I've had visitors

Written like that it sounds like an illness, like shingles or measles.

The prospect of visitors feels like I might be coming down with something because I focus on all the cleaning and house organisation that I don't do and I get impending anxiousness. It takes a while for me to remember that I choose friends who don't judge me on such things and relax into enjoying their company. They came all the way from America and brought me shoes and washed-out-looking linen of the sort I adore and our mouths were fully occupied the whole time with eating and talking - yes even in our sleep - it was exhausting.

Today they've gone and I really miss them

Visitors

In front of my house is an area of concrete that, up until this year, has been barren. I've been setting up containers for planting, arranging my irrigation system and sowing things.

I spent most of today making a wooden planter to sit on the boundary wall, there are lots of weird joints and additions where I've patched up mis-saws and mis-screwings but it isnow  full of soil and seeds. I ache all over - in a good way. I'm hoping I planted stuff that makes binding roots.


Yesterday my friend returned from her travels and came to see me.  I left the front door open and went to the gate to meet her, we got waylaid by my seedlings. While this distraction was going on - Big Pigeon slipped in behind our backs.

We finally went into the house, shut the front door and went downstairs. We headed into the back garden and heard an enormous thumpsmash sound. We looked up and saw the bird inside the house, hitting the upstairs window for a second time.

I ran up to let it out. Closing doors behind me as I went expecting a panic. But Big Pigeon was just standing patiently by the window waiting for me to open it.

Wrong house - he said as he flew out

French Markets Are So Marvellous

8th November
Despite the fact that filming is over and we are on a break. I can’t actually prise The Director away from his directing tools - he is still compiling 'selects reels’ (putting key sequences on dvd) to send to the writers. He never remembers that he always works through holiday periods and is perpetually amazed by the work he still has to do. Our parents have got the hang of this phenomenon by now and just as they deal with the fact that they have to visit us in cold, uncomfortable houses, they understand that their son (in-law) will only be sporadically visible.

Overcompensating a bit, I took my in-laws up into the mountains to a market I’d not visited before. It was a long drive, the town was bigger than I realised and the market very popular, finding parking was difficult. Fighting our way through the crowds we were soon exhausted and felt the need to return home, but I couldn’t remember where I’d left the car. When we did find the car, it was blocked in by a bigger vehicle which had been obscuring it from view.

We did finally get home, lit a fire and started preparing the cépes that we’d bought at the market - they were full of worms.

Territory Marking

6th November
My parents went back home to recover and The Director’s parents arrived yesterday so I took them out for lunch. A café in the neighbouring village offers a 4-course lunch with as much wine as you dare drink for 11 euros, it is run by Jeanne, whose elderly father potters around the dining room pouring the leftover wine into fewer bottles, (I didn’t pay too much attention to this until the last time I came and poured a large, purple hornet into my glass). The clientele are mainly blue-overalled men who work for the utilities companies. A lop-sided man is always there, he eats with his friends, clears all the tables and stays to help with the washing up, I think he's sweet on Jeanne despite her alcoholic husband who sometimes turns up to stand behind the bar and steal money from her till.

Jeanne finds the animosity the British residents show towards each other very funny, and tells stories about her English customers getting on each other's nerves. I have now had the good fortune to witness this comedy first hand.

Yesterday lunchtime my in-laws and I sat near another table of English people, they were getting up to leave as we were served coffee. A lady from their group detoured to us and placed a single small cup in the middle of our table, saying,
We didn’t want this so I thought you might appreciate a real coffee

There was something wonderfully ridiculous about the idea of us taking turns to sip at the tepid coffee. I pulled my face straight and asked why her coffee is more ‘real’ than ours.
We come here every day – the owner here spoils us with coffee from the espresso machine, yours will just be from the cafetiere.

The encounter has made my in-law’s visit, with any luck it will obliterate the experience of finding themselves trapped in their room after having unsuccessfully tried to repair their door handle.

New Blood At The Bar

2nd November
The filming really is done for this year, the Camera Boys have returned to the UK - we are now in visiting season. Since Bruno's August visit we have been without doorhandles - he replaced the original knobs with a set that can’t be made to stay fixed on. My parents arrived here a few days ago. They have known me long enough not to expect much in the way of comfort but I bet they had hoped for door handles. No matter - once given a pair of pliers and a monkey wrench they soon got the hang of getting in and out of their bedroom. My mother hasn’t really got the upper body strength to haul the front door open on her own yet though.

We were also suffering from a smelly drain problem. Our squalid kitchen has a concrete sink with a hole through the back wall. The water, and whatever else you put in the sink, washes through to a concrete gutter running the length of the back of the house. Over the years it has silted up and grown over with weeds, the autumn rains have made the area behind the kitchen swampy and putrid. My repeated calls to Landlord and plumber have been ignored. Mum put her foot down, The Director and my father got out the shovels and a wheelbarrow, dislodging unspeakable hideousness to make a drainage channel.

As a further treat for my parents I took them to the bar for some of Mrs Strange’s gin. The Senior Strange’s have already slipped away. But Kurt the tattooed son has returned from Copenhagen with his wife and turns out to be perfectly good at serving gin with flat tonic in a dirty glass from the iceless bar.

Kurt’s wife, Courtney has translucently pale skin, she has only recently started her tattoo collection, they both dress exclusively in black. They tell me that their band had split anyway and that they are going to liven up the bar with 'live bands, gourmet food and that kind of stuff'. Courtney is animated, she says that Kurt’s great in the kitchen - I’m not sure if she means he can cook. Buoyed up with enthusiasm for their plans (and feeling guilty that I’ve now booked to show our film at the village hall) I suggest that they put on a supper for after the film show - I’ll publicise it on the flyer I’m going to put around the surrounding villages next week. Kurt is a sullen kind of chap, he asks what sort of thing I have in mind,
I suggest casserole-type dishes; a daube, coq au vin … a cassoulet?
I’ll do a cassoulet
Something about his response is not putting me at ease.