Road Trip part one. Are we going?

How long is it since I last updated the blog?  Oh? That long?  Well, how long is it that we have been married?  WHAT?  10 years?! No?!  Yes actually I worked it out on my fingers and everything.  So ten years of marriage, house renovated, offspring produced and growing and animals happily installed but we had never actually been away without the children.  It was time for a weekend just for us.

A famous earlier outing was when she was my wedding car.

The first problem was what to do with a weekend, I mean we are pretty childish in our tastes (give us theme parks, caves and seaside castles and we're happy) but it seemed a bit pointless (and unfair) to do kiddy things without the kiddies.  Not being ones for golf and spa holidays or swanky hotels with pools, adult holidays seemed a boring option too.  Romantic rural retreat? We live in one.  Paris? meh, been there and not really fussed. Then, to my husband's horror, inspiration struck.  My pride and joy, my impractical, my lovingly decorated 2CV is the one thing I can't do with the children.   Love my car as I do, I have to admit that it is far from being the safest vehicle on the road and that, added to a lack of decent rear seatbelts and the impossibility of using child seats,  has led me to ban my children from travelling in "ma belle".  So to celebrate the newly roadworthyness of my car we (I) thought that a road trip would be an ideal way to celebrate our anniversary - we would return either loved up and ready to embark on another ten years, or divorced.

Problem two, where to go.  Many criteria now had to be met for this trip.  Firstly - a maximum distance of no more than two hours drive (in a normal car), this was in case of break downs, father-in-law would be able to fetch us back easily - she has never been known to let us down BUT we hadn't been far in her for quite a few years.  Seondly, no mountains - weight in a 2CV is all important and two of us in her could have proven too taxing. Thirdly, no motorways.  Finally a few wateralls for us to park and walk to, and picnic spots, many picnic spots would most definitely be required.   This left us with the choice of one destination, the Creuse.

The Creuse is the next door "departement" to us and I adore it.  It is full of things like this and roads like these  (photos from the Creuse tourist office)

but to many french people it is imagined as something more like this. 

 So there you have it.; destination chosen and car prepared.  Children posted off to Grandma and Grandad and the adventure to begin.Tune in for road trip part II to find out if our marriage survived when I have finished selecting the photos......  Oh and do have a look at the Creuse - it gets an undeserved bad press.

Shabby chic, cheapy-cheap scrapping bunting flags.

Doncha just love bunting?  I have it up whenever I can, birthdays, obviously, royal events (see previous posts) celebratory BBQ when the animals arrived and now summer high teas.  I saw some lovely shabby-chic flags somewhere or other and admired them but they came with a hefty pricce tag.So I decided to rustle some up myself.    Also this week my daughter has been asking me if we could do some sewing together - last year we made lavendar bags - sooo...  my scrappy bunting became a joint sewing projet .
Uber easy to do,  I rummaged round my scrap stash and found some colours and patterns that I liked together (I keep even the littlest of scraps so I had quite a choice).  Next I drew a paper triangle pattern the size I liked -  the best proportions I found was baically an isosoles triangle where the length was the same as the width (mine were 14cm along the top and then I measured 14cm down from the mid-point along the top) and added an extra 1.5cm x 14cm rectangle on top of the triangle which
made attaching the trangles together much easier. (I would have had my daughter draw up the pattern but her Dad had got robots out so I ended up doing the preparation bits by myself....)

Then we cut out zillions of triangles and sewed them right sizes together leaving the top open, this turned into great practise for leaving the needle in the fabric to turn a point! Also she learnt pinning and the great importance of RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER, only one wrongly pinned triangle ;-)   We turned them out the right way and  sewed them into a length of ribbon folded in half - bias tape would have worked well but I didn't have any in the house!

Et voila, easy-peasy, cute and cheerful for a summer tea,  a quick easy sewing project for a six year old AND finished in an afternoon.

Spring in my step.

