More grammatical challenges!

Double rainbow seen from the bathroom window!

After last week's interactions with the men at the gas heater/appliance shop, this week the stakes were upped considerably with the arrival of Monsieur Mekidesh (good French name...??) to look at the pool mechanisms.  I had carefully rehearsed "backwash", "skimmer valve", "how do we balance the chlorine and ph levels after testing"....and other useful phrases!  All of which were required, and more!  Luckily Mr M was another amenable young French man - we've struck it lucky so far when testing out the language skills.  He's obviously used to dealing with expat English residents and their swimming pools, as he was able to drift into a bit of English when I got stuck.  He very kindly spent ages with us, going through all the procedures to keep the pool in good working order, so hopefully we can continue without him.  French contractors have a very bad reputation of typically not arriving when they say they will, not arriving at all, taking forever to get the job done, and doing it very badly.  So we were very impressed with Mr M, especially as he rang at 2.15pm to apologise for being late, and he would get here as soon as he could - 15 minutes later!

Feeling buoyed up by this experience, we returned to the amenable men in their gas/appliance shop once more, and succeeded in buying straw for the chickens, a rat trap (there seems to be a large family in the roof over our bedroom, who seem to think its funny to get their dancing shoes on at night and party away for hours!) and we even discussed the fire permit laws!  We need to get on and burn all our garden waste before 1st March apparently. 

The wild boar continue to get into the property so building a fence good enough to keep a large boar out has been a priority.  Having done a bit of electric fencing in my time and knowing how wet noses and 5-8,000 volts make for loud squeals I would opt for that as a solution.  However that is not available in this case. The first challenge is to complete the fence using whatever equipment is available in the shed.   What the French call a post is what I'd call a decent garden stake, plus they are not ground treated and they're too short.  The second challenge is the terrain.  In amongst trees, steep, uneven and sloping to the river.  The first thing to do is to clear the fenceline of Turkish Barbed Wire (see below) and after much creativity a fence of sorts is completed.   Not what I'd consider a professional job but ok considering the situation.

Unfortunately the boar are still getting in but not via this part of the fence - it's all a bit of a mystery.  The previous house sitters came to the conclusion that they were swimming the Argen River and we're starting to think this could be true although the river is flowing pretty swiftly at present.  They must be very good swimmers is all I can say.  The irrational thought of camping out to unravel the mystery is now being considered.  That's keen but you can't have a pig getting the better of you.  I'll keep you "posted"!!

This week the temperatures have picked up considerably, with a couple of days getting up to about 15 degrees.  We went for a walk on Wednesday in an area called Les Plaines des Maures, only about 20 mins drive from here.  There are a network of tracks which can be walked, mountain biked or ridden by horse.  We saw a lot of cork oaks there - these are a variety of oak tree which has a very thick cork bark.  The bark is harvested and used for various composite cork products, not usually wine corks.  It's fairly obvious which trees have had their bark harvested, as it leaves a scar and doesn't grow back nearly as thick.

The countryside certainly wasn't the prettiest, but was quite varied with some good views back towards Le Thoronet at the end.  For those of you who have read the last post on this blog, you will remember the education session on yellow route markers?  I showed you photos of the creme de la creme of signs?  Well this walk had the more basic variety.  See if you can spot the route markers in the next three photos!  And one of them tells you to turn around, as you're going the wrong way...

You've certainly got to keep your eyes open, they're not as easy to spot as the red/orange or white tin markers we're used to in New Zealand but they're more informative!

Back to the business of improving the language on Thursday, with the task of persuading the builder, Monsieur Simionetta, to come and replace the insulating shelf in the chimney which came down recently after an "event" which didn't make it to the blog!  Mr S is more the sort of French contractor I was preparing myself for - past retirement age, speaks not a word of English, speaks more Provencal than French and impossible to get hold of by phone....  However, after a rather excruciating phone call on his mobile, where I had to ask him to repeat himself, or use a different word or phrase, at least 10 times, he graciously conceded to visit the same afternoon.  He quickly assessed the situation, completed the job in quick time with minimal conversation, and left, for some reason encouraging me to ring him if there were any problems!  It will have to be a fairly major problem for me to ring him again!

On Friday I persuaded Lew out on the bikes for a short ride.  Based on my riding experience at the beginning of the week, it was surprising that he agreed to come with me.  To cut a very long story (or ride) short, I couldn't find the road I was looking for, ended up in a chateau that was undergoing major renovations, asked some builders for permission to cross a bridge, then pushed the bike home along the irrigation channel full of nasty prickly stuff for about a kilometre that ultimately resulted in a puncture!  We set off to explore the roads on the other side of the river from us, going up towards Lorgues, in search of the road I couldn't find, but going in the reverse direction.  Riding along the country roads, you see some incredibly small houses.

Some smaller than others....

In general, the French live a much more minimalist lifestyle than we are used to!  The houses are positively spartan by our standards, with functional furniture only, minimal decorations or artwork, generally no carpets, just tiles or wooden floors, and no curtains as they have shutters on the inside as well as outside.  We have that arrangement on the windows here at Les Fadons, with a complex arrangement of levers to open first the shutters, and then the windows themselves.
Anyway, back to the bike ride.  We eventually found the road I had been looking for, but it had a gate across the access, with "Propriete Prive" in big red letters all over the place.  So we ended up pushing our bikes up a washed out river bed/track nearby for about a kilometres before getting onto the public road.  At least there were no nasty prickly things this time.  Next time I'll be taking the well formed private road and hope that the owner won't be there and if they are use my terrible French to baffle them with ignorance.  Just mentioning "les All Blacks" usually works ok too.

On the subject of prickly things, Lew photographed the most common offender found in the undergrowth: known to the expat locals as "Turkish barbed wire" this thing is everywhere, attaches onto you if you come within half a metre of its tendrils, wraps its legs around you and won't let go unless you rip your hands to shreds trying to extricate yourself!  Terrible stuff.  More photos of prickly vegetation will follow in a future episode.  This part of France seems to be well endowed with prickles and thorns that latch onto you when you least expect them to.  

Note the seductive heart shaped leaf, trying to fool you into a close relationship....

When a bike ride was suggested this afternoon, after some debate, it was decided that going in the car was much safer, so we went off to explore Entrecasteaux, a medieval (no surprises there!) village about 13 k from here.  The remains of the 11thC castle ramparts are still there, but the village is dominated by the chateau which was built in the 16thC.

The chateau is still privately owned and lived in, but opens to the public after Easter, so we will go back to visit again.  The building looks huge from the front/back, but side on is a different story, where you can see that the whole building is only one room wide in places.

The garden is a typical "jardin a la francaise" - or French garden.  Can't say I've seem too many gardens like this around town!  Although it was warm today, the clouds kept coming over, so some of the photos are a bit grey/dull.

And just to keep up the French door photo theme....

Finally, another example of how the French love their signs:

A disability parking space, with added advice just in case you haven't got the message:
"If you take my space, you can take my disability too"!!