Showing posts with label Depot Vente. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Depot Vente. Show all posts

Tuesday 15 September 2009

20. The final countdown

Tuesday, 15th January 2008. Readers of a nervous disposition look away now… Between completing on the house and the run-up to Xmas, I had an overnight stay in hospital in Bayonne. I'd needed a minor ‘op’ to remove a stone that had taken up residence somewhere in my plumbing.

While still in the UK, I’d paid for a BUPA consultant and had had ultra sound scans but they were inconclusive. My GP referred me to a consultant at an NHS hospital shortly before we were to leave for France. When this date arrived, they carried out various tests which included ultra sound scans and cameras (but strangely no X-ray), the consultant's advice was that my problem could have been one of three things – the third of which was a tumour!! He wanted – in his words – to “open me up to see what it was”. I thought I don’t think so.. I thought it best to wait until we were settled in France where I’d have time to work through the whole process from start to finish.

So it was that once in France and we’d broken the back of all the tedious jobs and we were approaching Christmas, I finally went to the doctor.. I was quickly referred to a consultant who straightaway sent me for X-ray and 10 minutes later told me that what I had was a stone and definitely not a tumour. (Phew..!) It was as simple as that. With my layman’s hat on I can’t help but wonder why the NHS didn’t X-ray me..? He asked me what I was doing on the following Monday and with that, I was booked in for an ‘op’. I was amazed at the professionalism and speed of the whole process, the modern facilities, the friendliness and approachability of the doctors and the consultants.. It was difficult not to make comparisons with my experience of the NHS.

I went in and had the stone removed and when Madame brought me back home to the gîte, to my amazement Madame D came upstairs with a basket containing a bottle of wine, a packet of coffee, a box of sugar and a large bar of chocolate.. She said it was traditional in the Pays Basque.. and Madame and I were very touched by this kind gesture as they don’t have much in the way of material wealth.

This afternoon, I had my French class again which I enjoy. We all ended up talking as there were only four of us today and one was Vanessa, a new girl from Colombia in South America. The teacher asked me if I'd like to ask Vanessa a few questions? (Ding dong!) Faced with this approach, there was no option but to put my natural English reserve on hold and it wasn't too long we were all freely engaged in murdering the French language in a variety of ways using all available cover. Why didn't we learn French this way at school? All I can remember are endless lists of new vocab to be learnt and death by grammar.

Wednesday, 16th January. We went to Spain this morning to do some shopping and as we approached the border, we were both once again struck by the beauty of the countryside and the mountain scenery. There’s something about the fold and the lie of the land here that we both like very much. Many of the peaks are steeply angled and of course the landscape is dotted with these beautiful white-painted Basque farmhouses that are often situated on top of hills. I think they do this to get the evening breeze when it’s hot in summer. While I do have a soft spot for the Malvern Hills, I'm afraid that they're small pommes de terre compared to the Pyrenees.
We decided to have lunch in Spain while we were there.. We had a tortilla each, which here is like a potato omelette with ham and cheese in it. With that we also had a round of hot bread with a slice of lomo (pork with piment d'Espelette) and cheese on it each. To ease its progress down we had a sangria each followed by an espresso..

When we emerged outside, I looked up at the sky and it was a real dark midday sky – almost black. It was the colour of a gun barrel – a very threatening dark blue-grey.. We went into another shop for some food shopping and while we were in there, there was a resounding crash of thunder followed by the sound of torrential rain on the roof.. The poor pooch was stuck out in the car on his own as they don’t let dogs in shops in Spain, unlike in France..

Thursday, 17th January. Rained quite heavily for most of today.. We went to the house this morning for 9am to wait for the company who were going to deliver the new bed.. They couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us an exact time it would arrive so we had to hang around until they finally came just before lunchtime. The kitchen fitter, Eric, is one of Peio’s Basque Mafia (another one!) and he’s another superb worker. By the time we left he’d done so much and neatly too. Every day we do a few more ‘little’ jobs.. I sometimes wish I’d made a note of them all. It would be quite a daunting list if we’d seen it at the start.