Everyone is moaning about the weather at the moment and I can't deny that I have added my share of grumblings too.  It has been fairly rotten for May, we haven't had a decent run of sun for months, it seems to manage a day or two and  then collapses with exhaustion over the sustained effort and lets the wind, rain and general coldness run riot for the following week until it can bear to drag itself out of hiding and stares in astonishment at the hoards of people suddenly stripping off jumpers and winter coats again.  But miserable weather aside Spring is still lovely, we have leaves and flowers again and the little sun that we have seems to intensify the colours as it comes through the clouds.  And since you can never be sure when the sun is going to sink into depression once more, the slightest glimmer of blue sky sends the whole family whooping out into the garden.

So today when the lashing rain abated, the thunder stopped and the sky blued up a bit it was a mad dash outside to get the new plants planted, the chicken shed cleaned out (new chicks arriving soon, watch this space) and set the two natural lawn mowers loose in the garden, and also to gather the lilac that survived the storm so now my kitchen smells gorgeous too.  Not so bad for a wet day.

Lilac and herbs.

With a little help from my friends.

Things had been going a little too smoothly recently.  Found a new job, sun was beaming frequently, children happy and doing well at school, animals well settled into a routine and a particularly lovely Easter weekend   spent with our family hunting for chocolate eggs in the garden and a long walk with the rest of our village round little country tracks, donkey and pony in tow.  Spring had well and truely sprung.  Of course all of this idyll meant that we were well and truely due for a shake-up.  First the pony went lame - and little sympathy from the vet who took one look at her and declared her obese.  My fault I know but she is a total drama queen when it comes to feeding.  Powders and injections to be given and exercise to boot

What did I do?

.  Great.  Two days later my parents returned to their boat in the uk too.  And then work phoned, 'could I possibly do two extra days work a week'? Having just received the vets bill I agreed, sigh, not part time work then.  I think that I really got miserable when, having reduced the size of the field and stopped the hay feed, Caramel the donkey decieded enough was enough and he was off.  He was brought back to me having been found lurking round the back of the recycling bins.

Then I found that I had lovely friends.  One came up every day to do Sophie's injections (the mere thought of doing them myself terrifies me) and despite earning the hatred of the pony she managed to get all her doses of jabs into her.  Another is coming to help me lunge her as she really hasn't got the hang of it - and four hands are certainly better than two.  Then, whilst trying to organise child care for when I need to get to the aeroport, friend three - misunderstanding what I needed her for, was going to do the four hour round trip to meet a flight for me! " No no, just get my kids from school!! Then finally having poured my woes out to a friend back in England I came home from my first day of work at the new school to a beautiful basket of spring flowers that she'd had delivered.

Honestly it was almost worth the stress of the last few days.  

Growing realisations

Until this weekend I think that I believed that my childhood lasted for about thirty years; from birth until the age of 16.  erm yes, I know the maths doesn't really add up.  And actually Mum doesn't really believe that I have grown up at all (although I refute this, I have to admit that the evidence is on her side - I got Playmobil for Christmas and J came home with robots for me the other day.... but I digress)  My reasoning goes thus;  I remember doing many different activities, each one for a very long time, I had lots of toys each of which I played with for decades.  I went to three primary schools and was convinced that I went to each for about three years.  So you see, when you look at it like that my maths was not so skewed.  But this weekend I popped into my parents attic to find some more age-appropriate toys for my own two children,   and then it happened, I started opening boxes, finding memories and re-calculating my age.  It went something like this; "Wow here's my brownie uniform, oh I was living in Berlin then so I must have been 8ish and I went for YEARS, we did LOADS of stuff and then when I went to guides I was SOOOO grown up and mature, I must have been, what 16? Or there abouts - ah yes here's my guide handbook, let me see I was ....10!!!!!  I was 10!! Noooooooooo  10 is still little!! But I was so BIG when I went up to guides, quick close the box" 

