Château de Combourg

Combourg, we like.  Gabriel is on vacation now, and we get to go to Combourg almost every day because that is where the swimming pool is; in Combourg, is the notary’s office where Jane’s house officially became hers on October 23 wahooo!!! and also, the Château de Combourg.  There’s a legend that there was an underground tunnel between our chapel and the Château, so regardless of the fact that the muddy earth of Le Maffay and the 12 kilometers which separate the playgrounds of the Princes de Combourg and our crib render the reality of a tunnel near null, it seemed like a good time to go and visit the château and see if we saw any tunnel entrances.  Or not.

We did see lots of beautiful leaves, a Countess, and a dessicated cat.  We explored the gardens and the little fronttoothless cowboy found two mushrooms and lots of room to run, and was even knighted by Timothy down by a lake.  I was fascinated with the gutters and practical workings of lightning rods, zinc and waterspouts, and even found a dusty window through which to peer, with an old dusty bottle of some elixir lit by the sun.  We asked two people who work there, the guide and the ticket lady, whether or not they knew of the availability of any historical documents about underground tunnels to consult, but no one knew anything about it.  You’re not allowed to take photographs inside, so you won’t see any of the inside here, you’ll just have to go and visit the inside yourself.  Even if you’re not a fan of Châteaubriand, it is very interesting and the guide is a very kind lady who has visitor’s pamphlets in English.  Here are lots of (way too many, dixit Seanie) pictures, among which is a study for the future stained glass window that we’ve begun collecting bottles for, a possible study for the chapel ogive.  Collecting bottles is hard work; first, you must empty them.  Please come and have a drink with us and help our stained glass project come to life.

ps. one of these images was photoshopped; which one?

Cip’s pet worm

Cipriano Armenteros the talking cat (he says hello, and sometimes “hi”), has never been much of a hunter, unlike his older sibling Max.   Max is happiest with a fieldmouse in his maw and skulks around like an adolescent, fleeing from battles over Maffaien primacy with Dipuce, (but he is always there for a hug if needed).  One day though we were out in the garden with Cip and noticed him looking at something fixedly for a few minutes, gently nudging it with his paw.  It was a worm, and Cip sat there for long time, never hurting it, just watching over his new friend.  I do not know whether he understood that it was a separate being, or if it seemed to him that a part of the topsoil had begun to move.  The worm went back underground, and Cip went off to prowl elsewhere.

Also, before we left for San Francisco and other points west, we got to see the very first blossoms on the plum tree open; our timing was inadvertently impeccable, on the very day we arrived home, the plum blossoms had been replaced by leaves, and the lilacs first bloomed.

Cip hunts the charolaises

Happy birthday Gramma Sally!  and Happy (late) birthday to Willy…

The cows set themselves free from the barn last weekend and escaped into the pasture to taste the grass.  They like the living room window, and we like to see them through it – we call it our “cow tv,” and they like to walk up to the barbed wire and see themselves reflected in the glass.  Cip got in on the game, and hunted them from the safety of triple-glazed windows, scratching at the glass like a tiger in a cage, or waving at them, depending on one’s perspective.  It was so nice to have the cows back.  This year’s batch is friendly and curious, more so than the skittish group last year.  Maybe Gabriel will actually make more progress in teaching them to play soccer?  Then Pierre-Yves came and put them back in the barn, it’s still too early for them to be out.  But Cip, Gabriel and I were happy that they were back with us, even for a little while.

Shot of the day

Cipriano Armenteros proves his derring-do by climbing up on the Renaissance grill covering the window of the manor house.  He managed to get himself back down, as well.  That’s a duct tape repair job on our electrical line hanging on the bottom of the grill; always so classy, ze Americans, with their shiny tape.  Duct tape is called ‘scotch américain’ over here, incidentally.

