I went to see The King's Speech the day before yesterday. I found a cinema in Quimper where it was playing in English. Wonderful film, fantastic actors, but quite stressful. One found oneself completely rigid with the effort of trying to help the poor man out.

I have photographed my two latest pieces of pottery. One is a simple shell shaped bowl, the other a large rather lopsided plant pot with the front and back sculpted in a sort of seaside rocks theme. Difficult to describe the inspiration, rocks at low tide, with seaweed, crevices, water, etc. (P.S. Lopsided with me is entirely intentional!)

I have been putting the power hose over my back terrace. It was filthy with moss, grime, mud, and lots of bits of plant pots that fell apart during last winter's cold weather. It's such hard work, but at least the result is immediate. I have to do the front as well, but am not quite sure how, since it slopes down towards the house and front door and all the water will run down and maybe not drain away fast enough before inundating me! I think very small doses will do it, stopping and starting so that the water has time to disappear. I've got lots of pretty flowers on my front terrace, hyacinths (which are starting to fall over but which are a lovely colour), daffodils,  and various shrubs with sweet smelling flowers.  (The "boards" behind the daffodils are the old door of the vegetable cellar in Le Mée!).

My back garden is also progressing, but more slowly now that the pressure of planting is off. I've sown a few seeds, cleared a bit more turf, and transplanted various things which were not in the right place.

I'M A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY...

I haven't written in a long time, I've been doing so much, it's hard to know where to begin.

Just after the New Year, I joined a nation-wide (world wide in fact) group with a section in Quimper, called On Va Sortir, all sorts of outings and activities are organised by various members, and one can join in whatever takes ones fancy. So I've been to restaurants, knitting bees, bingo evenings, bowling, English conversation meetings, etc etc, which has kept me very busy and I've made a few friends. The chess tournament was part of that... by the way, I got eliminated in the second round!

I have been reading John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. I can recommend it,  easy to read. He writes simply and with a lot of humour, and the book is an insight into America 50 years ago, before camping cars, mobile phones, internet, almost before television. Before political correctness, before black people held positions of importance and power, before ecology.

I've also been listening to The Millenium Trilogy as an audio book, or rather three audio books, that go on for days and days. I really enjoyed it, anyone who enjoys audio books should listen to it, it's remarkable value and really well put together (get the version read by Saul Reichlin). But I wouldn't read the paper version or go and see the film.

The weather was mild in February and I did a lot of gardening. With Christmas money from Michael I bought various plants, including twenty Eleagnus angustifola to plant as a hedge between me and my neighbours. I planted two a day, just after lunch usually when the temperature outside was at its highest. But I had to clear before planting, so it was actually quite strenuous. I had to deturf and get rid of loads of couch grass, which will mean that much less to have to look at next summer when it grows and I haven't mown. I've finished planting and have put bark around them.



Next I planted two cordon apple trees as a backing to my future fruit plot with money Stephen gave me for my birthday!  I did it very carefully with posts covered in coconut husk and wire and everything. Looks good. I've unplanted other things, a couple of brooms, an osmanthus burkwoodii which obviously was not happy since it hasn't grown in three years, a couple of grasses... All the turf I remove I chuck to a lower level of the garden which I shan't have time to do this year.

And continuing deturfing, I planted three artichoke plants and three rhubarb, in front of the hedge. Then I made enough room for a strawberry bed, this involved moving an enormous pile of rubbish, wood, branches, clippings which I've been accumulating for three years. I've piled it all up between me and my neighbour in a lower part of the garden, it makes quite an acceptable barrier. And I cut down the willow tree right in the middle of the plot, but can't get rid of the stump or the roots. It'll grow again throughout the summer. But I had a brainwave, and instead of chucking out the bits I cut off, I have woven a willow barrier, hedge, whatnot, partly with willow cuttings, partly just long branches. Not a work of art (Tom Deacon would not be proud of me!), but I'm quite pleased with it nonetheless. It makes a backing to my apple trees and will shelter them from north winds next winter. It also sort of finishes off the patch.



Looks more professional with cloches!





