Saignées

The word saignée (blood letting, as in medieval medicine) is what the plumbers and electricians called the channels I cut in the stone walls of this house to hide their cables and pipes in two years ago. I used this huge grinder with a blade the size of my big table saw at home to run kerfs on both sides of the channels, a process both terrifying and horrendously dusty. Then I chipped the material out between the kerfs with the Hilti 3-in-one, drill/hammer drill/ light jackhammer. I still remember naively going around right after we bought this house asking people, how the heck do they bury wires in stone walls?

This morning as I flung open the kitchen shutters on the south (river) side, I noticed saignées in the sky. There must have been several dozen jet takeoffs. in the south, so that can only mean Toulouse, some 140 km away. They are so pink in the sunrise, could they have been angels instead? I checked it out with telephoto:



Now, an hour later, the blue sky is starting to become overcast as dozens more planes take off. It's unimaginable how many complex reasons and motivations lie behind all the trips being taken by all the passengers. Tonight, Robert will take Alix to the Orly in Paris and she will fly to Los Angeles to become an American girl. She has been unhappy living with her mother's mother and will now go live with her father's parents. Eleanor, the older daughter, will remain in Paris and the youngest, Dorian, will live in Libos with Robert, still in exile from his house and shop about 20 minutes distance in Montcabrier.

Pour qui sonner le glas ?

The bell in the 13th century church rings the hour and half hour starting with 7 am. Also, just after 7 am, there is usually a lot of additional bell ringing. Right now, they are tolling. It's a mournful sound of course since it means somebody has died. All the French people know the Hemingway title, For Whom the Bell Tolls. But when you hear the glas, that is the obvious question. In Albas, they post cards, carnets, with black borders notifying the public that the community is one short. Such carnets noirs are pasted onto the abutments of the Albas bridge. I'll look at the mairie later to see if they have the carnet noir custom in Castelfranc too.

Speed square

In one of my posts, I happened to mention in passing that I could not find a particular tool here in France, namely a speed square. I picked up a fancy French try square with all kinds of complex holes at distances marked in metric. My friend Bruce, in a generous gesture of infinite complicité, has sent me one, unasked. It arrived here by mail: $28 in postage! Not just the familiar small speed square, but in addition, a great huge whopper that you could scare off a grizzly with.



I was raised on more delicate combination squares which slide and allow you to mark lines parallel to edges of boards. In fact, I held the combination square in distain until watching wily Rick, self-proclaimed red neck carpenter, day after day, doing new and wonderful things with his speed square. Because of the web of metal, you get excellent purchase on this square as a guide for skill saw cuts or for pushing things into flush. On the other hand, the point is great for dislodging dirt and ice from the inside corner of a stud wall. When dropped, the speed square will not go out of square like a combination square. You can hit it with a hammer in case of desperation.

It stores nicely in the pocket of a tool pouch. Whipping it out by its rim was a habit hard to break.



Thanks a lot Bruce.

Windmills

I've had windmills on my mind. Partly because I'm following the plight of a group neighbors opposing a proposed group of 400 foot high, politically correct windmills in the Kingdom. A Cervantes-esque battle if there ever was one. Wind power has become such a sacred cow, no radioactive waste, no global warming, no mountain top removal. I find them ominous and disturbing, huge presences revolving ominiously. They look industrial and disfigure the ghostly sacred ridges of the Corbières. Unlike the ones that were still in use in Illinois when I was little, whipping around briskly, pumping a little water for a few cattle and sheep. From the top of one of these small ones, you could still probably see ten miles or so. The new ones are probably 400 feet high and from my sister's house in Danville, Illinois you can see many dozens of them, if not a hundred. She thinks they make the landscape she loves into a industrial hell. Marvin, my brother-in-law thinks they are great.

Who are the Quixotes and who are the Sancho Panzas these days, anyhow.

Furnishing

On the way to Cahors, we pulled off the road and had a time out so that Mrs Snoutsworthy could tell me not to talk so much about the woes of the world. A dog magically appeared from the other side of this balustrade.



We put a down payment on click-clack flooring that won't be delivered for three weeks, then pushed on to Fontanes to collect Kim, Denis, and little Daisy and go to Montauban to the Troc, a national chain of antique-junk consignment stores. We're in the market for a couch, a couple armoires, who knows what else. I made some ignorant remark about how ugly Montauban is, so Kim took us for a stroll around the beautiful old part of town, far from the sprawling shopping malls.



Nobody else seemed to notice the amazing garden laid out in terraces above where we parked.



In addition to all the ordinary stuff you would find in any French brocante, but at much higher prices, Troc had a lot of furniture and related crud apparently made in Africa, including this small army of figurines.



Then it was back to Fontanes through the "fruit basket of France", the back roads lined with manicured groves of apples, plums, peaches. Rolling country, very long views, lots of the land under diverse and intensive cultivation, at rest now in mid-winter. Even the huge golden cows were lying down in pasture, Blondes d'Aquitaine, glowing in the dull late afternoon light.