New haircut

It was a sunny day two weekends ago, the weekend of the Folles journées de Nantes where we puttered around the house and soaked up Bach and made lots of vitamin D with our skin in the beautiful light coming through the windows.  We are very impressed with the unexpected solar passivity of our little house – the insulated slab and the light-colored terra cotta tiles are a great combination, and now in the lengthening days of February the solar panels keep the slab heated enough during the day so that we only make one fire in the lovely fröling, at night.  And the lemon plant shares our opinion, and is now covered with white polka-dot blossoms, enough so that if they all come to fruition we’ll be making a big batch of limoncello just from one potted lemon tree.

We made some chappelle-applesauce too, with the great apples that M. Roullier père gave us, which we’ve stored in the chapel; and we’ve figured out a good trick, adding in dried figs and a browning banana will sweeten it naturally and give it a delightful crunch, and it’s very good with cinnamon, and the great fresh cheese called faisselle which is like cottage cheese but not chunky.

It was a good day for a haircut, so we got out the clippers and Gabriel got the Tintin cut, even though he would prefer a mohawk; tintin is our compromise.

Cip is still not better, he’s going to be the Million-euro cat in a short while here; his eye got reinfected, and so he gets drops in the morning and at night, and they might have to close his eye surgically so that it can heal, and then if that doesn’t work they’ll just take out his eyeball.  It sounds better in the latin name for the surgery, which i forget now, but ends with -echtomy.  He’s literally worth his weight in gold though, because he is a talking cat, and actually says ‘hello’.  I just wish that France had a Sécu for cats, otherwise we’ll have to loan him to the circus to keep him in antibiotics.

Happy Tet, and the X-men

We’ve not been, shall we say, exuberant poster children this month of january of the new year, and now years, with the advent of the Bull. It’s been a busy month of work and travails, and the subtext of the crisis and having to read that word every day makes one feel a little bit like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight – are the foundations of the world shaking, or is it just me?

Small things have advanced nonetheless here at Maffay. I planted finally all the jonquil bulbs and nectarine tree that Jacqueline and Jean-Pierre brought when they visited after Christmas with Mamie, Rokia, Bruno and Selyan. The tulip bulbs from the school sale in November. The iris from Mme Brugalais at the Poste, and the crocosmia as well. And some bulbs on sale from our faithful Leroy Merlin, because everyone in their right mind knows that it’s now too late to plant bulbs, but i have hope, and a need for color in our messy rainforest of a weed-garden. Cip has now joined Max in the tribe of X-men, and is nutless to begin the new year; the vet found his hidden testicle after opening up his abdomen, tucked up next to the wall of his intestines. Cip is very proud of his soft shaven belly and otherwise shows no signs of trauma at his loss of masculinity.

Politically, recent events in the United States had inspired me to halfway imagine that we would wake up on the morning of January 30 after the strike, to find that Nicolas Sarkozy had left office to be replaced by a coalition of people from Sortir du Nucléaire, proponents of ecological farming methods, bankers with lots of bonus money destined exclusively for investment in eolians, a bevy of chefs de cuisine and sous-chefs to establish a Museum of French Gastronomic History with vast wings devoted to each of the Hexagon’s colonial excursions, Patrick Chamoiseau as Housing Secretary (of my house), Mathieu from the école de Feins as Education minister, with a guidebook written by Anne T., and a Joey Starr in Secretary of the Interior. With the RASED rehabilitated and reinforced, to help everyone in the coalition to get along, and the benefits from converting the Elysee to wind power given to the Education ministry to employ ten new school professors per day. The trees that Klaus knocked down will be used as the beginning of a radical new program to replace cinderblocks, the omnipresent parpaing, with wood-framed, efficient passive low-income housing. Brice Hortefeux shines in his role as chief toilet scrubber at the Elysée, as he has shown particular efficiency at “cleaning” during his time as the Minister of Immigration and National Identity.

But it was just a dream. And here at Maffay this morning we’re listing to Buxtehude at the Folles Journées in Nantes while typing, delaying doing the dishes and grouting the shower, Izzy is waiting for her little Luca Paul to be born in California, Grandpa Paul is in Oaxaca eating seven different types of mole, and we hope that you all are all well and happy and healthy as this second new year begins.