Today I planted out the strawberries in the black plastic, a few herbs along the end of the patch, and yesterday I put in a row of broad beans. So I'm inordinately proud of myself and shall continue to deturf, and plant a mixture of vegetables and lilies and this and that that needs moving from elsewhere in the garden or terrace.

Ellie  had her stitches out and has the neatest, tiniest little scar you ever saw. All a thing of the past.

I'm knitting myself an enormous jacket in grey wool. Lots of complicated stitches, endless counting, mistakes and undoing. But when I get it right, it looks good. I've also almost finished a sleeveless pullover for Cécile at her request. They had a series of snowstorms this winter, there are pictures on her blog http://mariusamazir.blogspot.com/.

Marius spent a week in Paris with Jacques and loved it. He's very independent at only four years old, didn't seem to miss his family and had a great time. Pictures of that also on his blog.

I'm taking part in an art club outing this evening. We had to create something on the theme "The Four Elements" (air, earth, water, fire). So I've done an acrylic and felt tip pencil rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's birth chart, rather quickly done I'm afraid, not brilliant, a bit messy, but at least I've got something to take with me this evening.

There we are, quick round up of a month's activities.

CHECK, MATE!

I took part last night in the first round of the Quimper chess tournament! I never cease to amaze you, do I?!! I haven't played chess for at least fifteen years, so I've spent the last few days practising non-stop against my computer to try to look credible at least. In fear and trepidation I took myself down to the Café des Arts beside the river in Quimper, and was the first to arrive, of course, as usual.  And anyway, to cut a long story short, best of three games,

da-da-daaaa... (that's a trumpet blowing)

I won the first two and so am through to the next round. But destiny has it that I'm playing next against last year's champion, who will certainly not take long to make me look ridiculous.  However, I rediscovered the pleasure of playing chess, and since the club meets regularly, I shall go and try to improve.

My English speaking pub meeting has been cancelled, or rather put forward to next week when I am not free to attend, so too bad, I'll speak English another time. That at least no one can do better than me. No one here that is.

It is lovely and sunny. But very cold again. Ellie has recovered completely and we have started taking walks again. She is having the bandage and her stitches removed tomorrow. The bandage has not bothered her in the least. She doesn't seem to notice it. But I think she will when they try to take it off her, it'll remove all the hair round her middle...

Basket day tomorrow. Last week we had a bag of split peas. I made some lovely soup, and had it... with a poached egg on top, really good!

ELLIE DACHSHUND, ELIE KAKOU AND ENGLISH LESSONS...

Well, Ellie is 20grs lighter today and feeling very sorry for herself! I picked her up yesterday evening, all groggy, having been told by the vet that on no account was she to wet her bandage... well the grass in my garden is high and Ellie is low, and it's raining. So I had the brilliant idea of making a pile of leaves on my front terrace, where there are no steps for her to negotiate, since she won't pee on concrete or tile or anything hard. And it worked! She didn't realise that her back end was off the leaves even though her head and fore feet were over them. So for the time being we can keep that bandage dry, but she has to keep it for ten days and I wonder whether we shall manage it for long!

I have tentatively joined a group in Quimper who meet up in a pub from time to time and speak English. They are not English speakers, and they will probably be very surprised to find that I am. And speaking of English lessons, I found this YouTube video of a famous French comedian, Elie Kakou, now "passed on" as the Americans would say, which I find very funny - I hope you have the same sense of humour as me, but it is very French humour. I saw him once live in Châteaudun, and although he was already very ill, he really gave us our money's worth.

Funny that all the really good French comedians die... young. Coluche, Thierry Le Luron, Elie Kakou. The ones that are left are not in the same league at all.

I'M ALMOST TOO LATE TO WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR !

But together with Ellie and Youpee, I do wish you a very happy 2011.  Ellie is starting the year with an operation - she's being spayed tomorrow, which will mean us staying in and taking things gently for a few days.

So we've been exercising a bit more this week. Not today, it's pouring with rain, but we went yesterday and the day before too, very wintery, not cold, but grey and foggy. The sea was very heavy, the heaviest I've ever seen it (which is not saying much, I usually don't go out in nasty weather), though there was little wind. Although it was low tide, a strange freak wave came a good 50 metres up the beach and surprised us.

