Contents of article "27. July 2007"
Monday 2nd July
Wednesday 4th July
Monday 9th July
Wednesday 11th July
Sunday 22nd July
Monday 23rd July
Tuesday 31st July
Monday 2nd July
Wow! Isn’t nature amazing. For all my fussing and moaning about the swallow family who have moved all their goods and chattels into our porch, it really is fascinating to watch them be born, grow and prepare to leave the nest. Slightly less fascinating is the birdie toilet which they fill up daily - I wonder if it can be recycled into anything!! If you look very carefully at the second birdie photo, there is one little chap who keeps getting stuck in the nest with his bottom facing the wrong way - very useful I suppose if you need the loo but a bit of a conversation stopper with the rest of the family!
The weather here is still quite odd. Warm - very warm in fact - but quite cloudy for this time of year. On the upside, it provides a constant subject of conversation with people you don’t know very well. "Quel temps bizarre" "Ben, oui, c’est la première fois que je vois un temps pareil en juin - c’est pas normal" "Ben non, t’as raison mon pote, incroyable" "Eh ben quel temps bizarre" Et ben oui, pas normale du tout" ’Ben’, by the way, is the French equivalent to um/ur and is pronounced bang (or bing in the south of France)
The diet hit a rough patch this weekend when a rather severe case of red wine head sent me running for the bread bin and chocolate bucket. I’m trying to make up for it today by being EXTRA good but I could murder a flake!
Here you see me at Physiomins, my ’diet clinic’ at Pollestres, undergoing one of the treatments that I call the Michelin Man. It’s a kind of half body belt which inflates gradually, squeezing all your bits into one big mush and just when you start thinking you’ve become a thin person, it deflates and everything flobs back to its natural state!
Wednesday 4th July
The weather continues to provides non-stop conversation fodder. It is moody and temperamental - dry and warm but with heavy rain clouds hovering over the mountain ranges. The Canigou could have changed regions for all I know, it’s so long since it has been clear enough to see it, and flowers and shrubs are bobbing confusedly around and asking themselves "Is it summer? Is it winter? Should I open up and look pretty? Should I close my petals, take a nap and wait for spring?" On the other hand, there are very few flies and not a mozzie on the horizon so there is a silver lining!
Last week we went to the fete de la saint Jean in Maureillas to watch the fireworks and the children jumping over the fire. I STILL can’t quite get my head round this odd tradition of sending your child to risk third degree burns to celebrate a happy occasion. If you look carefully at this (rather badly taken) photo you will see a fireman standing by with a hosepipe, just in case the kids start sizzling!!
Monday 9th July
Well, goodness gracious, bless my soul and other such shocked statements! Yesterday, I drove to Barcelona alone and unaided to pick up my Dad - AND GOT THERE IN ONE PIECE!!! Yes, OK - ’tis true that I drove round the Barcelona Ronda three times until I happened upon an airport sign (if you head towards El Prat, the Barcelona airport , take the Ronda de Dalt), and yes, ’tis also true that it took me three and a half hours to get there, but I did it! What an achievement and with the minimum of insults and rude hand and arm gestures from other road users! My beloved golf convertible is getting a little past these type of jaunts, being well into her 90s (that is if you count a car’s life in dog years) and apart from burning my nose, and waking up with chapped lips this morning, and burnt shoulders, I went, I picked up, I conquered.
And talking of waking up, we woke up to the first dull day in ages, after a night of storms. Well, it’s obvious innit! We’ve got my Dad staying so bad weather is only to be expected! It’s gone down about 10% compared to yesterday, cool enough for me to have made soup for lunch - you know - the kind of home made soup that you make on chilly days and drink in front of a blazing fire!
Wednesday 11th July
The weather is still quite dull, with shards of sunlight occasionally piercing the cloud - warm though and dry with a light wind. Dad is finding it very warm so it should be interesting when the sun really comes out tomorrow as promised by Météo France!
I have a new toy! It’s a battery loaded fly swat racket and as you swat, you press a little yellow button on the side and it gives off an electrical current which fries the flies. Only 5€ from Bricomarché in le Boulou and cheap at half the price, just for the great fun of zooming around the house swatting everything that moves. I cynically tried it out on my hand when I got it and trust me - it packs a hell of a punch! Lulu is being very unreasonable about the whole thing and won’t stand still long enough for me to shock him, so I am a woman on a mission - he will not escape Killer Kate for long!
