The English Armchair Abroad

Summer

The summer has passed in a daze.  We had such beautiful weather in June and July that I can forgive the dull August weather this year.  It hasn't been as wet as last year and although I would have been grateful for a few degrees more it's been lovely not to have to water the garden throughout the month.  And of course all those trees we planted will be happy to have had a decent amount of rain to put their roots down.  So many of our friends go away in August and this year, like last, they feel hard done by.  Well, you don't go down to Biarritz for the cold and the rain do you?!  We just love being here in the summer months;  if it rains on holiday you feel hard done by but if it rains at home you just wait for the weather to change again!

In addition, we have had all three of our children here for a lot of the time and they have been wonderful helping us clear banks and tidy up the garden.  The dogs love all the activity and one in particular loves wading into the moat when he decides he needs to be refreshed!  Two of the boys are brilliant cooks and have helped out in the kitchen and the youngest got his older brother to help him make Banoffi Pie last night for supper - delicious and so many calories there's no point worrying about it!  Sadly, next week this will change.  The older two are travelling during September before going back to university and the younger one starts at Lycee.  It will be very quiet suddenly.

We have, as always, been playing a lot of tennis.   The courts in the village are kept in excellent condition and are at our disposal as members.  It is rare that we find other people playing although we do still reserve the court in advance "just in case".   I have tried to introduce a Monday evening "Club Night" where anyone who is a member can just come down and play with anyone who turns up.  Of course, this is France and they are not used to this idea of not organising, confirming and double checking everything in advance;  but last night the five of us went down and were thrilled to find three other people already on the courts.  We chop and change so that everyone plays and noone is hanging around for too long - it is really good fun.  I really hope that I can get a bit more enthusiasm from the Comittee to publicise it for next year.

This morning in a fit of enthusiasm I signed up for three tournaments in September.  They all seem to be during the first three weeks so I will quite literally be juggling balls between the three.  But I do love it.  Win or lose, I don't care.  I'm afraid, though, that you will be reading a lot more about tennis in the next month!

What has happened to Typepad???

I have been experiencing great frustration with the new Typepad Compose Editor.  It is much slower than the original editor, the font size and selection is a nightmare, links are easier but not always reliable.  And now I discover that I have lost half the blogroll links that I put on. 

All bloggers depend on readers and many of these are other blogger who recommend their favourite sites to others by putting that site on their blogroll.  This helps with finding new readers and also with the all important Google listings.  So I am not happy.  I will try and rectify it tomorrow but I am seriously thinking of moving this blog to Blogspot with my other Blog:  Up the Garden Path

If anyone is having problems perhaps you could let me know and also what you are able to do about it - any advice would be welcome!

Blind Granny

Some years ago my parents had dinner with my mother-in-law, Blind Granny.  They had a lovely evening but afterwards my father asked me if he should have told her that her shirt was inside out.  This is a difficult one and what my father didn't know was that BG had already telephoned me in great embarassment as she had discovered her mistake.  So yes, perhaps my mother should have mentionned it!

BG has something called Retinitis Pigmentosawhich really started to take effect about 15  years ago although she had bad eyesight before this Basically, to begin with, she had no depth of field;  she could focus on only one thing at a time.  Imagine you are playing a game with two dice.  You throw the dice and look at them - both of them.  BG would have to find one dice and then the second one - hopefully before she'd forgotten the first number!  This is more of a problem at a dinner table with wine glasses.  If she wanted to fill her glass she would look for the bottle and reach for it, not realising that the wine glass was in the way and this would inevitably be knocked over.

The problem is always not letting someone feel useless.  With a bit of sleight of hand one of us could usually reach the glass and move it slightly to the left/right before a problem arose. 

Another problem that arises is the contents of the fridge.  Whenever we go to stay with BG we always check the use by dates.  That carton of cream that's been pushed to the back...is it meant to have pink in it??!! 

Our son went to stay with her and all was going well until she went into his bathroom to hang up the laundry.  As usual she put her scanner (which dials the telephone numbers and is essential to her) on top of the toilet seat.  Except that he had forgotten to put the lid down and in it fell. 

She doesn't like other people using her computer because it has been set up especially for her so during that same week H would use her cable in his laptop.  But he didn't always put the cable back into her computer.  Simple for a five year old to plug it in but a nightmare if you can't see the wretched hole it goes into!  (You'll be relieved to hear that he started thinking more laterally after that and lasted the month after all!)

We live in a house with a downstairs bedroom which is known as Granny's room.  She has no problem with stairs generally but ours is a spiral staircase and the steps are not of even widths.  Even I can't do them in the dark.  To get from the kitchen to her bedroom she passes through three other rooms which I have always thought of as a straight line.  However, I was wrong!  She was telling me how once she is through the first doorway she has to bear just a touch to the left to be sure of getting through the middle of the second one or risk bumping her head.  Then it's straight on with the sofa on her left to hold on to.  Small step up and then she's home and dry.  On the way she is likely to meet any one of the three dogs, only one of which is intelligent enough to get out of the way in time.  Not to mention the odd chair that might have been thoughtlessly left in her path.

And then the garden...the moat is obviously a potential hazard to say the least!  But BG has it sorted.  She makes her way with seeming confidence from the house to the other side of the bridge without any trouble, walking with two sticks in case she trips on an unexpected object.  On then down the first part of the track when she turns back in case she gets lost.  Usually Titch the dog goes with her and will help to guide her by trotting in front of her.  She can't see him but I have the feeling he wants her to feel safe.