Yesterday, for example, we had a look at what system we’re going to use to get TV, internet and telephones in the new house. There are so many different possibilities these days and the tarifs of the various companies are all subtly different depending on what you want. It’s a real minefield. They make it difficult for you to compare like with like. Also what kind of phones to buy.. And, no, they’re not all the same nowadays.

The day before we’d finally tracked down the right council department – after visiting about four different council departments - that issues wheelie bins as ours had vanished. They said they’ll drop one off at the house this week. Tick VG. Another job done. I think we do about 2-3 of these little jobs every day and we’ve been doing this every day since we arrived here.

Today we’re going to look at renting a small van for the move on 30th January. Plus we’re going to look at another TV/Internet/telephone provider in Bayonne called Numericable. With many of these companies now they offer free phone calls within France and all the EU (including Britain) and N America… And that’s 7 days a week, not just week ends! However, when we arrived there, we were discouraged by the number of dissatisfied customers.. We’re also going to shift all the new bathroom fixtures and fittings from the front bedroom where they’ve been stored for the last few weeks to the back bedroom which has now been finished. Another job done. Once we’ve done that, the painter can get cracking in the front bedroom. Next week, the new bathroom goes in too..

Madame's going to start sweeping out the sitting room and the dining room today as we’ve asked Eric if he can give us a price for sanding the wooden floors in there and refinishing them. He’ll have to get a shift on as there’s only next week clear before the removals men arrive with all our stuff the following week.

Friday, 18th January. We went to the house this morning and Eric's almost finished. He had the fridge in and he was just screwing all the handles onto the new units. And then that will be about it in there.. There’s now very little trace of the previous owner’s decoration evident and the house is very light now. Eric is also an interior decorator and we’ve asked him to do the downstairs wood floors as his estimate was very reasonable. He’s going to sand the floors in the sitting room and dining room on Monday and then he’ll put a couple of coats of varnish down. I asked the painter this morning in a roundabout way what he liked to drink.. He said whisky.. I surprised him (and myself!) by giving him a bottle of 12 year old Glenmorangie on his last day as our way of saying thank you for a good job well done..

It was still grey here today after a couple of days of rain. The river that runs down the valley was running very high and the water was brown..

Saturday, 19th January. We went to the house this morning to meet Peio and two of his Basque friends from the Spanish side who were going to fit the work tops and the sink. They came today to measure up exactly as there’s always a world of difference between the plan and reality. Eric is going to sand the floors in the sitting room and dining room on Monday so we had a major tidying up session. We swept and swept and swept getting all the dust up.. One of the side-effects of the painter's technique is that it produces a lot of dust as he rubs down with sandpaper between each coat. But a determined sweep gets most of it up and we went over it at the end with a damp cloth. We did the upstairs too while we were at it. It really needs a good vacuuming as a lot of dust has got down between the cracks in the floorboards.

The pooch was wandering around in his new garden but he was slightly uncertain of himself. Not quite sure what’s happening. He looked like he didn’t know whether to stick or twist.

After I’d finished sweeping and shifting things around I went outside and sat on our terrace to cool off as I was covered in dust and sweat. Madame reckoned that it was warm enough to eat outside. I’ve always dreamed of living somewhere where you could sit outside to eat..

We went to St Jean de Luz this afternoon and when we got out of the car it was like May… blue skies, brilliant light and the sun was warm on our faces. It was superb - I left my jacket in the car and just had a sweater on. Madame wanted to go there as there’s a bedding shop that she wanted to have a look at. It was open so in we went and 20 minutes later (this is the kind of shopping I like!) we came out with a bedspread and two pillow cases for the new bed and a blanket as ours were getting a bit thin. As a bonus they were in the sales too.

