The following year there was no spring renovation trip to Frasquenet. This was due to a time critical project at work, combined with a lack of volunteers.
During May and June I started to turn my thoughts to what my summer French holiday project should be. The wall enclosed, patch of concrete at the back of the house, which I considered to be simply a backyard, was sometimes kindly referred to as ‘The courtyard’ by visiting friends and relatives.
Naturally I would have preferred to possess a courtyard rather than a mere yard and checking my dictionary I discovered that they were technically correct, given the definition provided ‘Courtyard – a space without a roof but enclosed by walls’.
Disappointingly the dictionary went on to add “esp. forming part of a castle, large house, hotel etc.”. Regardless of the kind words of friends and the definition in the dictionary, to me a courtyard needed to have a rustic feel to it, to have a flag stone floor rather than a concrete slab, and should possess a feature such as fountain, preferably in it’s centre.
So my first vision was to lay flagstones on top of the concrete and put a nice old sandstone fountain in the middle. At this stage I need to explain that the floor of the courtyard was also the roof of the rear part of the garage. I had never been quite sure what held this in place, since the few very rusty iron beams, which appeared to have been put in place for the purpose, did not look capable of holding any significant weight. From a cursory visual inspection it was impossible to tell how far the concrete slab penetrated into the sandstone side walls. To put it bluntly I had little confidence that the weight of the flagstones and the fountain of my dreams, would not cause the whole lot to collapse into the garage below.
As usual I modified my vision, forgot about the flagstones and settled on simply having a wall fountain, where at least some of the weight would be borne by the wall rather than just the floor. At this stage I had little idea as to what this wall fountain would look like.
Our local High Street in North West London had an interesting general store, which sold all kinds of things not generally found in the other shops. The merchandise was mainly aimed at the price conscious customer and items ranged from screwdrivers and hammers to things such as cooking utensils, pots, vases and children’s toys.
At the rear of this shop was a rather nice backroom, which comprised a section which specialised in picture framing, ready framed reproductions of well known masters, and artificial flowers and plants. I had never been a great fan of artificial foliage, but the quality was much better than a decade before, when most artificial greenery had consisted only of brightly coloured shiny plastic. Now with the use of fabric for leaves and petals, and matt spray paints to add a bloom to berries and fruits, you sometimes actually had to touch these plants to know that they were not real.
I spent many hours at weekends in this shop browsing and trying to imagine which items would be useful for enhancing the house in Frasquenet. The artificial plants were particularly attractive, given that the house was empty for nine months of the year and so real plants were impracticable.
Among the items I acquired were three terracotta wall pots and some lengths of artificial ivy and fern, which I figured would help to reduce the austere feel of the shower room. For the mantelpieces in the living room and one of the bedrooms, I bought pottery vases whose early Edwardian styling was reminiscent of the water jug and potty which had graced my grandmother’s bedroom when I was a young child. For these I bought a selection of artificial poppies, irises, ferns and some rather sombre looking large dark red and black tulips, which I thought would fit in with the style of the wall paper in the front bedroom.
A visit to a garden centre near Ruislip, between Uxbridge and Harrow, produced a fountainhead. It literally was a head, or at least the front half of a head, in the shape of some sort of Greek god or goddess head. The head, which had a flat back, seemed to have been moulded from some fibrous, asbestos like material and dyed bronze verdigris green.
Having learnt from previous years, that getting up in the early hours to catch an early morning ferry, in fact lead to a sleepless night, caused partly by excitement and partly by fear of missing the alarm clock, we had booked ourselves on the Thursday 11pm, Dover to Calais ferry. I had calculated that given the time difference, we would disembark, at around 1:30am French time and hence we would be well south of Paris, when the morning rush hour started.
On this occasion, we had no passengers and had taken three weeks leave, for our longest stay in Frasquenet, so far. Apart from Jane, Sarah and our holiday luggage, I was accompanied by my previously mentioned purchases, including Bacchus’ head, an electric pump and my video camera. Where as the previous summer, I had tackled the very practical and necessary job of building window shutters, this year’s project was somewhat more frivolous, a luxury rather than a necessity. This would be the year of project “garden fountain”. My other intended project, was to make a video documentary of Narbonne and the surrounding area, so that I could lift myself out of the depression of future English winters, by watching the sun filled Corbieres skies, from the comfort of my armchair in London.
Despite the absence of passengers, we were not going to be left with many days entirely to ourselves. On the first Monday we were due to collect my elderly mother and even more elderly step father from Toulouse airport. They were due to stay with us until the Sunday, when we would deliver them to my stepbrother’s house at Lodeve. The following Tuesday we were to return to Toulouse to collect Jane`s friend Caroline and her daughter Sabine. They were due to stay with us for ten days, before we would return them to Toulouse for the flight home.
The ferry crossing came and went without incident. By 9:00am we were approaching Orleans and Jane took a turn at driving. When I awoke to retake the wheel, we were already south of Clermont Ferrand. By 4.00pm we had taken up residence in Frasquenet.
The following morning, Saturday, Isabelle paid us a visit. I settled our summer cleaning account and renewed our invitation of the previous summer, for Isabelle to bring Daniel and their children around one evening to experience “du nouriture Chinoise”.