What is the kindest thing you can do for someone with little or no sight?  I'm not sure but depending on the circumstances it IS a kindness to mention the inside out shirt, or the gravy stain, or the badly odd socks.  It's kind to just quietly cut up the meat in the kitchen so that s/he doesn't have to ask you to do it if it's awkward.  And one last thing.  BG likes to make a cup of coffee first thing in the morning to take back to bed (who doesn't?).  We have a very good system for her to carry it without spilling.  She puts the cup into a small souffle or pate dish, with high sides, so that any spills go into that.  It's better than a saucer which is too shallow and it leaves her other hand free to find land marks on the way back to her room.

L'Opera de Bauge - Eugene Onegin

Last night we were taken by some very kind friends to see Tchaikowsky's Eugene Onegin at the Opera de Bauge.  This is a small opera festival, started in 2003 by an English couple who bought a small property in France and who wanted to create something along the lines of Glynebourne.  You take along your picnic dinner (although this can be ordered from the organisers) and during the interval you eat your dinner in the gardens of the property - pray for fine weather!  

Each year they hire the most wonderful marquee - the outside is clearly a marquee and despite the wonderful paintings you start to wonder what all the hype is about as it  doesn't prepare you for the inside.  Once you go up the wooden staircase and through the doors you are taken back in time to somewhere in the 18th century.  Wooden loggia boxes around three sides and the stalls raked down to the orchestra pit.  There is even an upper tier, also in wood.  I know some of my readers are from Pays de la Loire - if you haven't been already do go next year.  Even if opera is not "your thing" you should go for the experience;  just be sure to download the synopsis beforehand as the opera is nearly always sung in the original language and although they have subtitles (in English and French) these don't always help!  You can get more information by going to the Opera de Bauge website.  Not mentionned on the website (unsurprisingly perhaps!) is the toilet facilities.  I can't speak for the mens' obviously but the ladies, well, it isn't very big.  You sit down and the door is quite literally in your face.  There is no hook on the door either so if you have a bag that you can't hang around your neck I'm not sure what you are supposed to do with it - no floor space at all you see!  But, they were clean and there was plenty of paper.

Eugene Onegin was the first opera I ever saw (not that I've seen many since then!) and I can remember my mother telling me to pay attention during the "letter" scene as it was so beautiful.  I had completely forgotten the story but once again I was transported.  Romance, intrigue, beautiful music and arias to make the ladies in the audience swoon!  It was beautifully sung by Russians in Russian - and that really was a master stroke on the part of the organisers;  there was no effort with pronounciation and this really helped the music flow magically.  The orchestra was a good size - I counted 45 but I couldn't see everyone;  45 may not be considered a large orchestra in Covent Garden but believe me it is HUGE at Bauge in this wonderful theatre.  As a result there was the power to build up suspense at appropriate moments.

I suppose the better something is he more the little let-downs stand out.  The climax of the opera comes at the end of the first half when Onegin is challenged to a duel by Lensky because Lensky's fiancee (Olga) has been flirting with Onegin.  Now, let's be clear about this.  A duel is involved and Lensky is shot dead.  To be honest, the flirting wasn't worth it!  Olga sang beautifully but no-one is going to fight a duel over her again unless she puts some effort into the flirting!  A little thing maybe, but crucial to the plot.

The production was superb.  The dancers (often a weak point in an opera) were excellent and really made it seem like a ball.  The audience are asked not to clap until the end of the act but I think this is a shame.  The second half opens with a second ball and the dancers come into their own;  I was not the only one who was disappointed that we were unable to show our appreciation. 

But these are little things and totally forgotten when Prince Gremin sang the bass aria all about his love for Tatiana.  Not much to say really, except I wish someone would sing to me (or about me!) like that.  It was fabulous!

No time to sit in the armchair

I have mentioned before that the summer is when our friends and family (well, some of them!) come and stay.  I never blame people for not wanting to stay in the winter.  This house is built with log fires in every room for good reason.  Unfortunately, most of the chimneys are blocked up and in any case, who is going to carry the wood up to the attic for the fire.  Not to mention clean it all out again!

So the summer is our busy social time and we love it.  In addition to our our English friends, there is also the migration of Parisians and others who come to Anjou in the summer.  A lot of them seem to have family in the area and so down they all come.  Truly, Anjou seems like two different countries called Winter and Summer!

This summer, so far at least, has been lovely.  A blazing June, a lovely July with just enough rain (admittedly torrential when it came) to keep the vegetables happy and hopefully an August that will live up to its reputation as a hot month and not a wet one. 

At the moment we have my sister-in-law staying (the same sister-in-law that made our beautiful Silver Wedding Present) with one of her daughters and also my mother-in-law - she of Granny's Blog - who is looking a little older but is just as able as ever to join in all the fun and games.

At the moment we seem to be eating a ridiculous number of cucumbers.  For once I have managed to get the vegetable plot to a state where we are eating almost totally garden produce.  OK, so I don't grow mushrooms but that's just about the only thing missing!  However, the cucumber crop has exceeded all expectations.  In desperation yesterday I decided to harvest all the cucumbers that were ready for eating so that they wouldn't get too large (some of them already are)...and so we have just over 40 cucumbers in the fridge.  If they last for two weeks that's, erm, just over three a day, not including the ones still in the garden...I have found one or two recipes that will either turn them into relish or form part of a soup for the freezer and will post these over on Up The Garden Path during the next few days.  The next glut will be beetroot but I have an excellent beetroot/chocolate cake recipe which freezes well - again I'll post it Up The Garden Path!

Now it's back to the kitchen.  Forgive me please if I am not posting as much as I should but teenagers seem to consume on a fairly large and regular basis!