A while ago

Lunch before guests visited

...the current Workawayer who is actually my former partner... how weird this all is... told me that his English hosts from Cyprus were going North to England in their camper van...and so we agreed they could visit. They came to lunch and then I managed to out together an evening meal as well!!! Fortunately, there was a contribution to costs!
Salmon, lentils and salad for lunch. Salad and roast chicken for evening meal. Wine!

The two weeks before that he converted the kitchen cupboards  and did a difficult task of making the worktop fit the space perfectly when every side was at a different angle!  I wanted the cupboards and line of the worktop to follow the line of the floortiles in a room where every corner of the four walls is at a different angle to every other!

 Naturally, work stopped for the weekend and with our guests we walked around the village.

 

I started to think camper van kitchens for my own house kitchen! Nifty use of space in their four wheeled van!

And on the walk back to my house after a cup of tea, after a walk in the village, I looked upwards to the sky, as I often do!

Al Fresco

A temporary garden table is created with temporary recycled kitchen worktop for the overspill of al fresco dining when the small orange table can just about have a setting for two.

On this particular day in June we ate home made rye bread with pick 'n mix food of jambon, (not for me), a cheese with hay on top called 'FOIN', olives, nuts, crudites and fruit, wine and fruit juice.

A handful of peas cropped just before Midsummer's day.  The spidery pea plants produced two more handfuls before yielding no more, despite being watered abundantly in the early days of summer.  Broad beans and runner beans seem to have come to nothing at today's date!

Another gutted picture of the gradually emptied kitchen!    Oh what fun!

Kitchen grot

Cabinets were emptied and doors removed.

I quite like this unit even with open shelves so it may get repainted and re-used as it is quality 1985 kitchen furniture

 Down it comes to reveal the wallpaper!!!

It must have been splendid to have this copper extraction hood.  Buyers are welcome to make an offer. I ought to be cleaning it!

Once we lowered it we discovered that the hose was not properly attached to anything but anyway I did know that it discharged into open air into the grenier.

 and these are the chocolate boxes (not Terry's) that connect electricity!!!!! and I am told they would not pass diagnostics five years ago... somewhat missed as they were not mentioned... hidden up they were!!!!

 Big Feet seems to have invaded my camera stream!!!!

Down it is.. and feel the empty space with the sun tunnel!!!! Those wall tiles came off very easily and out has gone the worktop, solid as it was, the tile grout was disgusting!

This was my kitchen

This was my kitchen......a good quality kitchen for its day, installed in 1985.  I inherited it five years ago. These photos were taken on the morning of gutting out.  I have enjoyed cooking in my lifetime and this room is the last to be renovated. It has scared me! A door on every wall plus a window to the outside world!
Casements worn around the edges, wall tile grout crumbling, worktop tile grout falling out, ceiling with torchis needing attention, beams shiny brown, oppressive to me, copper hood with not connected evacuation unit discharging into the grenier space above can be recycled,  oven works but I have no idea what temperature it bakes at!  The dishwasher looked as if it was new but quickly broke four to five years ago and was recently disposed of. The built in fridge froze foods every four weeks or so when I had to defrost the tiny freezer cabinet with water water everywhere.  Ten years ago and more I used to have a fridge that cleaned itself. What a joyous invention that was!  Last year I inherited the joint freezer and our joint Bosch larder fridge from my former partner who gave all the joint owned possessions to me when he sold his house to go travelling. 
Currently, existing kitchen furniture is being recycled, repainted for the laundry room which sits behind this kitchen.  La Buanderie,  as it is called in France, is in the part of my property that is on the Napoleonic cadastral plan.

I like my Ikea trolley but it did not normally live here!

Oh my.. I have detested that hanging lampshade!!!! It is I believ number two and saved from a house I once part-owned forty years ago.

and then we started to pull the oven from its housing and the wall...

like a Victorian camera...

and lo, behind the cabinets is a vestige of wallpaper, circa French 1985  (vraiment akin to English 1965!!!)  which I thought I had eradicated 5 years ago!!!  It really is an art form of its time.  One can see the colour scheme in harmony with the retro floor tiles!!!!!!! Then, this kitchen was amazingly modern in this French village. Then this kitchen was very very expensive!

I wonder what the flowers are....
VOILA... all to be renewed for someone in the next 30 years or less to say "Quel horreur!"

Oh Gosh July

No time for The Mad Hatter.  No time. No time. I dally and am late on many things. Time slips by for that is what Time does. Time doesn't wait for Man or Woman.  Time flies so fast one is not aware, even when living in the moment, or forgetting or remembering the future and the past.   It whizzes faster than Light or Sound.  Now past the middle of the year are we, and in a canicule, a heatwave, which I just love at 35C in the shade at 4pm or so, if only I could be by water. But water is a precious commodity and today it has been reinstated without leaks but still there is more plumbing to do before the washing machine can be used.