I undid my Christmas tree yesterday afternoon. The place I bought it from gives a 7€50 voucher if I bring it back this week.  There's something very sad and anticlimactic about taking all the decorations down. When you put them up, you are usually expecting family or friends, taking them down means it's all over and everyone has gone home. Back to normal.

Nicholas took quite a nice picture of me the other day on top of the Montagne St Michel in the snow, it's rare that I put pictures of myself on this blog, but here it is:

and a closer up version:

I bought a couple of amaryllis before Christmas, one just opened the day Nicholas left, now they are both out and look lovely.

And last but not least, because I wore holes in my slipper socks by wearing them over shoes so as not to slip on the ice when it was very cold, I had to knit myself a new indoor pair. Here they are.

DID YOU HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS ?

I missed saying "Happy Christmas" to you all. So, did you have a nice Christmas? With good meals and lots of presents?

We did. I fetched Nicholas from Brest airport on Tuesday 21st, his birthday! He was one of the lucky ones to leave London and get to his destination, and on time if you please! We have been having a good, quiet time together, as we always do. With a series of excellent meals, no restaurants, we seem to be able to do better at home. What did you have for Christmas meals?

The temperatures are going up down, up down, we have lovely sunny days (although as usual the weather forecast for the Finistère is awful) but rather cold nights. I have to put thick socks on over my shoes to get across the terrace to the north side of the house, the one that leads to the garden, so that I don't slip and kill myself while peeing the dog.

My load of wood for the winter was delivered last week. All neatly cut into 40cm lengths, split and stacked on a pallet.  Last year it cost me 225€, expensive enough, this year it's 275€. Can't do without unfortunately: a woodburder means wood. That being said, my little house is lovely and warm.

I've finally got photos of my two grandsons wearing the sleeveless pullovers I knitted for them just before going to the States in September. I forgot to take photos of the finished product and had to wait for Cécile to put photos she had taken on her blog.

This week I have made quick and not very expensive curtains to block out the draft that comes up from the veranda into the sitting room in the evenings in winter. There is a sort of archway about 1m70 wide, and a couple of metres high. I bought a steel curtain rod and some rings with clips on them. The things to hold the rod up with are placed too high for me to screw them in, so I stuck them with super glue. Then I bought 6 metres of fleece, really cheap, in a nice off white. I cut the edge and tore it into two pieces 3m long, turned over the top into a pelmet of about 25cm and clipped it to the curtain rings! It trails on the ground and makes sure that drafts don't get under it, and it needs no hemming, it doesn't fray. I'm really pleased with the result, which took me a couple of hours in all, not even. It looks good and is very efficient, in fact, with the woodburner going, the sitting room is almost too warm now!

I can show you my pre-Christmas knitting, now the presents have been given. I did a jacket for Marius, with toggles, a sleeveless pullover for Leif, a bit pink, but I really need to knit pink sometimes and it's not easy having two grandsons. And a sleeveless pullover for my brother Michael. They all seem to have liked their presents!

So, on to food: for Nicholas' birthday we had a bottle of nice champagne, the most enormous snails, then fish, then a sort of pavlova with a difference (meringue, fresh heavy cream and raspberries in a champagne glass. For Christmas Eve, we had a plateau de fruits de mer, which actually almost went wrong, because the fishmonger seemed to have forgotten my order, and gave me all the shellfish unopened, and the fairly large lobster I had ordered turned into two very small ones, but it was all good, and too much, so last night we had the rest of  peeled shrimps, langoustines, a few praires topped with the meat from the tail of one of the lobsters in a cocktail sauce (fresh mayonnaise, a teeny bit of ketchup, tabasco and cognac) in a champagne glass, with a bit of salad at the bottom! For our Christmas lunch we had a glass of champagne with three frozen raspberries in it, a few nibbles, a shoulder of lamb with roast potatoes, roast parsnips and peas, and no dessert, not hungry enough. Before Christmas, Nicholas made me onion soup, lovely. And today he did me a lamb curry which was quite delicious, lovely not to have to cook!

Plateau de fruits de mer before I opened the oysters (there are all sorts of things hiding underneath...)

Lamb curry

 A bit of a blurry photo of onion soup

Salade tière de coquilles St Jacques

 Foie gras maison and champagne (with a bit of saucisson lurking in the middle)...

