French language Frustration

A part time resident welcomes me.
I speak in French.
He says I can speak in English.
Then tells me I need to improve my French!!!!!!!!
I tell him I'm trying EVERYDAY to speak the beautiful language!

He also enquired if I lived here all the time. 
He told me how they normally always come for the whole of  JULY AUGUST and sometimes Easter time but that they came here during the winter on their return from ski-ing....... and there was no one -NO ONE for a whole week.....  He Agreed it is dire in the winter.  I told him I didn't have a choice not owning property elsewhere.

He was kind.
 
An hour later, it again gets to me and I feel depressed.

These things matter to me:
1. BELONGING... I have to belong somewhere.
2. Need security, safety, comfort of my own home - shared or not shared.
3. Social & Cultural meaningful discussion and contact with others.
4. Support and inter exchange with others.
5. Family
6. Financial Independence.

So if, I need 3 and 4, and fail with language skills,  there is only one thing I ought to do at this age of my life.
I should no longer try to live in a Fort Knox / French "chateau " / "winter prison"  which requires a family and renovation.

Summer Sun Contentment

By a distant village summer river 'plage' we listened to a MADAGASCAN music group.  They were good!  At home, I needed to lie down and wait a while. My bra was soaking wet. I researched how to lower heart rate.  After while I counted 90 per minute when the target for aged 70 = 75 to 128 beats per minute so I'm not doing too bad!

This year is the first evening that I have sat n my back garden since 2016.  In 2017 and 2018. burdened with the WILL,,  I hardly ventured out when HEAT was too much or COLD and RAIN was inclement,  so I became more physically unfit.  Today, I felt that glorious heat of summer, when I can bare legs, arms and therefore my soul.  It feels as if I am on the way to being healed.  I did bare my arms and legs on the Ile de Ré in September 2018 after I had travelled alone to see a Performance of Shakespeare as I began to emerge like a butterfly opening her wings.  
It was with romantic notions and memories, yet with personal pleasure of being on my own and independent of anyone that I went again to that wonderful place of security, safety.   It was with romantic notions and memories,  I revisited an Isle that reminded me much of a place I considered to be my home town – Southwold …. but in actual fact , when I returned there in January and February this year I could not stay for long. It was too closed,  too crowded, too 'noir'. I did not feel free.  I felt stifled, that 'my home' had been robbed from me by the hooray Henry's and squashed in so called needful development.   Whereas France seems more and more to fulfill my need to be alone and independent even though I long for company.

BUT BACK TO THIS EVENING.

Today I bought two types of exquisite goats cheese from “ISABELLE” in La Roche Posay market. 

I cannot explain the complete story in my head to you or retell it for me, but I pressed the water pump to water garden plants for the second or third time this summer… we had had so much rain in June.  A stained by time and weather plastic chair had made its way to the lilac tree but no one had ever sat there. 
It looked inviting.
I created a makeshift table for the chair. 
I took my cheeses, rice salad and glass of red wine on a tray with my reading book to dine,  to look towards the setting sun … it sets behind the rooftops. 

OH MY!

Yes it was 2016 when I was last here…. and only just before HE without many days of warning LEFT at the end of July when we were supposed to have gone camping after finishing the kitchen.  HE, my former partner who I feel several times had shafted me, forgive me, but I can’t think of other appropriate words, when one felt abandoned and rejected.  Well, anyway, having decided to sell everything and 'give almost everything away', he again escaped to the south of France or maybe this time was straight to Peckham Rye where he fell out with the host on the day I departed to go see my mother for her 90^th birthday.   He needed a bolthole … what|????   In normal circumstances before that he could always rely on me but when he left in July, old wounds opened up especially remembering the Bordeaux incident the years before!
A Long costly journey for a bolt hole from UK to France for an immediate bolthole?  Can he not go to his daughter or sister?  I never said YES and I never said NO. I was late departing and a ferry had to be reached in an ailing vehicle. I was on my journey with everyone set up with keys to look after my cat. … our cat!       
CUT…… C.U.T.

