Richard's post

You may not know that Ricardo the Magnificent is a keen Bellringer.

He passed a milestone recently at the huge Church at North Lopham built in 1526. A quarter peal is kind of like your first public performance in the Bell ringing world. It usually goes for around 45 minutes and takes a lot of skill and concentration. He rang on what's called an "inside" bell.

Dawn Pullan, the Ringing Master of the Southern Branch of the Norwich Diocesan association of bellringers (to give you her full title) said he was like a dog with 2 tails afterwards.

He's also been very busy making a kitchen for friends who live nearby. The photos are taken on his mobile and are unfortunately pretty bad. But you get the jist. The bechtops are all made of Iroko and very glamorous indeed. I'd kill for a kitchen like this.

Before.....with the new old oak beam that had to be put in above the stove opening.

And after...complete with flowers

Oh Dear (Warning gruesome images follow)

It has been hot here over the last week or so & Richard has been up fixing and painting the barge boards along the sides of the roof of a friends house just 'round the corner. He's been getting a marvelous tan but I've been slightly nervous of him up on scaffolding by himself, with one leg balanced on the hedge.....
It's been good weather for drinking a beer after work too. For some reason his beer of choice was this one, Carlsberg Special Brew. It's got a really high alcohol content, much higher than I realised.Last night we went 'round to Clarissa's to watch a programme about the Global Village Trucking Company.
Richard had had a beer before we left & quite a few glasses of wine as we watched all his old hippy buddies from the rival Norfolk commune re-living their well spent youth. It was amazing to see how much & yet how little had changed.
As he left with ideas of being 21 again, Ricardo decided that all his time spent in Circus Oz had given him powers no mere mortal could live up to & he quickly swung himself up on a pole that crosses Clarrry's driveway... He got up alright.... but with no help from the Special Brew couldn't stay upside down for very long, his legs gave way & he bit the dust (or gravel in this case) and gashed his head really badly. Six stitches later. He's vowing never to go near a Special Brew again.
Thank God the urge to down a can or two hadn't overtaken him up that bloody scaffold!!!!

Too darn hot

I said before that I wouldn't complain even if it was really hot here..... but OH MY GOD it's been hotter than I've ever experienced in my life before. 41 degrees feels like you've just opened a fan forced oven to put some biscuits in but you can't just close the door and walk away.
Poor Richard has been working, putting in a new deck, for our darling friend Gwen Ford all through the heat. I don't know how he does it. Lucky he's 12 years older than me....if we were the same age, I'd never ever keep up with his enthusiasm.
I took these photos of Gwen's beautiful garden where he is working. She has a B & B just up the road from where we are staying here in Eltham, Victoria, Australia, and I'm hereby putting in a shameless plug for it.
It's called the Eltham Garden retreat. You can't hear the cicadas buzzing loudly here and you can't smell the intense eucalyptus smell but you can imagine the peace that surrounds this place even on the hottest of days.
This is the lovely path that we had to tread endlessly to carry the wood up to the area where Ricardo is rebuilding the deck. A beautiful place to work you must admit.
Here's a photo of him after his hard days yakka.
Here too for your enjoyment is a not too bad one of me goofing off with my niece Lena at the nearby shopping centre where they have a donut king...... I've never tried blue ones before.

...and Ricardo is DONE too

For more than a week now Richard has been fitting a kitchen that he made for a friend's house in Blakeney in North Norfolk. It is absolutely gorgeous. He's a talented bunny...The worktops are recycled teak. He stayed up there for a couple of nights but we missed each other so badly he had to come home....
The doors and the rest will be painted.
There is this fab plate rack. I've always wanted a plate rack. It's enough to make you want to buy your own house..(better up our hourly rate).

Now...........................at last he can pack ......

Blakeney

Look at this amazing house built of tiny flints in the old fishing village of Blakeney in North Norfolk. Every house in the street was of a different kind.
We went there on the weekend for Ricardo to look at a job at a friends beach house.

Fairwell La Fosse

Well, we made it back to sunny Norfolk. After a long long drive back from France......

As we drove away from the ferry terminal in Newhaven in the UK, the traffic stopped & was bumper to bumper for miles & miles. 'Welcome back to Britain', where there are the same number of people as there are in France but half as much room.

On a lighter note....the staircase is finished!!!! Ta daaaa

Here is a picture of me looking like I've actually done some work...in my beautiful new/old smocked linen blouse that we bought at a Brocante sale in Saumur. (Sometimes these pictures blow up if you click on them and sometimes they don't, for no apparent reason....give it a try)

We had such a nice time in La Fosse & people were so welcoming, we'll be back for more as soon as we can. On the day before we left, Liz's neighbour's came over in their fabulous wrap around French aprons & presented us with a bottle of wine, a bottle of home made cider vinegar & a jar of home made plum jam. It's amazing how humanity transcends language.

Here are some random photos of our last day when we went on a drive up the Loire to a place called Montsoreau. The Chateau there overlooks a quiet stretch of the River Loire, near the confluence of the Loire and Vienne rivers and at the base of a cliff. The river here is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is peaceful & beautiful. The Montsoreau chateau was done up incredibly tastefully. There were no four poster beds & Louis 14th chairs, only a beautiful light & sound display of beautifully made model boats sailing along on a bed of moiréd steel mesh. There was hardly anyone else there and the eerie sounds of terns & lapping water lulled you into a calm & meditative state.

After a sumptuous lunch of crepes...We went to Fontevraud where we saw this amazing building which looks like a princesses tower but is actually the kitchens of the Abbey there. We also discovered that Richard the lion heart's grave is at this very Abbey

We finally got to see the church that Liz had told us about near La Fosse that had wonderful topiary yew trees. Comical & tactile. A lovely summer's evening with hardly any noise & raked sandy paths.
The strange grumpy-cheese-crab-cake that we bought to see what it actually was. Why would you actually burn the outside of a cake.
So farewell to La Fosse and La belle France. Thankyou for a wonderful time.