Lobster cocktail

On Christmas Eve, just after lunch, we took the car and went up into central Finistère, the Monts d'Arrée, to visit the Montagne St Michel and the prehistoric burial chamber (allée couverte) at Mougau Bihan. Nicholas was looking for photo material. There was a bitter wind, but lots of sun, and the Montagne St Michel was still covered in snow. Quite different from the summer painting trips that Yves and I often make.

Mougau Bihan, Finistère

Nicholas at the top of the Montagne St Michel

Ellie at the top of the Montagne St Michel

The path to the top of the Montagne St Michel, Finistère

This afternoon we went for a walk along the banks of the river Odet just outside Quimper, but it was bitterly cold. Then we went to the Anse St Laurent near Concarneau so that Nicholas could photograph old fishing boats that are falling apart on the mud flats. And now it's time to sit in front of the fire as darkness falls and catch up with my blog.

Done.

A very Happy New Year to all of you should I not manage to post again before then.



WINTER SOUP

It snowed during the night, but only two centimetres. Pretty this morning, and not too cold.

I made myself the most fantastic soup for supper last night, quite by chance really, adding bits and pieces of not much to not much... I started off with a free range chicken carcass that had quite a bit of meat left on it one way and another. I put it in a large saucepan with water, obviously, an onion, a clove of garlic, some leftover boiled rice and some salt. Boiled it very gently for a few hours. Took the meat off and shared it between Ellie and me. She thought that was a good idea! Put the meat back in, set it to boil, added the zest and juice of one (organic) lemon, and when it was boiling, I created a swirl in the saucepan and added a beaten egg (could have added more). Sort of my version of avgolemono. Then I put cubes of rather stale wholemeal bread into the bottom of a large (thai soup size) bowl, and ladled the soup over it and added freshly ground pepper. It made a very hearty, tasty, comforting supper on a cold winter's evening. Cost me nothing, and when I'd got the whole bowlful inside me, I didn't need anything else.

It always amazes me that people don't make more soup. There are all sorts of soups you can make for next to nothing that are really satisfying. You can even make soup out of vegetable peelings if you wash the vegetables before the peeling... A ham bone, or a couple of marrow bones, or a carcass, or the broth left after a pot au feu, a queue de boeuf or a poule au pot with a few noodles added to it... or a real country soup of split peas and cubes of smoked ham, or cream of lettuce just made with the outside leaves of a salad and a potato and a bit of cream,  I could go on and on. The very best of course is my Mum's poireau pomme de terre! And these are just the simple ones.

I saw a report on the television yesterday about soup, and it showed various people buying cartons of soup at the supermarket. Some are no doubt quite acceptable. But the lady was saying, I don't have time to make soup. Time to make soup? Precisely, it doesn't take time to make soup, you bung everything into a saucepan and the soup makes itself. Especially now you can just whizz it through at the end with a soup mixer. If she'd spent the time she'd taken going to the supermarket and buying the carton actually making soup, she'd probably have saved time.

When I was a child, I didn't much like soup. Not because of the soup really, but because my mother wouldn't let us drink until we'd finished our bowl. It "went against the wind" according to her. One of her quaint beliefs... But to me it was pure torture not being allowed to help it down with water. My children didn't like soup when they were little either. To such an extent that I gave up making it. Now I have soup almost every day in winter, and even in summer, cold soups. So good, and makes my food budget go so much further!

By the way, I found out yesterday that I was actually making a minute amount of money from the adverts on my blog! So I'm going to post more often to increase the traffic if you see what I mean. And I also wanted to say that I don't actually choose the ads, so dont worry if you see sexy Philippino ladies etc., I haven't gone quite barmy! Don't hesitate to click, I may get rich...

IT's COLD...

Yesterday, Châteaudun, where I used to live, was the coldest place in France with -19° actual temperature and about 50cm of snow. I'm congratulating myself on having moved to the Finistère where last night the temperature went down to -5° and we have had a centimetre or two of snow in the last couple of days. It's chilly but not that chilly. My woodstove works well, my house is small and easy to heat.

I've started feeding the birds. A blackbird has been helping itself to my pyracantha berries. Can you see it? It's orange beak gives it away.

