23. Spring - Fêtes de Bayonne 2008

I think we'd been in the house for 2 months and we had just about got ourselves straight when our first visitors arrived.. By the end of September 2008, five months later, we'd had 21 visitors - and with Madame's health problems, this is something we won't be repeating - except for very special cases. She only knows one way to entertain and that is to push le bateau out.. She is a truly wonderful cook but for days after each set of visitors had departed, she would be absolutely worn out.. It was too much for her. So as much as we’d like to invite friends down here, I think for Madame’s sake, we’ll have to say come down by all means but we won’t be able to put you up. Which is a great pity but there we are.

We'd heard a lot about the famous Fêtes de Bayonne from various people.. This is the annual fiesta that takes over the town for 5 days & nights every year at the end of July/beginning of August. Last year, it was calculated that 1.3 million people came and this year was no different. Normally, Bayonne has a population of around 40,000 so you can imagine with well over a million extra visitors that the town was well & truly swamped. Many visitors come from the hinterland of the Basque region itself as the Fêtes are a celebration of their Basque identity but they also come from further afield. If parking can be problematic at normal times, then during the Fêtes, it's a complete nightmare. In our avenue, people normally park on one side only and there’s usually always a space free.. However, during the Fêtes, cars were 'creatively' parked on both sides up on the pavement as only the French (and the Neapolitans) can do. This meant that we couldn't go out in the car because if we did, we'd have two chances of finding a space upon our return: fat chance and no chance. It would be no use us putting the car in our garage as some eejit could always be relied on to block the access to it.

 

The Fêtes started off at 10pm in the main square in front of the Town Hall.. Fortunately we’d arrived there early and we’d found a shop doorway to stand in (which kept us out of the crush). After a few words from the Mayor there was the mother of all firework displays – made up largely of explosive detonations that painfully rattled your chest.. Everyone was in white and red - white trousers, white shirts with a red bandana, and a red sash round the waist. Don’t ask why – it’s just how they do it here. Everyone – but everyone – was dressed the same – they all joined together in a display of pride in their separateness, their Basque identity, their distinctive Basque culture, their Basque music, their Basque dancing and their unique Basque language. Language specialists have no idea where or what the origins of the Basque language are – it’s like no other language in Europe or anywhere else. Here’s an example so you can see how different it is: Zuek egunkariak erosten dizkidazue. This means: “you buy the newspapers for me”. Knowledge of any other European language won't help in decoding this.

The Fêtes really were a spectacle.. Despite the bars being allowed to serve alcohol till 3am and stay open till 5am.. we didn’t see many drunks.. Many slept in their cars.. and cars were parked everywhere.. The town was full of little bars that people set up, each street seemed to have their own band and it was complete bedlam! The narrow streets were full of Basque marching bands beating out old rhythms with their drums, accompanied by the reedy shrieking of an instrument that sounds like a duck call..

One evening our local butcher (supposedly the best butcher in Bayonne) at the bottom of our avenue organized a dinner in the street.. We had to sign up and pay in advance then just turn up on the night. They’d put tables out in the middle of the road to seat about 100 of us.. (only in France!) The price included the menu, the wine and there was music provided by a small band.. It was supposed to start at 9.30pm but of course it didn’t start until 10pm.. The main course was boned leg of lamb – which was delicieux! Fortunately they came round again with seconds! I think we left about 1am..

They had a pop concert one night at the bull ring (which is about 200 yards away) – which was extremely loud.. They'd spent all afternoon doing imaginative sound checks ("Un, deux.. un, deux..") but as the concert finished about midnight it wasn’t too bad.

We’ve been continuing to tackle all the outstanding jobs – some big, some small – one by one. As the dining room shutters were a bit rotten at the top, we had to have some new ones made by Eric. He’s very, very good and not expensive. He’s got the Basque work ethic too..

He appeared one afternoon at about 1.30 with a stack of planks and by 6.30pm he’d finished. He’d taken all the metal fittings off the old shutters and re-used them where he could. Next day, I had the ladder out and I put on 2 coats of the Basque red that we’re supposed to use. All the woodwork of the houses in the Basque country is painted either blood red, dark blue or dark green. Now and again you’ll see a brown one.