Valentine's Day promenade above Albas

This was a favorite walk when we lived in Albas.  It started just up the road from the Creuniers, took us past the La Framie, the house of the ânes, past M. Prunier's, past La Meleze.  It was still light when we got to La croix de Girard, so we were drawn to detour up to the cazal in Chateau Eugenie's new vineyard.


The climb up to the high vineyards is along a hunting road with plenty of pig turds and lots of muddy little pig side-paths running up.

A partly ruined mas near the huge almond orchard


The ânes' owner lives here


The ânes themselves live in back...


Just a taste of the work of Monsieur Prunier. He gives us prunings from his plum trees which flower beautifully indoors in a pot of water. He tells us stories like the time when an old lady drove through his meticulously tended gardens and orchards, over a 6' drop, and smashed into a wall. She broke her thigh in the crash but sat their all night until M. P found her the next morning. "Do you think I can back out?" were her first words. She came from a family renowned for their stoicism.




A glorified cazal. The cazal is usually a small hut in a vineyard which appear to have two purposes: first, they use up the amazing volume of stones in the soil; second they provide some shelter and storage, handy for vineyards which are way uphill from town. This is almost a house, with chimney, an attic, etc.


This is a new vineyard. Chardonnay in a world of the black-red Cahors wine. The cazal is new too.









The lauze roof from the inside...


The view from the cazal...



The cut end of a oak tree blown over in the recent tempest, surrounded by vines...

Hommage à crotte de chien

A jaunty party favor to celebrate Rover's contribution to the culture of Europe

Prayssac market

It was quite a wintry morning..why there was even frozen rain on the windshield.




Nothing would have kept me from the Prayssac market on a sunny day. This is partly a farmers' market with local produce--eggs, chicken, foie gras, honey, bread, apples and vegetables. But there's a lot of stuff similar to what you can find in the Carrefour supermarket, imported from Spain and Morocco but here sold mainly by people with more character. You hear a lot of patois spoken, a thick soupy accent that sounds a little like Italian. It's too early in the year to hear much English.






The market is along the circular street that rings the church. I am utterly familiar with where each stand is but still have to get my bearings if I leave the ring street for the departmental road or any side streets. First today was the cheese. There are two others but this couple is always mobbed. Why not? The move like Maseratis, never foisting off larger pieces than their customers really wanted, they have great cheese, and they are not too expensive.





Then the spacy organic foods guy. I used to get muesli from him until one time he opened up his gunny sack and a big moust jumped out. He instinctively tried to crush it with his foot. The mouse raced off to a stone wall and frantically tried to dig in to a space between two stones, tail out straight and vibrating. The bio guy was holding his chest, pale and shocked and speechless. I mix my own muesli now.


I got julienne and salmon today. They didn't complain when I made them break a 50 and threw in some parsley and a lemon for free.



This is a new bread person who sometimes has wonderful rye still warm. Today I settled for a narrow baguette (ficelle) of poppy seed, another of sesame and the first ring loaf I've ever persuaded myself to buy. I told myself it is just a regular baguette where the head ate the tail.




For no reason, I usually buy spinach and radishes from this same guy. He also has cabbage and romensco.




The red meat boucherie usually grosses me out but today it looked good enough to eat.




On the way back to the car, I passed the oysters and noticed for the first time he comes from Ile d'Orleon where Anne and Florence went on vacation as girls and where they want to be buried.






One use for stale bread.

Playing with beams

Things went a lot better at Cavart today. The forklift started right up and smiled upon me despite my ignorance of her complex transmission. It was a chess game, getting the 3 m stock for knee braces loaded flat, then the 6, rafter beams loaded diagonally. Never used a forklift before but tried to imitate those many Manly Men I've watched over the years, considering carefully every gesture as though it could be my last or maybe the end of Robert's beautiful truck. There was a low telephone line to duck under. I tried a change of venue to the wide dooryard in front of the shop, but like a Labrador trying to bring a 4' stick through a 3' door, I got stuck aganst a tree.

The load looked chancey to me, but you see guys all the time driving around with these huge loads angled, held on by wide web straps. I never liked driving behind them and on the kept having fantasies of squashing the little camionette that followed me up the steep roads between Montcabrier and Cazes.



Robert said it looked fine and later drove off to Gavaudon like it was nothing.

Picking up Robert's tools

Robert showed up at the house at 2pm and helped me load Honduran mahogany parts from the ugly staircase that used to go between the present main bedroom to the present kitchen. And some 5 or 6 meter long oak floor joists from what is now the guest bedroom. The joists must have run 150 lbs, with lots of nails stubs sticking up too. What with having to wait for Attorney Snoutsworthy to finish up with a conference call with a court, I didn't pull out until quarter of four. I had the hang of his big truck by halfway to Prayssac, and, at Caze, was adequately backing up a couple hundred meters on a lane near Gloria's house to let a dump truck by.