No walks for Ellie who suffers from the cold, you would too if you had to walk with your tummy four centimetres off the ground. So she tears up and down inside the house instead, chasing the cat, skidding on carpets and generally creating havoc. I do miss Oslo's staid behaviour.

I have been knitting like mad, but I can't put pictures yet because that would give the game away. (Now everyone will think they are getting one of my famous handknits for Christmas, which is not true, only two or three people are.) I've also been selling things on Ebay. All good winter-stay-at-home activities. Painting too, the house I mean. I've finished the bit of wall in the sitting room. I ran out of paint ages ago and finally got more. Looks good finished, can't think why I didn't do it before. The join doesn't show at all. And now the ceiling. It's been half done since the kitchen was installed (in other words, since just after I moved in!). Here the join does show, because either the paint has changed colour, or I didn't mix it up enough. The sitting room is a bit of a mess with moved furniture all over the place, but it's very satisfying getting it done eventually and moving everything back into its place. Find some interesting things when you move furniture...

I went to an exhibition last weekend of my friend Jean-Yves Marrec's pastels. My favourite is the one pictured below, but he does a lot of seascapes, and harbours and boats and is very clever.

A BIT MORE POTTERY

Good Lord! I've managed to upload all the photos I wanted in one go.

This is an artichoke sculpture I have been working on for ages, couldn't get the colour right. But now it's finished, and looks good and I'm inordinately proud of it, as you can guess by the number of pictures!

It's about the size of... a large artichoke! What's it good for? Not much really. Just an object of beauty.

And here is Ellie showing off the size of our big beach...

She was one year old a couple of weeks ago. Oslo has been gone for a whole year. How time flies... And here is a sun-worshipping dachshund:

Well, we get little enough of it (sun) nowadays.

Nothing else to report really.

MORE CATERPILLARS, BERRIES AND GRAFFITTI (and Google being very very annoying...)

Google is being very boring, I wrote this a month ago, but have not been able to publish it because Blogspot, run by Google, has mucked up the method of putting photos in the blog, it's virtually impossible, one can add one photo every few days as far as I can see. I've got fed up with this so I'm publishing without the photo that should go with the last paragraph. So this was written in October...

I've done a bit of gardening, wonders never cease. When going down the path a few days ago, I nearly trod on the subject of the photo below. A very large, firm, fat caterpillar, about 7 to 8cm long, and after a long search on internet I've found that it's an Elephant Hawk Moth.

My pyracantha is in full berry and illuminates my front terrace at the moment. Won't be long before the birds get the berries. Have you noticed what a year this has been for fruit of all kinds, nuts, berries on trees, etc? Is it the hard winter we had? The absence of spring frosts? A wonderful month of June? Or a combination of all these factors? Blackberries were very plentiful, apples and pears too, chestnuts are just falling out of the trees (every other tree in the Finistère is a chestnut tree, I've picked up kilos)...

I went to the beach Friday morning because the time for low tide coincided with the time I had to pick up my vegetable basket. So we went to the big beach at Tréguennec. It wasn't very sunny, in fact it's the first time this year I've felt cold, but it was magnificent all the same, hardly a soul in sight. There is a new graffiti on the first blockhaus on the beach. I'm admire graffiti immensely, their complexity, the talent the artists have for getting an overall view while working fast and very close up. It is amazing that the tide, which covers this blockhaus when it is high, does not wash them off. They manage to last several years or until they are painted over.

I made a terrine a few days ago. I've never done that in my life before. I fried up some onion, minced some pork belly and some bacon and a côte échine, lots of parsley, a bit of garlic, added salt, pepper, fresh thyme, chili, nutmeg and a couple of spoonsful of armagnac. Mixed it all up, put half of it in a terrine dish, the put four rabbit fillets in the middle with some prunes, put the rest on top, with a bayleaf to look pretty. Covered it with tinfoil and put it in the oven in a baking dish of water for an hour and a half. It's very good, I'm quite pleased with myself. A little dry maybe, next time I'll put a bit of liver in with the meat, but the flavour is excellent. The ingredients cost me 8€. And it will provide lunch for days and days.

Photo meant to be here (terrine!)