Contents of article "12. April 2006"
Monday 3rd April
Thursday 6th April
Tuesday 11th April
Friday 21st April
Monday 24th April
Friday 28th April
Monday 3rd April
Help! Trampoline season is back! The minute that the sun peeps its yellow head around the mountains, the gathering of the ’boys’ is inevitable.
My next magasine, now renamed PO Life, is going to the printers today and I AM STRESSED! Choosing a front cover has been particularly difficult - something not TOO used before but something typical and representative of the PO. The Canigou is of course the most symbolic image of the PO but everybody’s done it. Well, so have I now, mainly through a total inability to make a decision. An advantage of having had a couple of professional photographers here for the week (my friends Alan and Dave) has not necessarily helped as they took so many superb photos that I have been spoilt for choice!
Final decision
The front page of PO Life
When our friends left, we took them to the airport via the lake at St Jean Pla de Cort, near Céret. I have never made it there before 9 a.m. but it really was worth getting up for. There was a mist on the water that gave the whole lake a dreamlike quality and nobody around to remind us of reality - very quiet, very still. The restaurant on the lake should be opening soon - April I think they said last year - and it is a particularly beautiful setting to drink your wine and watch the sun go down on the lake.
Thursday 6th April
Big, big excitement. we have a builder and he is going to start our extension in two weeks. Youpi! Suprisingly in a region which has high unemployment, it has been incredibly difficult to find a building firm and pin them down. We have had SIX ’dévis’ (firms round to look at the plans and give us a price) over more than eight weeks and are still waiting for four of them to send us their proposals! They just don’t seem to want the work. However, we have finally settled for a very nice chap who has a building company in Le Boulou, and he’s going to get his men ’on the job’ at the end of April. It looks like I might have spadefuls of naked men wandering around my garden again this year.
It is a problem in this area though - actually getting people to ring back, turn up for quotes, send in the quote, give a date for a job, keep to it..... We have had so many wasted mornings or afternoons just waiting for various tradesmen to turn up. The PO is a region for holidays, retirement, painting, drinking, swimming, sunning, walking, climbing, skiing, biking.... but not for working if it can possibly be avoided!
Anyway, back to the extension. It’s going to be an independant studio for my Dad so that he can come over here and stay as often and as long as he wants. Olivier had a vague idea that he wanted to build it himself. Unlike in England, one can build one’s own home, once one has planning permission for the build (which we have - more about that later). However, a building firm gives a ten year guarantee called a ’décenale’ and Olivier could hardly grant one to himself. Without this, it would be quite difficult to sell the house. I will follow the building in PO Life so look out for it!
The weather is going through adolescence at the moment - moody and unpredictable. This morning it was damp, cloudy and miserable - this afternoon sunny and so hot we needed to put sun cream on our arms - this evening cloudy and depressing. "Mi-avril" all the locals keep telling us "L’été commence vers le 15 avril" "il va faire beau à partir de la fin avril, notez mes mots" (doesn’t really exist - just thought I’d do a literal translation of ’mark my words’ for no other reason than that I’m a bit silly!
Tuesday 11th April
Heading off in five minutes for Leeds via Barcelona and Jet2.com. Nothing unusual about this I hear you say. Well, this time, I’m going to Barcelona by public transport! Gulp! I don’t have a clue how to take trains and buses. Do they still have conductors? How will I know when I get to my stop? I’ll let you know all about it when (and if) I get back. Just hope Spanish train drivers are better than Spanish car drivers! Adios!
Friday 21st April
Barcelona Sants
Figueres station
Je suis de retour! Though I say so myself, I coped admirably with the intricacies of Spanish public transport and even managed to find myself a good looking Spaniard/Venezuelan to carry my suitcase (heavily weighted with Sainsbury’s ‘plat préparé’ curries) on the return journey. I think he must have felt safe with me!
The total cost of the train from Figueres to Barcelona Sants station plus shuttle bus to the airport, was just over twenty euros for the return ticket. The trains were spot on! Clean, punctual, comfortable and not overcrowded (although this could well change in high season) and I thoroughly recommend them. Figueres is about twenty miles from La Jonquera (the first town over the Spanish border) and if you wish to visit Barcelona, it is worth leaving your car there and covering the rest by train. Barcelona Sants is right in the city centre so when you arrive, you’re there! If you want to plan your train journey in advance, take a look at the Spanish train timetable.
My only complaint on the way there is that Olivier wedged my suitcase into the luggage rack so that when I arrived in Barcelona, I couldn’t get it out. I had to stand on the seat, huff, puff, pull and shove whilst several macho looking Spaniards watched with disinterest. One of them finally gave in in disgust and gave me a bored and silent hand down with it, showing no reaction whatsoever to my grateful "Muchos, muchos gracias. Suitcaso multo lourdo y moi signora petito y pathetico" Could it be that putting an ’o’ on the end of a word doesn’t really work?
Arrived back to lovely weather, but today the clouds returned and peals of thunder and lightening sent Bisou heading, at speed, for the woods in panic. She returned after half an hour, (at which point I was seriously considering calling out the gendarmes,) soaking wet, covered in mud and grass cuttings and smelling like a dead sheep!
The buds and blossoms are beginning to mature all around us, despite the temperamental weather, and the PO is preparing to don its Summer attire. The vines, which I find quite stark and threatening in the Winter, have started to sprout green appendages and the world around me is slowly turning different shades of green, red, pink, yellow and white again.
Monday 24th April
The sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip hurray! Summer has finally bullied away the rainclouds and squeezed out the Tramontane, replacing them with blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Beautiful!
Today, I woke up to a throb throb throbbing and literally felt the earth move! Yes, the diggers had arrived to begin our extension and what a racket. I seriously considered getting up to ask them if they could drill and bulldoze more quietly but settled instead for a pillow over my head. It’s all very exciting. On Friday, they marked out the building with white lines so I was able to spend the weekend wandering in and out of each room, scheming and planning!
Today, they have dug the foundations and are coming back tomorrow to ’coule le ciment’ This involves lorry loads of liquid ciment which they pour into the foundations, on top of the steel reinforcements already placed in the trenches, to ensure, I suppose, that the house doesn’t fall down. There will be a more technical explanation in my article in PO Life for those of you who might be genuinely interested in building techniques in France.
Friday 28th April
Not much action on the extension front recently, as it takes a week for the ciment to dry properly. They will be back on Monday to continue, so for the moment we’re stuck with mounds of earth everywhere! It’s like living in a moleholery (or whatever mole abodes are called). The weather, of course, has been beautiful and dried up the earth to perfection, in preparation for the windy weather of this afternoon, which has blown soil into every orifice every time we ventured into the garden.
However, NOTHING stops the intrepid Hareng family from digging holes and moving rocks, and we have spent most of the afternoon doing just that - digging holes and moving rocks! The rock moving came to a dramatic finish when Lulu uncovered an ’orvet’ - a grass snake - hiding amongst the stones and panic ensued. Lulu of course insists that it’s a ’vipère’. Well, judge for yourselves.
I’m plant-sitting at the moment for a friend, an enormous responsibility as I am not green fingered and vegetation in my care tends not to make it through the week. Every time that I look at it, it seems to wilt. Long live plastic house plants - I’m good with those!
This morning, I received delivery of my new camera. I lost the battery charger for the last one, and kept forgetting to buy ordinary batteries, so it gave me a good excuse to go internet shopping. It might even improve my photographic skills, although I’m not holding out much hope!