Now almost midnight, before the passing of the day and night of the first of July it is 25C in my courtyard and indoors here by this hot machine, 28C.  Every now and then I walk in the full moon moonlight in my spacious garden where sweetpeas, roses and lavender bloom in the darkness, where if I was brave I would sleep in the hammock at night!

I am indeed grateful for water, space, air to breathe, gardens, my house, land and village AND THIS MY FRIEND who is helping 'my house' for reasons he has explained!  Why he should return to this sometimes difficult and unreasonable person is a mystery when I have made so many mistakes in life and have been so wretchedly unkind to some people.  Perhaps it shows me faith in humanity.   I have accepted his return despite the fact that he too made mistakes of a volatile nature; been my enemy as well as a friend.  In a way it shows me that perhaps there is forgiveness on each side.  Even so, I have been on guard and am learning not to let that, which is fear, affect me.  Fear must be cast aside. Maybe I have been wrong about many things for which I am sorry! Often I have been right and not praised myself enough.

Fortunately we have been able to turn on the water for showers and baths and have been able to wash up dishes with cold or warm water as one wishes out in the outhouse 

Who would wish to be a plumber with different copper pipes and fittings or different systems? In and out water! Awkward spaces. Soldering and parts that do not work! A lorry load of bits for every eventuality.

Patience is what I keep.   I watch and heed that Time is slipping by, but know I am not in control and do not care.   Summer slips by.  I do what I can. What would REALITY do?  This is THAT!  This is Now and I wait for Future when I can make decisions and choices.  I already know that my home is my chateau and like he says I am the Queen of my Maison and not just the Client!
I if i could Master Time I would be a rich woman!
I am going to take my time to plan this kitchen... behind me and ahead of me is Phase One and Two.
I have not much time for much else. This is my work! 

Kitchen and laundry room emptied into Le Grand Salon

All the food, wine, kitchen paraphernalia is stacked in the BIG Room.... oh my , I don't fancy moving ever again. The oven has been removed from its housing and reconnected.  Now I wonder what is next because things are not going according to a pre-conceived plan... that is Life... It is not the bowl of cherries that my former partner once told me in a chosen birthday card which he then sent with His Love!  But isn't it sweet that he has returned to help me with this major project? Love must exist in some form even if he is working in exchange for shelter, accommodation, food and company as well as a safe place for him to be whilst he works out what is next in his own Life. Fortunately, my ground floor L shaped house has the two wings and a degree of privacy.

Midsummer and oh how time flies

I have various photos from the last few weeks that I would like to post in my blogger diary format.
It will all have to wait for TIME.
Currently, it is about eleven p.m.
I can't believe that the year has reached midsummer, with birthday imminent, with weather as superb an ideal as I would wish, except too humid at ten this evening.  PLUS today has been a Sunday, a Patrimoine de Pays et Moulins weekend and also Journee de Musique day / weekend when amateur musicians can play anywhere and not be made to move on or be quiet.  Mostly, it is organised music for the general public. Last night I did go out to listen to Bal Musette but with no one to dance with I reluctantly left a style of music I enjoy.
I am glad we went out at about 7 in the evening.  After he had said I looked as if I was going out,  which at the time was not true, I answered, "Nope, I was just getting dressed for the evening in general as I was tired of work clothes" .... But after that statement, I thought "sod it", (please excuse me getting grounded!) and offered to take HIM out for a treat, get a change of view, whilst making myself a G'nT.... and so, it was so ...... that we went to the English tea shop and caught the end of a three hour session of solo sax jazz......which only a few minutes before did I consult the oracle of all global and public knowledge (providing that someone has posted).
Nice it was to feel the cool lanes between old stones, feel the river breeze and special ions, see what has changed since I wandered that way about a week ago. Every time I stand on the bridge I tell myself that I must come more frequently!

He AND I worked since about 8h30 a.m. ...( me without breakfast!!!), until about 4pm when he stopped.  I carried on to get those tiles off the plasterboard. Sheer Pleasure!
Pending an arrival of an electrician (..... I feel that suitable heraldic music should be played if ever he does arrive!..... )  my friend said we should completely evacuate the kitchen ... today it was deconstructed MORE, but still there exists the sink, the fridge, the freezer and oven which could all be sent elsewhere if only there was space! Must use more energies tomorrow to do so!
I don't think the electrician WILL arrive,  but at least we are prepped and ready (sort of ... with this linear arrangement of kitchen  I cannot quite cope with the idea that the sink is against a wall with my back to a window, I always feel uncomfortable.  Even though HE is attempting to persuade me that a mirror on that wall would enable me to watch the garden and those who are seated, I still feel summat is wrong with the difficult to do other with'' plan.  
I am trying to think laterally, but the space of 3.6m long and 1.20 max is tricky to include jutting out u shape bits or a small work island. There are four doors and a window!!!!!!! I am tempted to out the kitchen upstairs in the newly roofed grenier at this stage but the next part of the renovation story is that I am concerned about the floor in the grenier affecting the ceiling of the kitchen and the other two rooms.  I thought the distance was greater than what it is!
More later!
I have often detested my kitchen space... and now it is not a kitchen and the feelings of being overwhelmed and indecisive continue. Taking the guts out of the kitchen has though convinced me to cover the retro orange rectangulay floor tiles positioned in 1985.