This is what the kitchen looked like before i finished putting down the big black tiles on the countertops (which we loooooove),

and what the shower looked like a few days ago, with the first coat of impermeabilization green stuff on over the Fermacell panels.  The flames at the beginning of the post are what it looks like on the inside of the Fröling when i’ve managed to get the fire lit. All bets are being taken now as to whether or now we’ll have enough wood to last us to the sundrenched (hah) days of April, when the solar panels will take over.

For sale

The news of the past week on the left side of Maffay: tiling the kitchen counter, cleaning out the mobile home, getting paint up and carpet down, selling it so that we can look unimpeded out to the farm, and the meadow stretching out between us and the road to Sens.

I’ll put up some pictures of the renovated mobile home soon; either it was the paint fumes or general fatigue, but while working in it yesterday before the first potential acquirers came to visit, i began to have feelings of nostalgia, and thought: perhaps we were actually quite happy in here. And i believe that we actually were, especially in the summertime, or even at winter tucked in at night in our wood-panelled little room. One of the things that we learned from our experience is a very pragmatic tip that we would like to share with you all: if you ever have the chance to live in a mobile home, make sure you don’t store things in cardboard boxes, because they absorb humidity and everything inside, if it is fabric, will smell like Miss Havisham and you will find yourself making many trips to the dump with a carful of moldering, mildering ex-clothing.

The other, better news, is that wine is a surprisingly resilient resident of a mobile home, through the upper ranges of summertime, and the freezing temperatures of winter. Cleaning up, i found a bottle that Jacqueline and Jean-Pierre had given us before we left rue Frédéric Sacher. The bottle had rolled underneath a kitchen cabinet, and survived 13 months in a wooden box (our mobile home), in a French meadow. We drank it last night with Karin, Jean-Jacques, Malin, Simon, and Mathieu and it was actually, not bad. It was actually good. And i remember now, many years ago in Port Townsend, that when the red house burned, the workers who came to reconstruct its innards after the fire found my father’s wine cellar, and tested the bottles in it, and found that the wine was actually very, very good. I’m not saying that i’ll start storing wine bottles out on top of the fröling, but i am saying that if anyone is every about to toss out a bottle of mobile-home dwelling wine, i will gladly help dispose of it.

Also, this is for sale: it is a motor, found in the recesses of our barn. It is a 30watt motor, and used to turn the batteuse, or thresher, at the farm. It probably still works. It is very heavy, and its price is as follows. You must come and pick it up, and then you must see if you can get it to work, and if you can, please invite us over to see what you’ve made it do.

Also, a small remembrance of the history of Maffay: Hélène said that the barbed wire fences came only after the Americans, and the war. As a child, she had to go every weekend and after school, to watch the cows, because there were no fences. Kids had to go out and cowsit in all their spare time, which i actually think would be very appealing to Gabriel. Also, M. Roullier said that at Christmas time, he has the memory of the chocolate that his mother would make only at that time of year: the bar of Christmas chocolate, shaved in razor sharp slices into a warm bowl of milk. That, and an orange, was Christmas. There was also a man who would ride down on his bike from the coast at St Malo with a bag of clams, bringing them to Feins for Christmas. M. Honoré used to ride his bike to get back and forth to Rennes, and Pierrette says that she remembers that people would walk to the market in Combourg from Feins, making the round trip during the morning. This makes me feel very lazy and makes me think about perhaps riding the bikes to school with Gabriel.

Oh, and Cip is probably blind in one eye, because of a scratch or other proclivity to impair himself (this is double entendre in french: you’ll remember that Cip is our cat, who has only one testicle, rather than two). This is what happens when you name a cat after a mythical bandolero; he’s dealing well will his new infirmity and i’m thinking of making him a little eyepatch, for formal occasions, once i get a little more work done in the house, and enough space cleared to make room for the sewing machine.