It gave me a pang to turn into the familiar driveway marked with the lieu dit (place name), Cavart, and pass the fences and gates I'd helped build, going through the green gate that was plastered all over the front pages for a couple days after the murder. The police tape was still sort of intact having been tied and retied. Six months after the crime, I didn't bother. I took a long, uneasy look up the lane toward the Dutch neighbor where Helene killed their friend. Nobody around, the bamboo fronds growing higher and higher.



All the doors had two red wax seals, one on the door, the other on the jamb. The strings embedded in the seals had long since been broken so I just opened the front door, half expecting the wretched German shepherds to bark and lunge against the glass.



I decided to walk through the whole house in case there was broken pipe or an open window. Dorien's toys, no Dorien. Eleanor's bulletin board and the bed I made for her, but no Eleanor. Helene's and Robert's beds were neatly made up. There were bags of possessions marked with Helene's maiden name, the name they use at the jail.



Robert gave me a detailed list of what I was to pick up. It took a long time even though I know the shop well and have at least passing familiarity with his huge collection of tools. He is setting up a carpentry job, timber framing a porch roof. It would have been a lot harder if it had been a masonry, zinc, roofing, or sheet metal job he was doing, to mention just a few of his trades. Setting up a job, tryng to get there with enough and not too much equipment, this is extremely personal. An odd thiing to do for another carpenter, as if he were partly incapacitated. This incapacity is a legal one though, not physical, in the form of a court order forbidding Robert from visiting his house and workshop. I found and loaded three different sized skillsaws, including the big Makita 18". And the automatic mortiser, which I covet and which Robert had brought over for me two years ago, unasked, to use here on the joists and beam of the kitchen floor.

The light was going but I was all loaded when I made a bêtise: I drove a little too far into the orchard and one of the front wheels sank into the soft earth up to the axle. I scrabbled around for the jack, raised it up to the maximum, cribbed the truck in that position, added material under the jack, raised it again to the maximum, more cribbing and so on about 7 or 8 times. Dumped a bunch of wood into the hollow where the tire had been, inserted a board under the tire itself, a lot of gravel under the rear tires and gave it a try. It STILL was spinning! So I called home, had Robert tell me where he stored his come-alongs and cable, wrapped cable around a convenient huge piece of steel I-beam, winched the truck in the maximum, reset the come-along, winched some more. Then jumping in the cab, before the truck could decide differently, I revved my way out. It was completely dark and I forgot the 8 meter ladder which was the last item on my list. I forgot the list too.

Off to prison, on to Castorama

We headed off early to Agen to visit Helene in prison. We had to be there by 9:30 at the latest, so I didn't see much of the scenery on the way though Matilda, our GPS, took us along many twisting roads, over hills, not along the hemarroidal course of the Lot River. The door to the Maison d'Arret des Femmes has no marking at all, but they had my name on file as a qualified visitor. A small man went on ahead of us with his young child through a series of doors opened with anonymous clicks by an unseen guard. My shoes set off the metal detector so I had to wear an incredibly mangy pair of slippers. The small man and his son visited his obese wife who had murdered her own mother. Helene seemed to be herself, extremely sad of course but seeing things clearly. We sat and talked together, the three of us, holding hands the whole time. While the visiting room / parloir was decrepit, filthy, with dangling wires, doors smashed by having been kicked Helene says their quarters are like a hotel: they cook their own food in kitchenettes, watch cable tv, take courses, tend a small garden. She had a decent tan.

Afterwards, in order re-enter the real world gradually, we walked over to the old city, ducked out of the rain into Agen Musée des Beaux Arts and looked at tiny clay figurines from Lebanon, circa 2000 BC.

We found a space for the car at the edge of park with among the worst war memorials I've ever seen. The vast majority of cities, towns, and villages in France have monuments to the dead from the slaughterhouse of World War I (1914 - 1918). And the vast majority of these simply state: "Pour les enfants de [name of town], mort pour la France" I often wonder what must have come over a town to order one of these bloodthirsty, war-glorifying jobs:






And then what is the meaning of this memorial to the Agen folk who fell during World War II?



The final depressurization took the form of a visit to a gigantic Castorama, a sort of French Home Despot. I got myself a professional cordless drill as an improvement on using the heavy Hilti 3 in 1 for finish carpentry as well as a Bosch router and some cheap bits. Couldn't locate with a speed square, curses for having left such a lightweight necessity of life at home.

We continue to sucked into the vortex of the Clicclack flooring departments of giant stores. Stephanie, like Diogenes of old, holds up pieces of MDF with wood patterns photographed on the fronts to try to understand why a photograph of cherry costs a lot more than a photograph of pine.