Return of the intrepid itinerant worker traveller

He arrived whilst I was playing Chopin Nocturnes on the out-of-tune piano at Poitiers Gare.
There he was wondering if it was me! Nothing said but I asked him to take a photo or two.

Over forty hours travelling all the way from an island of Malaysia to Paris and then Poitiers.  Naturally anyone of any age would be tired.  He was back in Europe. Back in France. Un verre de vin rouge was imperative in the bar across the road where he remembered cacahuetes... and so.. tales unfolded as stories began, some of which I had read about as we have kept in email correspondence for the year... and for the five years in which we have been separated from being a couple! Nothing like the telling of a tale c.f. reading a story Jackanory!

The full moon was in full bloom.  A larger orange dot than turbines on a horizon.
I had been away for a couple of days, so the next day, there was shopping and affairs to see to.  Even though it was a so-called rest day for him, once washing was sorted, (less than 10kg of belongings on his back), he wanted to start planning the kitchen.  It was his choice, although I'd said, "Take a break".  With pencil, paper, ruler, he sat down and asked me this and that about THE KITCHEN PLAN... and the LAUNDRY ROOM PLAN...
I began to wonder if he has possibly underestimated how long the process and project will take!  Our ideas are miles apart!  Adrenalin was riding. I am glad he has arrived to force action over the difficult task of changing the kitchen!
He is keen to be in Europe for the weather, the summer weather, and the implications of this are not lost on me.  He is keen to continue travelling and that of course is also not lost on me. Everything is clear without further enquiry or explanation. We are very good friends and have surpassed many challenges!   I am sure everything will be perfectly ok!   Hope is everything!

French Kettles in the Kitchen

I am using the 4th French kettle in less than a year and I've developed an aversion.  Kettles seem to have become astronomically expensive and I am reluctant to spend a lot of money when they keep being faulty.  Then there is the calcium which appears in the boiled water (it lurks horribly in the kettle and in tea).  I use a water filter, admittedly not all the time, and I know someone who passes the water through coffee filters which are re-usable.

A couple of years ago, I kept the kettle box and receipt and just a few weeks before the guarantee ran out, the kettle failed.  So bravely, I returned it to the French shop for a replacement.  However, because the guarantee period was almost over I was happy for the kettle to be tested for a fault and honesty pays, for indeed the inspector agreed it was not good, so they gave a chit for the value to be spent in the shop on another kettle or comme vous voulez.  It's only recently that French shops have agreed to no-hassle-refund.  Since then I've bought cheaper kettles, 9 euros, from a GIANT supermarket shop whose name is not dissimilar from the mighty ocean!  One of these I returned within a month.  I bought another...and the same thing happened after 3 months.  It turned itself on and burnt out! I don't feel I should return it but I will.  It is true that on occasions I have left the kettle to boil when there is no water in it but I'm better at not doing that these days.  Recently, I bought a Severin brand, half price in the sale, normally 60 euros.   Cautiously wary the creature that I am,  I'm keeping the kettle on a plate instead of on its electrical device when it is not boiling water.  However, I've noticed that the plastic lid which opens slowly when a button is pressed to fill it with water,  does not fit exactly so when I DO switch it on, it continues to boil for a long time before cutting out.  I've decided to take it back as the kitchen fills with steam if I leave the kettle to boil and wander to another room.

I thought I would look on Amazon and see what the options are as well as look in other shops that sell electrical household products.  But how does one return faulty goods to Amazon?  It will cost postage when it's not my fault!
However, not all is bleak,  I once bought a LIDL kettle which was excellent as it had a 3 year guarantee as opposed to a one year guarantee and that particular kettle lasted just over the 3 years.  Disappointingly, they are only in the LIDL shops at certain times of the year. And they do not always appeal to me in their design feature. Hey ho ... it's a kettle.

Years ago I had a wonderful Russell Hobbs .. very stylish.. maybe I shall investigate that.  Perhaps even look at John Lewis now that they sell online and deliver to France.  I can use a European converter plug because one is not supposed to change plugs these days! 

I could go back to boiling the water in a saucepan but it's not as nice as having an electric kettle. That reminds me I have a beautiful, expensive, camping kettle in my attic store....it's about 30 years old.... and as good as new.  Really, excellent design.  I could use that on the gas hob and listen for the whistle.