After that we walked along the front and found a bench facing the sun and sat there for a bit like a couple of owld codgers.. Well, why not? It was really just the job and we were reminded how lucky we are to be living here. After that, we found a table outside in a crowded café in the main square where we sat and people watched for a while. It was so warm and we kept telling ourselves that it was mid-January!

Sunday, 20th January. This morning we drove just up the coast to a place called Hossegor in Les Landes. Although it’s just outside the Basque Country it’s very different. The landscape is different – the soil is sandy and so the trees and the vegetation is different – it was thickly wooded with pines. The style of houses is different too (right). Gone are the large white Basque houses with the wood facings painted blood red. We had a good long walk along an inland canal that was less of a canal and more like an inlet that was open to the sea. It became a large lake surrounded by houses that looked wince-makingly expensive. While we were there I saw a young couple getting out of a black Range Rover Sports - a familiar face I thought - it was Dimitri Yashvili (the French rugby international) who plays for Biarritz Olympique.

A white van with Spanish plates stopped outside the house during the afternoon and it was our Spanish Basques with our granite worktops.. The two Basques were quite happy to work away well into Sunday evening so we left them to it and sure enough, the next morning, when we opened up, the kitchen looked magnificent with its gleaming green granite tops. They'd done a beautiful job.

Monday, 21st January. Went to the house first thing (9am) and Eric had almost finished (!) sanding the sitting room and dining room floors..

After this we went to St Jean to go to the bank to tell them of our impending change of address and then, on the way back, we stopped at a Depôt Vente where we bought a wardrobe in cherry wood for one of the bedrooms. It should be a good match for a chest of drawers we already have in cherry wood and it will give us a bit more storage space. It comes apart so they’ll deliver it (on 1st Feb) and put it back together again. It’s 16½C, in bright sunshine and hardly a cloud to be seen..!

A chap could get used to this!

Thursday 3 September 2009

17. Noël

I was just saying to Madame the other day that so far we’ve seen no reference to the approach of Christmas in any of the shops – no towering displays of marzipan or jars of mincemeat or John Lennon singing “So this is Christmas”.. or Easter eggs in Woolworths. (now - unbelievably - closed for good in the UK I heard)

So imagine my surprise this morning when I heard on the radio the unmistakeable sound of 'Jingle Bells'…! It made me think – well here we are with less than 2 months to go to Christmas and still no Christmas Lights.. The French just don’t have a clue do they.. (irony!) I would guarantee that, for the last few weeks, supermarkets back home will already have been fully set up with dedicated aisles for such traditional English Christmas essentials as German Stollen bread, French marzipan, Belgian chocolates, Turkish delight, Italian panettone cakes and the like (we contribute the spuds!).. and deep freezes full of turkeys the size of small boulders..

One afternoon we went into Bayonne to a “Depôt Vente”. This is where you can take things to sell – mainly furniture.. The Depôt Vente sets the price and then takes a percentage of the proceeds. We went there looking to see what they had in the way of armoires. There were some in stock and while they were certainly cheaper than we’d seen in antique shops, it was fairly clear why. I think these are the kind of places that you need to drop in every week to see the new stock as it arrives - except that, like stuffing mushrooms, life is just too short for some things.
After this, it was starting to feel like evening so we came back. Madame had bought some chestnuts so we had these roasted with a cup of tea (living dangerously!).

For the French holiday on 1st November, we planned on going to Les Aldudes - a village buried in the Basque mountain country that straddles the entrance of a valley that, while it runs deep into Spain, is still French. The valley's chief claim to fame is that it produces arguably the best Jambon de Bayonne in the area. And, of course, many of the other products that the Basque cuisine is famous for.

