before then as I can't get into any of my clothes . OMG, it is so awful. I hate being this fat. I must get on to a more positive plain and I think this is one aspect that is really important.

Harriet and Freddy are on holiday at the moment. Freddy went to stay with Gus for a few days and they ate nothing but takeaways! Oh, la honte! Harriet was really pleased when Freddy got home, although she and Toby have both had a headache for the last few days - maybe it's a bug.

Wonderful family

It's been a lovely weekend. Beautiful weather and I got sunburnt today, it only 9th April (Tilly's birthday) I potted up 5 butternut squash, 6 watermelon plants, and I think 12 cantaloupe melons. I've left them all outside so I hope it's not too cold over night. That's fine -I've just checked the weather and it says a low of 9 degrees tonight.

Fenella and Ben came back and Gus came just for the night and we had a lovely dinner last night. I made chicken with apple and chestnuts again as I had half a jar of chestnuts that needed finishing up. I also made my chocolate tart again which was yum and we had a really good laugh. I love it when they all come home. Harriet was not here sadly as she had gone to Paris with Matt to see an All Time Low concert. Ive been trying to remember what the jokes were as we really laughed and laughed - especially me and Fenella.

I weighed myself this morning: 76.7 kg! OMG! It really is time to do something about this. And my legs don't work either- I really struggle to stand up from a crouching position and obviously my arms don't work. Oh, I did make a poultice out of comfrey today and put it on my arm for about four hours and it feels better so I think I'll try and do that more often. I saw loads of YouTube videos about comfrey and I put it all around the feet of the fruit trees and in the compost. Then I moved on to watching loads of YouTube videos about permaculture, some of which were quite interesting.

Gutted

Today was the day of my X-ray. I woke up excited as I have been looking forward to the result of my X-ray for ages. Toby and I drove off to the hospital and everything went as normal. Booked in; sauntered off to corridor 4, waiting room 1, or whatever. The radiologist was a little boy who looked like Nicholas Lyndhurst as Rodney in the very early days of Only Fools and Horses. He tried to speak English which was sweet but as my French was better then his English we ended up speaking French. Anyway, he didn't seem to know what he was doing on the X-ray machine but after 3 or 4 tries seemed to think he had a good enough picture.  So off I went to see Rolland. The X-ray pictures weren't very good but anyway, you can see the bone graft linking up the two bits of bone so I was happy enough. Then, in time, in came Rolland and someone else, a nurse perhaps. They confirmed that the Graft they had put in was in the right place and then told me that I have to keep wearing the sling until the bone is fully grown as  last time the plaque got broken and they are blaming me for taking off the sling too early. So now I have to wear the sling day and night, I'm allowed to take it off to relieve the ache or stiffness but only if I am resting. Not to pull my pants up or do anything. I've got to be really careful not to break the plaque so I'm not allowed to swim, drive, or do anything that might risk the breakîng of the plaque by imprudence ( or impatience!) He said it is a bigger plaque than last time covering half my humerus but I must be very careful not to lift anything heavy or do anything basically.  I'm allowed to  go for walks as long as I promise not to fall over!

So I'm feeling very disappointed as I really thought I was going to be back to normal life today and the way they said "it's much to early for that" I think I'll be strapped up in the bloody sling as an invalid for another three months at least. Ehue! So I really need to see the positives - I'll try and rest a lot more and enjoy the summer. Spend time in the garden (although what I can actually do with one arm is quite limited ) and design the garden for the future. On a brighter note the seeds are really sprouting now and we are going to have a fantastic number of melons this summer. I think I've got 5 butternut squash, about 5 or 6 watermelons, a few cantaloupe and a few charentais but the honeydew are the only ones that haven't started sprouting yet. I bought some courgette seeds but I haven't planted them just yet. That's a job for tomorrow.

Today started off really well as before I even got out of bed Toby gave me a massage with coconut oil which was sheer bliss! Chris and Paul who are buying the house at Fougeret wanted to go over there and take some more measurements etc so they came to pick me up. I'm still not driving, which is awful.  The garden was lovely and we walked around identifying trees but the grass was very wet and soaked my shoes and my feet have been cold all day. Alexis is panicking about the longhorn beetles (capricorns in French) but I haven't rung her back yet.

The pudding I made last night was a chocolate custard tart on a base of crushed praline and cornflakes - an experiment for me as I just though it would be yummy. It was okay last night - still runny as it was just out of the oven but today it was amazing, so now I know that I need to make it in advance and let it cool completely and then chill it in the fridge. Also, I think it would be better in a wide shallow spring-form tin as I did it in a small one and it was too deep. The base was a bit crumbly but I think some melted butter and golden syrup would hold it together better .

The plants are great! There are about 5 butternut squash and a couple of melons. No charentais melons showing their heads yet. I bought some courage tote seeds yesterday to I'm looking forward to planting those too. And I need to finish weeding the herb garden and plant a load of coriander and rocket. Everything takes time. Tomorrow I have my X-ray in Poitiers so I really hope my arm is knitting this time. I really need to get fit and skinny as I'm feeling old, old old and really fat. Still, I will. Probably this time in three months I'll be closer to where I'd like to be.

I've booked flights to England to visit my darling Mummy on 10th May which is rather exciting.