That’s right, amazing but true, you too can heat your home for less with Gerbil Power. Well I suppose I had better own up, they are wood pellets and not Gerbil food, but they look just like the pellets I used to give Bubble and Squeak, may they rest in peace.

The benefits are many:

• The cost of the fuel is more affordable.
• Because the fuel cost is cheaper we can heat the whole house and heat it to a comfortable temperature.
• No green house gases from heating the house and our hot water.

The affordability of the fuel, is certainly a big plus. When we were running the gas boiler we could only afford to heat parts of the house to 14° C in the winter and then supplement that with wood burning stoves in the principal rooms. Now we heat the house to 19° C , and use the wood burning stoves when convenient.

The biggest discernible effect is that the whole house is now warm, and we can enjoy all the rooms throughout the year. Less discernible is the reduced environmental impact that the new boiler has . I mean the polar ice caps have not stopped melting since we installed this, have they?

Wood Pellets Did you say?

The fuel is made from sawdust and wood waste from sawmills, which is compressed into  small pellets that looks like Gerbil food, (it does I tell you) this is then delivered by lorry and blown into our silo which is in the garage and can hold seven tonnes of the stuff, that’s a lot of Gerbil food. Even better later this year a local factory will start producing the wood pellets from local sawmills, making the solution even more sustainable and cheaper  . . . . hurray for Gerbils !

Sometimes we are tempted from our mountain hideaway to the bright lights of the big city, tempted by our consumerist desires, we brave the crowds and the traffic. This time it was the need to buy materials for the renovation of the salle de classe, that we could not get locally, I say this time but in fact it is nearly always to buy renovation materials.

Having satiated our consumer desires, with the purchase of two suspended toilets, and 12 bottles of burgundian white wine, we found we had time to spare. A rare opportunity to explore! We therefore set of for Pont-du- chateau. Follow our progress through this historic town.

Pont du chateau is a small town with yes you guessed it a chateau and a bridge, and if you thought where there is a bridge, there must be a river, you would be right. The Allier is the river flowing down below the old towns ramparts.

The Chateau dates from the middle of the XVII century and is the work of Guillame Montboissier Beaufort Canillac and was financed by his friend Cardinal Mazarin. The Montboissiers were exiled to England in the 18th C. because of the Revolution.

The day was sunny and the newly arrived swifts filled the air with their shrieks. Like them our spirits took wing with the arrival of such a lovely day.We were not the only ones to be taking in the sun. Just below the Chateau the old men of the village enjoyed a game of petanque beneath the flowering horse chestnut trees.

The town is quiet and it is hard to imagine it as it was in its heyday as a thriving river port, in fact there were five ports just in Pont du chateau . Hundreds of miles from the sea, river barges carried all manner of goods from the Auvergne, coal, fir trees for masts for the Navy of Louis XIV, strong wine for Paris, paper from the paper mills of Auvergne well known for its quality and of course hemp for making ships sails. All of these goods passed through Pont du Chateau. The sailors, bargistes, porters who made the journey to Paris with the boats, many never returned preferring to stay after selling their cargo, breaking the boat up and selling the wood those that did not stay walked back to build another boat and make the journey again until they too had made enough money so they need not return.

The town is close to the administrative centre of the Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand and not far from the ancient cutlery producing town of Thiers. Well placed to trade with them both and to act as port for them both. 

St Martine church is a good example of its kind, unfortunately the door was locked so no photos of its painted interior . . .

. . . but hey stone coffin anyone.

Political concerns are foremost in the minds of many even in this quiet town, sharpened no doubt by the global financial crises, and the general consensus (correctly held or not, it is not for me to say) that the government of President Sarkosy is not doing enough to help the common man. The European elections could well provide a means to voice that discontent.

The Allier is like all rivers in the Auvergne and indeed all of the Auvergne clean and general untouched by pollution, and as such is home to the rare freshwater grayling a fish sensitive to pollution. Other species of note that can be found along the length of the Allier are salmon, beaver, and otter. The Allier springs in the Massif Central at 1500m altitude before pouring its waters into the Loire 421km later. It is funny to think that the rain that falls on our village some 70km away, by way of many streams and a tributary of the Allier passes under this bridge and thus to the Loire and on to the Atlantic.