I really wish to write about being in the garden this evening.

I sat feeling the most excellent warmth and that wonderful contentment that comes from sitting in absolute heat and European sunshine that was a very rare wonder in England.

I read my book.  Grellier the cat came to look from a distance.
It was almost 23h before I returned indoors.

When I have a need to be close to others, or to express thoughts, desires, abstract feelings which have insufficient words, then music and company, or even being still and alone has great gifts.
The hot African heat drawing itself north through Europe on account of too much water evaporation holds a special moment in one's living hours.
Contentment is a most wonderful gift to treasure.

More Garden in June

The first blooms of ROALD DAHL David Austin Roses 
I planted the bare root in early April.

This splendid architectural 'thing', was originally about 10cm tall from Auchan with about 5 other small 'thing' plants, four of which died.  The other ground cover plant can be seen just behind it. This has been moved at least twice, but seems happiest in the lavender and rose bed, so much so, that this year, after growing more spiky leaves that I keep away from, it bloomed for the first time.  YUCCA Gloriosa. I was intending to move it as it is in the wrong place for my lavender plan!

Grellier in playful mode - neighbour's cat who cheekily slinks indoors to be gently shooed away.

Two 'surviving their struggle' roses, peeping from behind lavender.

At last these are flowering, having moved from several gardens to here - from the garden of my Aunt Ivy - deceased 1994

Uprooted after flowering, before they seed, ORIENTAL poppies which were glorious, but now need to be hung to dry,
once stems can be cut easily in half.

Filled with prunings from Paul's Himalayan Rose- see images in previous posting.

The gardener clipped off the shooting branches which were new growth looking for jungle trees to ramble through!

This can be a secret haven BUT that there chair has got to go as it is most uncomfortable and always has been.
I think maybe to buy a stripey deck chair..

Music Night In France

I decided to drag myself out of my Saturday mind, concerned about family & thinking 'how did it get like this....??' into 'getting warmer by the hour', a beautiful sunshiny day.  I headed toward Le Grand Pressigny but continued to Le Petit Pressigny to see one of four art expositions with 12 artists exhibiting.   I chose an artist I know.  It was a splendid, simple, effective exposition of wonderful photography of light and feathers with interesting ceramic sculpture influenced by marine form.

Back through the beautiful verdant, untainted valley of L'Aigronne to La Fête de la Musique where people I know were performing.   I missed some groups as there were two stages.  

There were lovely healthy salads for 2 e per bowl. BUT Steak and Chips was on offer by one of the stages for which I had been yearning for a while. A delicious apple tart with too much flaky pastry for my liking was so nice washed down with rosé wine and dining al fresco with others was a treat I have not had for a very very long time.

 

Good Company. Good Food. Good Music.  Good decorations from recycled plastics.
 The jazz orchestra did a number by Stevie Wonder and "Knock on Wood".
Good female singer.   Scottish Jim sung old rock songs and then Celtiqua played Irish Music.

 I had a discussion with Tim about the pronunciation of  words  deriving from CELT... we were in agreement,  BUT, now I  learn that a hard k and soft ce are each deemed to be correct for English phonology.

At the parking place I think one pot has been removed.

Le Brigade Singing European Songs

After we sang all our songs, the town collége school presented a performance about people's rights. Our group became imprisoned by 58 metres or so of knitting...others were trapped in yarns of wool.

My Three Piano Accordions

It was the first public performance I've done for about 4 or 5 years.
Standing was easier in heels but a warm evening breeze liked to play 'snatch my ancient music' from pegged music stand and table, so after about an hour I gave in to the wind.  I have recently dug out accordion pieces I played when I was 12 -14 years of age which I haven't played for decades   so those lovely concertos which need the pages to be turned need to be photocopied and mounted onto card. Unfortunately, I have never mastered learning by heart piano  recorder or piano accordion music.

I don't have any photos of yesterday evening when I played for the opening of a photographic exhibition in the village square with the newly appointed bar / restaurant. They are waiting for the kitchen to be finished before serving meals.