So you can see that life here is all one mad round of fun, washing wine stains out the curtains, putting clean straw down, trips to the bottle bank and re-seeding the lawns after the starlings have been at it – AGAIN!

And now I'm just off to buy the newspapers in Basque.. or maybe not.

22. Wide Loads

This morning we woke up feeling in need of a dose of adrenalin-fuelled high octane excitement - the sort that can only be generated by indulging in some cutting edge retail therapy - so we went out to buy a new toilet seat..! The one we inherited in the downstairs bathroom was past its sell-by date (enough information - it just was!) and was long overdue for replacement. You really haven’t lived until you’ve visited 3 DIY superstores to measure up the myriad toilet seats out on display. You do have to wonder at some of the ones we saw.. like the clear plastic one with barbed wire embedded in it - why?

We had a toilet seat problem.. and it's not often that you hear this discussed in a blog.. Perhaps the previous occupant(s) of the house were "wide loads" because for some unknown reason she/they had chosen to fit a special Godzilla-size toilet in the downstairs loo and not many seats appear to fit it. The only one that fit the bill was lavishly decorated with a highly coloured tropical scene from the Maldives.. Now we have to explain to everyone intending to use it why exactly we chose this particularly garish model..

On the other hand, Madame is absolutely delighted with her new kitchen.. she says it makes her feel like a star.. with everything to hand it’s all very practical. She’d had this idea for a tall wrought iron unit with glass shelves (for cookery books etc) to go in a corner and we walked into a lighting-cum-furniture shop and, “Stone me!” (in the immortal words of the Queen Mother) - there it was – the only one they had and in the exact colour (to match the walls) she wanted too.

More jobs crossed off the list.. put up the first aid cabinet and also tried to install the new small flat screen TV for the kitchen.. There was no aerial point in there so we’d bought an indoor aerial which turned out to be a waste of money. It didn’t seem to matter much where I pointed it, at best we got a black and white picture in a snowstorm.. but luckily the shop did say that if it didn’t work, they’d take it back. So no prizes for guessing where that’s going.. There’s an aerial socket in the dining room and now we’re thinking of taking a feed from that and drilling a hole through the wall to get it into the kitchen. However, I’m rather reluctant to do that as the walls are so pristine but I don’t think we have a choice.

This morning, I finally took the plaster off my middle finger – that was the one that was cut the worst – and it seemed to have healed over now. Unfortunately it was right on the knuckle where it flexes and the doc said I’d have to be careful to try and let it heal without doing too much physical activity.. (“Music to my ears!”) No, to be honest, it’s been a major limitation with all the jobs that needed doing.. I just had to try and avoid gripping things too tightly with my right hand.

I'm off now to have an arduous physio session with a bottle of Ricard..

21. Farewell to the gite

I’m glad my stay in hospital is behind me.. I’ve just got to go back on 28th January for a final check-up. The staff were really friendly and a cut above the staff in NHS hospitals.. (in my experience)

I remember going to visit my Mum who'd been taken into the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Unit at a NHS Hospital (that shall remain anonymous) in 2006. As I arrived, an ambulance was parked outside the entrance to the A&E Unit and its crew were cleaning out the inside of it – one of them was holding a bloodied stretcher that looked like it had come from a chainsaw massacre while the other chap was hosing the blood off it. I wouldn’t have minded but this was in the entrance to the A&E Unit and everyone walking in or out had to walk through these pools of bloody water..!! I couldn’t believe it..!

1st February 2008. We’d settled on 1st February 2008 with our Hereford-based removals company as the date for the delivery of the bulk of our possessions which had been in storage since the summer of 2007. The New Year came and went and as we neared February the last few jobs in the house neared completion. We had to seek permission from the Town Hall to block the traffic in the road while the removals lorry was unloading.