The river, any river is quite  an apt symbol for the Auvergne. The Auvergne volcanic rock filters rainfall that is eventually bottled and then sits expensively on many a table, Volvic is but one name. In our village like others in the Auvergne our tap water is French mineral water taken from a spring rising in the village and piped to all the houses in the village, almost every pasture and meadow has water bubbling out of it. Rivers powered some of the first industry. Paper has been made in the valleys around where we live since the crusades at its height over 300 working water powered paper mills pulped and mashed reams and reams of paper. The always flowing river urgently making its way to the sea also reminds me that many throughout history have sought their livelihood somewhere other than the Auvergne, the rural exodus has left its own mark upon the landscape, abandoned houses and villages less cultivated land and more forest.

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Hope you enjoyed your cup of coffee and the tour of Pont-du-Chateau.

The factoids.

• Number of floors – 4.
• Combined surface area of all floors – 380 m2 for those of you not metrically minded that’s 4,090 ft squared.
• Average ceiling height 3 m / 9 ft 10 ins.
• Tallest ceiling height (to the apex) 6 m / 19 ft 8 ins.
• Overall volume 1250 m3 / 44,143.33 cubic feet.

Not sure what that looks like, well the average 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom house in England is about 100 m2 / 1,076 square feet. Try it with you own property, just do a quick calculation, to get an idea of scale.

So now you have an idea of the size of the project, do we get a bit of slack on blowing the deadline?

Ok so I can see you will need more convincing, so now onto exhibit B the photos. In this post I will concentrate on just one floor the ‘grenier’ or attic, which is quite representative of the house.

Oh and another lovely shot of the attic at the start of the project.

I’ve gone too far haven’t I. You have sympathy with us for not hitting our deadline. But now you are questioning our sanity, taking on this project, let alone deciding we could do it in five years. “FIVE YEARS! You must be mad”. Ah but the wiser amongst you are saying, “Well it is not a problem if you are a professional from the building trades, or you have money to throw at the project”. Wise words indeed. We had a tight budget, which we have kept to, more or less. Both of us were desk jockeys, filing paperwork was manual labour for us, and our tools were the stapler and hole punch. We were at best competent Do-It-Yourselfers having only ever bought new houses in England.

We did use builders at the start of the project, but as our confidence grew in our own abilities so it lessened in “les artisans” ability to start work on time and to finish a job by the agreed date. So in the end it was easier but slower to learn how to rewire, plumb, repair masonry, roofs etc etc etc.

The attic was used as general storage when the house was a school and also as a place to cure meats, as evidenced by the salty meat stains that had seeped in the rotting floor. Not forgetting the time that German Shepherds were bred in the attic either, I hasten to add not for their meat and of course they were not actual shepherds but the dog breed. So quite a bit of history, and with history time passes and with the passage of time dust and dirt settles, and the house has been emptied of any number of trailer loads of that.

The attic in its new and shiny form is our “penthouse guest suite” with a comfy salon.

two double bedrooms, here is one 

and a bathroom/toilet, for which I do not have a photo.

Well that about wraps up the attic, I will have to look for more photos of the other rooms and get posting with details about their renovation. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

We used to have more visitors when I was rehoming kittens that I had found. My friends would arrive with their kids to play with the kittens which was great as it helped domesticate and socialise the kittens with other people, making them more homeable. Luckily I haven’t found any new kittens for a year or so, so my policy of catching all the stray cats in the village and neutering them seems to have worked. The locals were killing the kittens which I couldn’t bear, so I took them all in and homed most!

Jack busy trying to teach Ninja kitten some manners……

…….and the art of sleeping!

A bientôt
Gail

“Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; such was the fright which the Thenardier inspired in her, that she dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail.

In this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket was full; it was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground once more. She took breath for an instant, then lifted the handle of the bucket again, and resumed her march, proceeding a little further this time, but again she was obliged to pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again. She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs.

This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment.”

Book III Chapter V Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

They can be easily spotted by their quick nervous movements and the flicking of their tails, (”start” is the modern English reflex of Middle English stert, Old English steort, tail of an animal), which gives the group its name.

Welcome back Redstarts, and thanks for the colour you add to our fields and trees.