I played my newly purchased Italian Piermaria 240 accordion with 80 basses,weigh 9,2 kg which  had not been played by previous owner for 15 years.   I think it must be between 15 and 20 years old
It's one kilo lighter than my Italian Marinucci 120 bass 10, 2 kg which was bought when I was 10, so 60 years ago, and then it was secondhand. I think it must be between 61 and 65 years old. It was Santa who bought me my first accordion when I was 7 years old.  Initially, I was taught after primary school hours by my maths teacher. She was French but within a short soace of time I needed a much bigger instrument as I could not play any more pieces on the little Hohner Mignoni 8 basses.  Then I started to have lessons with Martin Lukins in Uxbridge. I remember playing a black accordion.  I don't know if my parents hired or bought the one I played before I was ten years old.  I remember sitting on the edge of the settee in the front walk-through living room at 10 Saxon Avenue, Hanworth, Middlesex with my chin pointed upwards resting on the accordion and my knees supporting the weight. My father hand-stitched a leather buckled back-strap to keep the accordion straps from slipping off my shoulders. It was in the same place for years and years, after I paid a company in Scotland to tune the Marinucci about 25 years ago.  It had new straps and an integrated back strap.
Then ...last year ... with decluttering I moved it ... and I need it now for the PierMaria.

Garden in June

Lots of self sown oriental red poppies, roses,  an orchid in flower, and the spiky plant from Auchan 9 years ago measuring 10 cm tall is now in flower for the first time.... and crowding the rose behind it. Lavender too is crowding some roses in the border as are some rose bushes crowding some lavender plants.

Pottery Project

It has been many weeks working at sculptural form.

I'd seen a garden sculpture that inspired, when I was asked what I wished to make.  This was discussed and I was shown how to start but my result will be vastly different than the inspirational piece.  Once started, and after a few weeks, I realised that I was enjoying the process of being so absorbed for two hours in trying to master techniques to mould clay, that it didn't matter how slowly the item would reach a finished state.

I am grateful to the professional artist / teacher who rescued and inspired when I talked about the structure having an air of becoming a chateau for a plant.    The humour from the class was that it was a rhubarb forcer, a Civray Nuclear Energy chimney, a Staffordshire pottery chimney, a chimney... but then it transformed.  "What will you do with it?" they asked in French, before it had holes, and then when it had holes, hilariously offering all manner of suggestions.

But with TIME not on my side the teacher drilled out the holes once I had cut out the larger ovals.   He needed the item to go into the kiln for biscuit firing.
It took almost two hours to sand remove knobbles.... and then glaze.  Much waiting, as it was a demanding session for the teacher, but a good opportunity to watch, listen and learn to the stages that others were at with each of their individual creations.  Some were making bowls and plaques, others masks and plates, and one was making figurative, imaginative models.

It started life as coils of clay building upwards and inwards.  Instead of winding roses around the form it became a staircase...the top wasn't what I had tried to create so I cut it off! It has been glazed an awaits a second firing in the kiln... along with a coned roof piece which MIGHT fit or not.

Final Piece to appear here when completed.

June Cake and Bake Club

VINTAGE or ON TREND was the theme... ...
No one chose the latter  but one witty baker used a recipe which was ON TREND when her grandmother used the recipe! 
The Cake Club now allows savoury bakes and any bake or creation  that is NOT a large cake that can be cut into portions.
The June event started an hour earlier,  so people had lunch rather than afternoon tea.  I am not really in favour of the idea nor keen on savoury bakes but I was voted out!  It is interesting.

My Classic Vintage Coffee and Walnut Cake with an  On Trend Chocolate Buttercream filling and topping

The Organiser's brother made an excellent yummy ginger cake.

The Organiser made a fruit bake with fresh fruits yet the Vintage recipe used frozen fruits.

Her husband made a wonderful tasty Vintage Glacé cherry cake.

Remember tinned Mandarins... make a Bombe with Bourbon biscuits.

Shortbread biscuits

 All three quiches contained bacon / ham so I picked the meat out!

 Well prepared by the lovely hosts at Le Grand Pressigny.