Cipriano Armenteros

Yes, we have another new cat. This one is Pif’s second son, the strange puzzle-printed animalito who i discovered one morning in early May at Malin/Simon/Anton/Klara’s house. Let me anticipate your questions:

1. You’re not a cat person. You live in a mobile home with a gargantuan six year old with a penchant for mud and general disorder. Your parents are horribly allergic to cats. You’ve said in the past that you think cats are “bitchy” and standoffish.

Yes, all this is true. Did you read the post back in May about finding the mice babies in the compost heap? Also, Sandra said tonight that she found various parts of a rat in the back of the manor. Cats are many things, but my love of cats is inversely proportional to my dislike of rats.

2. What is his name?

Cipriano Armenteros, from the perfect Rubén Blades song of the same name. Buy the album Caminando and listen to it over and over. He’s an honorable bandolero, and little Cip has already distinguished himself for his bravery, hissing blithely in the face of Machin, and bears his white standard nobly on his chest.

3. Are they driving you crazy?

Yes, half of the time, when they’re not asleep, which is kind of the same way i feel about kids. This is karmic retribution for all the sibling rivalries i had with Izzy growing up – i find myself saying, why do you have to be so mean to one another? can’t you just get along? And Cip, who is very verbal, yowls and scratches some more with Max, i consider googling the french translation of ASPA. They’ve started getting along now, which means that one of them will start licking the other one All Over, and i wonder at times if i should tell Gabriel not to watch this until he turns 18 or so, unsure of the age limit for watching homoerotic kitty porn. Then I send them all outside to play in the dirt.

4. Is this one of those strange Freudian scenarios where you’re substituting cats for children/boyfriend?

Yes probably, but they do eat much less, and do not pee on the toilet seats: and, one day, they will eat rats. How many women can say that of their child/lover?

5. Are you going to turn into one of those crazy cat ladies with 600 cats in your house, covered in cat hair and reeking of cat spray?

No. Both boys will become neutered Its at six months old, we are not engaging in any reproductive experiences here at Maffay, and they really will be outside cats, because we have work here on the house for which the collective experience of Grandpas and Grammas is required. However, we might get a goat or two… (to be continued).

Low tide and how Max came to Maffay

We went to the beach on the day of the low tide this month with Annick and Cyril du Chevrolais, and picked up about 7kg of mussels, and lots and lots of tiny clams, and a few small crabs that you boil red and salty and then crunch into. G and i had a delightful mussel delirium meal, with oven roasted potatoes, and decided that we’ll follow Annick to skim the sands of low tides every month. This year there are 13 moons, we’re in luck.

And I think it was the weekend after that, but we went to Angers for work, and that weekend stayed over with our friends the famille Hodé who live in Liré country, the place that every French schoolchild knows because they memorize a sonnet about la douceur angévine being better than Rome’s Palatine hill, written many years ago by a man whose name now is emblazoned in neon on a bar alongside the Loire: Le Joachim. This is where Max is from, son of Nahla and a passing tomcat. Isa and Fréd welcomed us royally with margaritas and fajitas (heureuse comme Ulysse, i was), and fresh farm eggs, mutton, and potatoes, and homemade vinegar… and Mathis and Laurine and Gabriel made forts and played with kittens and ran around outside and ate ice cream and had a grand time. And we took home Max, farm eggs, homemade vinegar to start our own, and the promise that they will come and visit us once we have a little more than a roof, shower and septic system.

Max

Not much has moved forward in terms of our home at Maffay due other work, but, we do have great news: Maffay has a new master, Max, with whom we’re both completely enamored, especially at night when he licks the perfume off my neck with his catscratchy tongue, or when he sits on my lap as i work at the computer, or when he follows Gabriel around the garden or jumps around on the bed like a little mexican bean. This is Max in his favorite nap spot. He comes from the same place as Joachim du Bellay, the land of Liré, from a visit to our friends the wonderful famille Hodé, and we think he’s a very literary cat because he already likes listening to bedtime stories, and is soothed by the clatter of computer keys. He naps as much as i would like to, and eats as much as Gabriel, almost, and like Gabriel, thinks he is a tiger.