Montreuil Bellay

Up until now I've been nervous of going out & about on the wrong side of the road into a world were no one speaks my language. But today I was determined to venture out a little further than La Fosse. I made a trip to Liz's favourite butcher in St George Sur Layon and managed to negotiate a kilo & a half of lamb neck fillets for tomorrow night's Navarin of lamb. The butcher's tiny little Mama that served me was sweet & tried valiantly to make small talk with me. Everyone we have met has been so lovely especially Christine, Liz's neighbour & her small cute doggy named 'Capsule.'

After the meat adventure I drove on to a nearby town called Montreuil Bellay...

Chateau heaven. I had absolutely no idea there were so many in the Loire valley. What a dummy. Montreuil is one of those story book towns with honey coloured stone towers everywhere. No wonder there was a revolution here in France. The rich must have had an incredible life; it's also no wonder they had such impregnable walls surrounding their magnificent piles of stone.

Here for you also is a picture of the one doing all the work while I swan about, (although I do cycle up to the local pattisseie every morning for Tarte aux fruits or La Religeuse au chocolat)...luckily I bought my 'Buns-of-steel' DVD with me, otherwise there would be a lot more of me coming back to the UK than when we left a few weeks ago.

Richard est très heureux

Here is a picture of Richard in French hardware heaven. I had to buy a crowbar to lever him out of there. We managed to safely negotiate the buying of nails and the cutting of wood to the right size to span the hole that the staircase is coming out of.

Here he is feeling even more 'joyeaux' closing up the hole with said pieces of wood, where it came out.

(Forgive these strangely written sentences, I have the feeling that my English is deteriorating at roughly the same rate as my French is improving).

La Fosse de Tigne

At last a little bit of time to blog. The weekend was full of eating, laughing, chatting and a trip to Angers to see the famous & kind-of-scary Tapestries of the Apocalypse. (More on that later).

Now I need to bring you up to speed as to where we are & what we are doing here.

We are in a small village in the Loire valley in France called La Fosse De Tigne (pronounced tinyay), about 1/2 an hour South East of Angers.

Richard's lovely friend Liz has bought a house down here and needs a hand to do it up. Well actually she bought one ages ago and has recently bought the one next door, it's the newer house that Richard is working on. It feels like home....I never realised how Mediterranean Melbourne was. The main house is ancient and made of thick stone. The windows are tiny and it stays cool even on the hottest day. There is a huge backyard. There is lavender and roses everywhere. (Thomsey you would love it). The more recent house is a marvelous one from La Belle Epoch, built around 1904. It has really bad wallpaper and endless rooms with giant spiderwebs. It is so quiet at night. Liz uncovered this beautiful floor of tessilated tiles.

Not much else is left inside the house of any character, most of it had 70's panelling in the rooms.

Last week there were friends of Liz's staying, Chris (an Aussie guy from Hobart), Marianne (from Amsterdam)and a little sweetheart that Chris looks after named Ivy. Ivy fell in love with Cheekee Monkey, and I fell in love with Ivy. She made a skirt for monkey to wear & called him Elizabeth Nemo. She was an absolute delight and made it not so lonely with Richard working all day.

The weather has been beautiful so far. About 25 degrees with little puffy white clouds. It is such a familiar landscape, there are vineyards as far as the eye can see, with the odd field of sunflowers or corn evey now & again. There is a mini chateau over the back fence which I will photograph soon to show you. It's like a piece of Disneyland.

Bloke post

This week has been one of greasiness & engines.
Richard's van broke down a couple of weeks ago & we bought a new (well VERY second hand) one. It is the same as his previous one so he took a whole load of bits & pieces off the old one & put them on the new one. A very satisfying job indeed. We towed the old one to Mellors metals. An exciting scrap yard near us, where the giant claw could come down at any time & squash you like an ant. All the fun of the fair & you get paid for it by the scrap dealer's very clean daughter.

Then after our sojourn to Sunderland Point a few weeks ago and a great deal of discussion with the all knowing fishermen & women of the North West; we decided "to Hell with the expense", we would put a diesel motor into the boat. We had one that we bought from a friend where our boat lies, but it was attched to a compressor.....more rust, diesel & dirt to get it off the compressor and to take it to....
Mr Diesel' himself, Brian Greenwood.
Brian has every man's ideal job, in every boy's ideal location. He has a workshop on what's known as 'The Broads' . With a view of boats & ducks & riverland. An Arthur Ransome story is set very nearby and there is a museum of the Broads too where these photos were taken of Ricardo in his element.
Mmmmmmmmm motors'


Mmmmmm canvas covers
Here's a picture of the engine that we will replace in the boat, an Albin petrol job, a collectors item we are told.

Ricardo's fun work

Ricardo has been working at the new whiskey distillery that has opened up just down the road from us, called the English Whisky Co. The first & only registered whisky distilling company in England.

It's a great looking building and Richard says the copper 'still' looks amazing.

Hopefully with 'Ricardo hammer-for-hire's' excellent workmanship it will be an even greater building...this photo is from their website, click on the link above to go to it & have a look. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet Prince Charles when he came to have a look.

Huge achievements..

Richard and a gang of workers are about to finish a house they have been working on for the last 2 years. It's a huge house and a huge achievement.

So....

inspired by Yarnstorm's blog entry about a Victoria sponge...I made one of my own to take to the site to help celebrate the penultimate day's work.

Let's hope that blokey builders like cake, maybe I should be taking a slab of beer & some pork pies.