You are never far from the past in the Auvergne, it intrudes into the present in many ways, the small family farms, still maintained by a family, the grandparents herding the flocks as actively as the young repair fences. The lavoirs that exist in almost every village remind us rudely of times past. Beautifully restored and charming in the summer sun as they are, I am glad that I was never called upon to stoop and kneel, hands and arms in cold water, like some arduous religious ritual to whiten and cleanse not my soul, which after all may be worth saving, but to whiten and clean clothes and bedding.

The lavoir is a public place fed by a natural spring or sometimes pond or watercourse , they are generally covered where the local women or washer women would wash laundry. Some were equipped with a hearth to make the cinders used to whiten the laundry. The use of lavoirs has been progressively abandoned as washing machines became available.

Many fine examples of lavoirs exist throughout France, with many having been restored. The one featured here is to be found in the village of Rousse in the Puy de Dome.

There existed also the “bateaux-lavoirs” or laundry-boats, literally they were floating platforms tied to the bank of a river, and used for washing laundry. Many still exist at Laval in the Pays de la Loire.

The bateaux-lavoirs was also a squalid block of buildings in Montmartre, Paris situated at 13 Rue Ravignan (Place Emile Goudeau). The place is famous because at the turn of the 20th century a group of outstanding artists lived and rented artistic studios there. First artists started to settle at the Bateau-Lavoir in the 1890s but after 1914 they started to move elsewhere (mainly Montparnasse). The name bateaux-lavoirs means the laundry-boat because it resembled boats of laundry women.

One of the insults used by the character Capitain Haddock is “Amiral de bateau-lavoir” Admiral of a laundry-boat.

Well there you have it – yet another reason to be thankful of your washing machine and another reason to visit the Auvergne.

Market a definition

• mar·ket (mär’kĭt) pronunciation
• n.
• 1. A public gathering held for buying and selling merchandise.
• 2. A place where goods are offered for sale.
• 3. A store or shop that sells a particular type of merchandise: a vegetable market.
• v., -ket·ed, -ket·ing, -kets.
• [Middle English, from Old North French, from Vulgar Latin *marcātus, from Latin mercātus, from past participle of mercārī, to buy, from merx, merc-, merchandise.]

Even the smallest village will be heaving with people on these days, and it has a real sense of community, always with plenty of refreshment stalls selling the usual French sausages and cheese, bread and wine, lots of wine.

There are usually pens of old fashioned breeds of livestock for the people to pet, and local producers of cheese, honey, jam, cider with tasting tables of their produce. There may even be a band to entertain the crowds, and a display of sheepdogs herding geese.

They are hugely popular days out, even our tiny village has about 4 of these per annum, and they continue well into the evening terminating with fireworks. Last year I was buying antique linen sheets for both my own collection, and for my Ebay shop Faded-Grandeur, from one of the stallholders , and she was explaining that she had arrived at 4am to ensure she had her favourite spot!

Can you tell that I love living here??!!

“Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client.” William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997)

See more brocante photos on my flikr photostream

A bientot! Gail

Fairly plain ordinary box, shoved under a lot of other plain ordinary boxes, but when I opened it, intrigued by the writing on the box of Carte Alimentaire . . . . .

I found these hiding in the box, a collection of ration books and tickets issued during WWII. This comes from a period of history that I have always been interested in since I studied it at school. In Britain where I grew up, tales of getting an orange for a birthday, or recounting the first time a banana was seen and not knowing what is was, have become part of the national conscience.

For those that do not know food rationing was introduced in Britain in 1940 and did not end until 1954 . In France food rationing was introduced in 1941 and ended four years after the wars end in 1949. Find out more on rationing in Britain here and here. Find out more on rationing in France here of course in French

Some people that I have spoken to here in the Auvergne, (a very rural region of France, even today it has many small family farms dotting the mountains and hills) remember rationing . One lady who was a child at the time remembers her mother being afraid that the German soldiers would steal her daughters lunch box on her way to school, and that the soldiers often came to their farm for eggs and milk. Still another lady recounts that rationing was difficult and everything was in short supply as there were no young men and many German soldiers. This is not surprising as many agricultural workers were amongst the 1.5 million young men transported to Germany to work in German armaments factories.

Tickets were issued and designated for the age of the recipient so a ticket for a baby was marked E, V for old people J for young people and A for Adults.

Well as interesting as it is from the safety of this century I am glad I never lived in that time, can you imagine how difficult shopping for a family would have been, and I moan about the check out at our local supermarket.

To view more photos of the ration books and tickets, visit my flickr photo set.