Sunday 22nd July
After a week of wall to wall sunshine with hot, hot temperatures, there is now a little cloud cover, making the weather more bearable if one actually wishes to be active - which I can’t say I do! I abandoned the diet towards the beginning of my Dad’s stay here, knowing that I would not be able to resist the evening apero of nice nutty nibbles - an obligatory part of summer in southern France - and of course the accompanying glass or two of wine that just cannot be ignored - oh, and a cold beer or two on a hot day - surely it would be rude not to!
However, back to the grind tomorrow when I once again renounce all things nice, to follow my Physiomins regime to the letter (ish) and lose some more weight in my quest to become tall and slim! The photo shows me in the machine where I am wrapped in cling film and boiled-in-the-bag - it’s all quite pleasant really and not at all claustrophobic as one might expect as it’s very easy just to lift the lid or even climb out if you’re not enjoying it.
In fact, it vibrates slightly at the same time as it steams you, which is apparently very good for the circulation. I must admit, I feel great after these sessions, and totally refreshed and ready for an evening of heavy binge eating and drinking!
The traffic is building up throughout the region and going anywhere involves leaving ten minutes earlier if you want to get there in time. (Of course, if you want to arrive ’à la catalan’, you should leave ten minutes later and pop in somewhere else on the way!) The temporary Le Boulou bypass, which starts at the Intermarché and cuts out the town, seems to have eased the constipation in Le Boulou a little, but the permanent bypass which avoids Le Boulou and its ZI (zone commerciale) completely doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly at all. The road to Le Perthus is a solid line of traffic from Le Boulou through to La Jonquera at certain times - avoid going after lunch for example. I do know a short cut round the back which totally avoids all the traffic but if I told you I’d have to kill you - top secret and all that. Suffice it to say that I took friends Rosy and Alan into le Perthus last week and it was with an evil chortle that we sailed past all the traffic jams and red angry faces sitting in queues and looking impatiently at their watches!
The new fly swatter is proving a bit of a failure. Once I hear the buzzzz, and by the time I find my glasses, and put them on, the villains have moved on to pastures new and I’m left sitting there, flailing my arms around and beating the air in vain! Lulu is keeping up his ridiculous refusal to be swatted and electrocuted, and disappears every time I pick up the bat - after all I’ve done for that boy!
Monday 23rd July
I cannot tell a lie - it is very, very, very, very, very warm here at the moment! In fact, according to the clock and themometer over the chemist in Maureillas, it was 34° this afternoon, and who am I to call them fibbers, particularly as the chemist is also the mayor! So, although I feel terrible about all you poor people stuck in a rainy, flooded England, pining for the fjords of the Pyrénées Orientales, spare a thought for us out here, stuck next to the pool in these mopbrow temperatures, unable, due to this horrendous heat (with a rather pleasant breeze but we don’t mention that) to do more than open a bottle of very cold beer, which we are then forced to swig down in one for fear of dehydrating...... Que la vie est dure!
Here are are few photos of Oliver by the way - our stalwart representative of England (along with a German and a ...... French??) in the 14 July celebrations. Well done Oliver (I presume you’re the good looking one!)
Tuesday 31st July
July is about to slip away into August and the weather is like a dream! Hot sunny days, warm, balmy evenings, that intangible feel of summer in the south of France that we read about in Pagnol’s Souvenir d’Enfance and Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse. And oh, the smells! Rosemary, sage, and thyme growing wild in the garrigue, and wafting in on a light breeze of heat, lavendar mingling with suntan oil and barbeque.............. This is what I wake up to every summer morning!
The pool is causing me big decision problems in the morning! When I have my morning shower, do I wash my hair knowing that I will be in and out of the pool and need to wash it again later? Or do I leave it until the evening, by which time I can’t be bothered and go to bed with chlorine in my hair, to wake up to the same decision predicament the next morning? Life here is full of these brain teasers! Bisou loves the pool and isn’t the slightest bit bothered about her hair - she falls in regularly and has to be rescued by a knight in shining swimming trunks. Although she can swim fairly well as you can see from the photo, she prefers to be carried out where possible and placed ’par terre’, particularly if there are some very dry people in the vicinity to shake next to. She picks her victims with care and tends to go for visitors when available!
And whilst we’re talking about the pool - meet Colin! Colin is Olivier’s new and extremely expensive (in my opinion - over 2000€!) pool robot who creeps around the pool, crawling up walls, climbing steps - a little wonder. I was quite happy with my previous pool cleaner (Olivier) but you know what it’s like with boys and toys - if it makes him happy! Why is he called Colin and not Robbie or Rupert robot? I honestly don’t know. Olivier arrived with him in the back of the car one day and said ’Here’s Colin!’ When quizzed on the etymology and history of the naming of the robot, he was unable to come up with a suitable explanation - but Colin he wanted and Colin he got!
