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A
Year of French Living continued...........
Sadly
in March my Mother died on her birthday, mercifully quickly and without
pain.
Easter
here marks the start of the local fetes and the first is in our local
town of Rochebeaucourt. Our daughter Leah and her husband Chris came
down for the week to supervise us and empty the local supermarkets. The
streets are decorated, the bars and cafes stay open all hours, huge
floats decorated with literally thousands of hand made paper flowers are
towed through the streets and a collection of village bands play through
the night until the musicians collapse from exhaustion or beer. March
also marks the start of our serious work season at Nadaillac. Nicky
wades into the four acres of garden, helped by our good friend Pierrot,
a great fund of local knowledge, plants and dubious wine, while I
commence my annual battle with the swimming pool. The repairs and
redecoration of the houses, after a winter standing empty, take a fair
amount of time and effort, life isn't all wine and Saucisson you know.
Not our best letting year
but unfortunately all France seems to have had a
bad season in 2000, too much spending on the millennium perhaps. Anyway, summer was good
and the holidaymakers enjoyed
themselves and were well behaved. We enjoyed
ourselves as well and were well behaved for most of the time. The fete at Blanzaguet was
superb as always, a three hour six course lunch with wine, aperitif, coffee and cognac followed
by a two-hour professional cabaret all for 85 francs.
As always in our lives we have our hounds. Fern,
my Grands Bleu, is now nine and a half and still fit and foolish as ever though she does
suffer a little from rheumatism these days, but then so do I. Nicky has done well with Pepper this
year winning her first French obedience competition by a mile. Our Basset
Bleus have
enjoyed a superb showing season coming first at innumerable shows throughout southern
France. Limoges, a bitch we imported from France at the beginning and brought back with us,
had a beautiful litter of six pups at the end of August, two of which are destined for UK next
year.
Autumn brought visits from a number of good
friends and also the Race of the Ramparts. This annual event is held in our local city of
Angouleme and is an old fashioned series of street races. It used to be a full-blown Grand Prix
until it was decided that the circuit was too dangerous, Fangio winning in the fifties. Totally
unlike a modern grand prix which I find boring, here you have a wonderful atmosphere over
the three days. You can walk through the pits, talk to the drivers, examine the cars, and
what cars! For me the highlight is the Bugatti race, 17 beautiful old cars, the youngest 75
years, and still capable of over a 100 on the twisting circuit with
it's infamous walled
uphill double Z bends. Autumn here is truly beautiful, the foliage on the trees enough to
rival anything in New England. The deer and wild boar in the forest are abundant although with the
abnormal amount of rain we have not had many cepes, the culinary king of mushrooms, none
at all in our small wood this year. And now it's almost Christmas, I hope the weather stays
good enough for me to smoke our Christmas turkey outside again this year, the two I did
last year were delicious. And please no more Hurricanes.
I'm still chopping trees.
Andy
& Nicky Spillane
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