There is a saying that some lofty Parisian food critics are fond of quoting that the only implement needed in a kitchen in the South West is - a tin opener! While this was meant as a clever put-down, nevertheless I think it does hit on a truth. Much of the great products of the South West can be preserved.. Think of confit de canard, foie gras, haricot beans in graisse d’oie (goose fat), rillettes, cassoulet and pipérade (though personally I have some doubts about this last one) et al... There isn't much that can't be put in a can or a jar - but it's none the worse for that. It's possible to buy all these products via mail order too!
Post visit report: Well, we had a great day out today high up in the Pyrenees.. First of all, the weather was supposed to be 3C in the morning warming up to 12C in the afternoon. Anyway, we set off and as we climbed up and up the skies cleared and we were gradually able to see the start of the high Pyrenees in the distance – the mountains near us were only about 2-3,000‘ high – further east, I think they go up to about 9,000’ or even higher. As we climbed, the full extent of the Pyrenees started to unfold in front of us.. and just when we thought we’d seen one high mountain, in the distance behind it, we’d see another even higher one - and in the blue misty distance behind that one, another one..
Les Aldudes
.. and yet another one beyond that. And all the time, the valley sides were getting steeper and steeper as we wound our way ever-upwards.. It was difficult to keep one eye on the driving with all this magnificent mountain scenery around us and at one moment, I thought I saw the pale outline of a snow-covered white peak that was higher than the rest, way way off in the distance and I thought, surely not, a snow covered peak so early in the season but on the regional news when we returned home they featured it too. First snow of the year in the Pyrenees..

Stirring mountain scenery and it was difficult to keep my eyes on the road as the country opened up before us. We ran up the valley on an old single track smuggler’s road that climbed up towards Spain and near the top we pulled over to eat our lunch.. I opened my window and looked out across the expanse of a great deep valley – white farmhouses with red roofs were dotted across the valley floor. It was through rugged border country like this that the men and women of the wartime Comet Line (organised by 24 year old Andrée De Jongh, a brave Belgian woman) famously helped Allied airmen to escape down from the Low Countries, through the occupied zone in France, across the Pyrenees into neutral Spain and home via British-controlled Gibraltar. In fact, in Sare, a Basque village close to the border, I recently discovered a newly placed memorial (below) to Victor Ithurria, a highly decorated and legendary figure who served in the SAS with great distinction during WWII before being killed on 25th August 1944..

I saw some large birds flying around in circles and I realised I was watching vultures (griffon vultures..) circling around in the air currents.. As I watched, I saw one furl its wings and dive down to the ground, followed by another, and another. Soon, there must have been 20-30 of them down there. Whatever was down there under a tree was getting a good pecking. Another British pensioner who won’t stop for a snooze after lunch again! We first saw them here a few years ago when we were up high in the mountains.. I remember thinking at the time, if I didn’t know better I’d swear they were vultures. When we got back to the hotel, they told us that, yes, there were quite a few vultures up in the hills.. Certainly makes you think twice about falling asleep in the sun after a good lunch..

We next came to a small village, ie, about 5 houses together, and one of them was a hotel with a restaurant. Out of interest we stopped to look at the lunch menu… it was £8 for a 4 course lunch…! (these are 1960 prices!) Next time we go up there, we might just try it. Anyway, we continued higher up the valley and soon we came to the border. There was no border as such – just a garage and a smoky café.. (smoking still being allowed indoors in Spain)

The countryside looked spectacularly good in its burnt copper autumn colours under a cloudless deep blue sky. After this, we went to St Jean Pied de Port. This is a very old town in the heart of the Pyrenees where Madame’s father’s family originated.

It’s on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. People still come from all over the world to walk the route. It was getting really warm now and after blocking various pavements for a while we found a tea shop and sat outside in the sun. Madame couldn’t believe that she was still wearing her sunglasses on 1st November..!
Main street of St Jean Pied de Port

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
At the moment, there’s still that holiday feel to life down here because we’re still "camping out" in the gîte with a minimum of our belongings. I just have the one English book and that’s “Out of Africa” - which I’ve read twice since we’ve been here - as all our books are in storage. As a compulsive reader, forgetting to pack a box of books in the van was a major mistake.

This is "Tarantella" by Hilaire Belloc.. (try reading it aloud)

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda?)
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap! of the clap

Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing, glancing, dancing,

Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in
And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?

There is another verse but I like this one.