The 'uniforms' suitcase

Next box "oohhh pony riding stuff, yippee, the rosettes I won, the speical badge to wear as a "helper" for the show - oh yeah, that was when we were allowed to tend a stall over the lunch break, and here's my sweatshirt for riding, dear me Mum must have shrunk it in the wash it's tiny, but I was nearly fully grown by then, what with riding and taking part in shows and being trusted to sell things to people, Heeeey here's the programme let's have a look at the date......... AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH I was 11"  And so on.  And then the toys.......  I now realise that I must only have played with some of them for a few years, maybe sometimes only a couple of years.. but they seemed to last for decades.  Anyway, painful as it was I now realise two things, a lifetime is exactly that when you are a child, the whole of your life, and it needs to be filled with fun and activities and memories in the making.  And secondly; don't open boxes.

Winter Idyll ?

Well possibly the lack of posts through autumn and winter has alerted you to the fact that autumn and winter are not quite as idyllic as all that.  I could talk to you about the roaring wood fires, the hot cappuchinos in the cosy living room, candles lighting the centuries old stone walls,  the stews bubbling away on top of the stove all day to be wolfed down with hunks of french bread and the joy on the children's faces as they race into our bedroom having seen the snow piled high in the garden.  But,  I could also tell you about the daily loading of the wheelbarrow with forests' worth of logs, the relentless cold in numb toes that manages to get through two layers of socks.  The worry of ferrying children to school and ourselves to work on icy, frozen roads and maniac lorry drivers who still think that overtaking little cars is a good idea in a blizzard.  Soggy clothing hung round the fire to dry and missing gloves mysteriously re-appearing weeks later in someone elses coat pocket. And the worst, oh the worst worst is that first inch of skin making contact with the air outside the lovely snuggly duvet on a Monday morning when you know that this is absolutely the very last second that you can possibly stay in bed because really it is now time to get up and if you delay any longer you really will be late and there is now no more excuse for not getting out of bed, no matter how warm it is under the covers and how cold it is in the bedroom and that has now made you another five minutes late but my goodness isn't it cold out there.  KIDS GET UP WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE AGAIN!

French Summer Idyll

As M is now back at school after the LOOOONG summer break I thought that it would be a good time to look back at the holidays.  So, what did we do?  Well after the canal boat jaunt  (See here) we returned to a fairly sunny but horribly horribly dry France.  Having missed the patronal festival - much to the children's disgust (there is a roundabout, just one)  - we realised that we had three days before the end of the Souvigny medieval fair.  No time was to be lost.  The Souvigny fair is fantastic.  Set in Souvigny with its abbey and beautiful church where several Ducs de Bourbon are buried, the whole of this small medieval town makes a great effort to become as authentically medieval as possible while still keeping it fun.  Geese are herded through the streets, street jugglers, fire-eaters and musicians perform on different corners, soldiers march through the town and a few horsemen try to avoid trampling the crowd.  There are stalls a plenty  and the  hypocras flows.  Many people go in costume which adds to the crowd of street artists.  We go in full medieval dress too which is just so much fun! Anyway here I am;

Apologies for the poor quality but in the attempt to stay as authentic as possible we left the big camera at home and relied on J's mobile phone cunningly hidden in a deep pocket, but the settings were wrong.  There are loads of photos here if you are interested, but not taken by us.

The rest of the holiday flew past and what we did and when we did it is now a bit of a jumble. There were quite a few afternoon teas, an apero that ended at midnight, picnics down the country lanes and the ever present brocantes.  We had a lovely day out in Charroux - a pituresque village full of little artisan shops and a fantastic new restaurant that serve the very best smoked salmon "galettes" (french savoury pancakes) with a pink grapefruit salad that I have ever tasted.  And to finish of in style an old friend came over from Scotland and we enjoyed 10 more days of frolics.

In the Sioule gorges 

  Donkey walking

And finally there was time for a last go in the park as the leaves are now beginning to fall.  Back to school we go - and UP a class.  But that's a whole new adventure and another day to tell.