On the day, we were at the house at 7.15am ready for the removals lorry which was expected at 8.15. We turned the heat on and waited. We cordoned off a part of the avenue with some barriers that the council had kindly dropped off for us. I was half expecting a call from the lorry asking me to direct them here but nothing. Madame was getting increasingly agitated as the witching hour approached with still no sign of them.

At 8.15 I was pacing up and down outside when suddenly the big lorry turned into the avenue on the dot of quarter past.. (with the “Dambusters March” playing in my head!) The driver was the same chap who’d moved us from the cottage into their storage facility in Hereford - so we knew him. Anyway, he and his mate soon got cracking and despite regular pit-stops for cups of tea on the hour every hour (unlike our Basque boys!) they soon had everything unloaded. Where did all these boxes come from I asked myself..? Boxes and still more boxes appeared. I opened one and found they’d packed half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits we’d left out for them to have with their tea in the cottage five months earlier. I resisted the temptation to offer them to the men..

We managed to position most of the boxes in the right rooms and then we went back to the gite where we were staying for our last night. It was reassuring to see that our old things had emerged safe and sound not only from storage but also the long trip down. I was desperate to read a book other than "Out of Africa" - great though that is.

The next morning we were up early to fetch the rented camionette (light van) from nearby Ustaritz which we were going to use to transport all our things from the gite to the house.. In the end this evolution took 2 trips. We said our final goodbyes to Monsieur and Madame D who in turn invited us for a coffee in a few days time. Then we returned the van and headed off to the house. In the meantime, the last touches were being applied to the kitchen and the bathroom.. When we’d finally created a bit of space around the sofas, we opened a bottle of champagne that a friend from work had kindly given us - with a few bits of smoked salmon.. It felt good to be reunited with all our things again.

On the Friday morning, our new TV was delivered and connected up. We’ve now got hundreds of channels of TV from around the world – including Al-Jazheera which I don’t think we’ll be watching. They also brought round the new dryer and fitted that on top of the washing machine.. Before long Madame had most of our stuff put away and we were starting to see the walls again.

On the Saturday morning at about 8am I was putting together Madame’s old armoire (wardrobe) when I tripped over a piece that I’d put down on the floor and I went down like a sack of spuds - a sack of pommes de terre doesn't have the same ring to it does it? I landed on top of the attachment fittings for the electric radiator which hadn’t been put back up and whose edges were razor sharp. On getting to my feet I found I had a sliced cut across the back of my fingers on my right hand (across the first joint) which I hardly felt but then they suddenly started leaking blood.. Madame patched me up as best she could with what we had to hand and then I drove into town to find a pharmacy that was open because here in France, pharmacists will dress a wound for you as well as - here's a surprise - identifying edible from non-edible fungi.

When I found one, the woman took one look and said “’Opital!”.. When I got there I was whistled through to the Urgent Dept and where we found to our astonishment that the doctor there was a young Welshman.. His parents live here for six months and the other six months they spend in Welsh Wales so he grew up speaking French.. I had my hand x-rayed in case some foreign body had got into the cuts and I got a tetanus jab.. and they tied my hand up like a parcel and said no work for you this weekend. A result!

However, after a few idle minutes though, I started carrying on with the million and one jobs that needed doing, of which one of the most time-consuming was changing 20+ plugs on everything electrical from the familiar old British 13 amp to your basic untrustworthy foreign jobbies.. (I jest) And so the days of that week passed.. each day we’d open a few more boxes and put things away, downstairs in the basement or out in the garage to go to the dump.

One morning we went to the gite for the coffee as promised.. and as 12 o'clock approached Madame D brought out a few nibbles.. then it was time for an 'apero'.. at which point Monsieur D came in from the farm - then a bowl of soup appeared.. next minute, there's a roast farm chicken on the table, wine glasses, and we're having a real farm lunch.. cheese.. then a tarte and then coffee and a glass of Basque liqueur.. When we finally came to leave, they presented us with a porcelain Basque pattern coffee service.. Words failed me at this point. They are two of the most generous people I've ever met - we'll never forget them.

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!