Isabelle informed me that the pizzeria and swimming pool on the edge of the village, had been re opened for the summer. This was the first time since buying the house that this complex, had operated. For the first time we could now get a good meal and go swimming, without having to take the car, this meant that now both Jane and I could enjoy a glass or two of wine with our meals, knowing that we could walk home afterwards.
Knowing that we would soon be invaded by parents and friends, I immediately set about acquiring a stone trough, which would become the receptacle of the planned fountain. Most of the troughs that I found in the nearby garden centres were too modern looking for the effect I wanted to achieve, but persistence paid off when I found an apparently suitable one in Narbonne.
My budget and lack of patience meant, that I was actually purchasing a stone look alike, which in truth is made of concrete not real stone. I felt slightly ashamed of this compromise, since I understood from the writings of a certain author based in Provence, that real stone objects such as that which I sought, came two a penny in southern France. Perhaps if I lived here permanently I would also have the time to seek out these more authentic items, but alas time was of the essence.
While the trough I chose was the largest I had seen, I was still taken aback that it took three burly Frenchmen to lift it into the back of the car. As the springs virtually bottomed, I consoled myself that I would be proving the durability of the suspension.
As I drove toward Frasquenet, I sought inspiration as to how I would single handedly get the trough first out of the car and then up the very steep steps to the courtyard. I knew that a word to Isabelle would produce the required assistance in the form of Daniel and friends, but I like a challenge and I needed to get the trough out of the car before collecting the parents from Toulouse on Monday. A large plank, that had lain on the garage floor ever since I had bought the house, was called into service as a ramp.
I pulled the trough with all my feeble strength, it moved no more than half a centimetre. Eventually by using a bit of broom handle as a roller, I was able to inch the trough to the end of the plank, which rested on the back bumper of the car. Two hours and four cold beers later, the trough lay on the garage floor. Amazingly the trough, the car, the plank and myself seemed no worse off for the experience. Clearly there was no way that the trough would ascend the steps to the yard, without additional manpower, or some extremely clever pulley arrangement. With my short term objective of emptying the car achieved and four beers inside me, I decided to leave it where it was on the garage floor, until further inspiration arrived.
In the meantime I had noticed that the garage needed a bit of a tidy up. This would become my job for Sunday morning. That evening we lit the barbeque and cooked a long length of Toulouse sausage, which I had purchased earlier in the course of my trough search. The sausage and accompanying salad went down very well with a chilled bottle of Vin de Frasquenet rouge.
Sunday came and after the customary croissant and cup of coffee, I set about tidying up the garage. I was very cautious about lifting objects off the floor, being aware of the hidden creepy crawlies I might come across, after Jao Chai’s scorpion incident of the previous year. Luckily the village had positioned a pair of large wheelie bins about 50 yards from the garage door, so disposing of the rubbish was no problem. As I gingerly lifted an old sack that had lain in the same corner ever since we had bought the house, scurrying insects confirmed that last years scorpion had not been the only one in Languedoc. These were bigger than the previous year, but were also light in colour, they didn’t seem as menacing as those black ones you see in James Bond movies.
I started to make two piles of debris. One pile was definitely destined for the wheelie bins, whereas the other pile contained items, which might be of use at a later date.
I lifted a solitary roof tile from the floor and put it in the pile of potentially useful bits. I then picked up the lump of sandstone that had lain concealed under the tile, also intending to put it in the useful pile.
As I closed my hand around it, I felt an ominous tingle in my spine, as I detected that what should have been hard and dry, was actually squishy and clammy. It then wriggled and launched itself back toward the garage floor. After the initial shock, I watched, as it headed for a dark corner and realised it was the largest toad I had ever seen. Well at least it had been a living creature and not a cleverly concealed turd, which had been my first thought. At this point I decided that the garage was tidy enough, so I turned my hand to constructing a troughless fountain prototype.
An hour later, the Greek god’s head, which I had fastened to the courtyard wall, was as I had intended, spewing water into my temporary trough, a red plastic bucket.
The problem was not only that its horizontal range was an incredible 8 feet, when all I needed was 8 inches, but also the pump was so strong that the head was filling up three times faster than it was emptying, leaving a torrent of water pouring down the wall. Clearly in a hot climate, wasting water would not go down well with the locals and anyway the flow would probably wash away the crumbly mortar, which held the wall together.
Various attempts to control the flow using different diameter pipes, left me convinced that a less powerful pump was required, so I tidied up and abandoned project fountain for the day.
A little after midday we made our way to the pizzeria. We settled back sheltered from the baking sun by a large parasol and asked for the pizza menu. The waitress politely informed us that pizzas were only served in the evenings. We settled for a salad and a bottle of chilled rose wine.
We were pleased to find that use of the inviting swimming pool was free to diners. Later as I lounged beside the clear blue water, taking in the magnificent view, smelling the mixed fragrances of pine trees, herbs and garlic, I listened to the excited children shouting and splashing and thought of all those lucky people at home enjoying the worst English summers for years. This strengthened my resolve to make a video, which would be visually unsurpassable as an antidote for winter and would be more life like than virtual reality, if only I could capture the smell!
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