The Mother is coming
with Tonia and Anya
Sunday
Back to the world of work and preparations for impending ‘visitors’.
Job 1: make a ring that actually fits – priorities people, my family are coming and we don’t want this to look ill considered!
The one I have is rather too large and my temporary plaster solution is incredibly annoying, and sticky after a while. It took sometime but eventually we got the size right. At least now, when we finally get the ‘actual’ ring, we should have the right size.
Job 2: if mum is coming she’s going to need a hob for all that cooking she’s going to be doing. Better get the placing done, hole cut, oh, and it needs a hole through to the basement for the power.
Job 3: better double check we haven’t caught Covid on the way back from holiday before they arrive, I suspect I might be put up in a shed if this is positive. Thankfully it was clear.
Job 4: time to disappear to the garden. The garden has been going a bit mad while we have been away by the looks of it and lots to do.
Before long however, I was in a mood. When I was tidying up I my potting shed I found that mice had been in and all my seeds had been broken into, spread everywhere and little way of determining which, apart form the most obvious, were which. Little b*ggers!
Matt doesn’t appear to appreciate how annoyed I am, ‘they’re just seeds’.
Job 5: need to put the ‘eating’ side of the island in. Not so easy when it’s a temporary fix but we’ve watched enough Gold Rush to do a bush fix.
Job 6: I’m off to the dining room to tidy up a bit. Also did a lot of last minute sweeping of stairs, mopping etc but they arrived earlier than expected. Ok, ok, yes mum. I admit it. I did also say to Matt ‘Let’s not go crazy, Mum’s coming and she’s going to need something to do. She can start at the bottom and by the time she’s done it will be ready to do again’
And so the troops [or hoards] descended.
Great to have them here. Mum’s car was packed to the rafters, we were surprised how much they were able to fit in there, it felt like Christmas. Thank you to all of you, they are all gratefully received and will come in useful. Joelle’s blanket will definitely come in useful in staving off the cold this winter while we continue to battle various heating engineers and the ever illusive ‘forage’ (geothermal drilling). Chrissy’s lights are just what we have been looking for, we want to have loads of them guiding paths around the garden in the evening for the wedding so these will be perfect. And Mum, for the new bedding, we wouldn’t have had enough for 2 visitors without it, and the new towels, and everything else, there was so much I can’t tell you!
[26 September 2021]
Special Guest Blog: Sunday again – from the perspective of the forthcoming invaders:
I [Tonia] am woken by mum at the ungodly hour of 3am. Having had about 3 hours of rubbish sleep and being used to going to bed at this time rather than getting up. All I will say is that I was neither very communicative or cognisant of what is happening.
I take Anya for a quick walk in the park and try to give her some food, but she is just as befuddled as my brain at this point. She knows something strange is happening with all the things being packed, the lack of sleep and that I’m actually getting dressed.
We finally make it into the car with everything – there was a last minute, “oops, i forgot mine and Anya’s passports” but as we weren’t in the car quite yet I felt this was OK. On the road at 04:04 and I can honestly say I was rather anxious at this point about how Anya would manage what could be a 15-20 hour car journey, sitting in her own seat with a new seat belt on top of a very large pile of stuff mum was taking plus the large dog crate we were taking.
Recent panic buying of fuel rather intensified the early part of the journey as we hadn’t seen anywhere we could get more fuel and there was rather a long journey ahead, but at about 6am we arrived at Folkestone. We made it through the first part very quickly, although mum and I were somewhat anxious about getting Anya through her passport control.
I am delighted to say with her having an EU passport it was a breeze, just 3 min and the lady is offering us an earlier train… my brain must have been shocked into action at this point. I cannot recall once in the last 30+ years I went anywhere with mum that something like this happened, we weren’t just on time, we were early!!
Almost as soon as we get on the train then it is basically delayed until about the same time we had been due to leave, but ‘no harm, no foul’. We are off, mum gets a short 15min cat nap in and then we are already in France! ETA without stops 19.04.
We know the first stop is for petrol and there is a station right by the port. That is in conjunction with a debate on the best route. Paper vs Technology?! Mum has planned with traditional paper maps and almost 100 post it notes (that may be a minor over estimate but didn’t look far off). Google however says that route will take more than 3 hours longer than the 2 other routes it can offer. After some negotiation we are on the road again; but she will never forgive me if getting through Paris is a nightmare so my fingers were extremely tightly crossed, but Google has invested millions in this right, surely it will beat a post-it-note!
First off, I never quite realised how far it was from Calais to Paris – for you Londoners, it is not as close as Eurostar make you think – even if mum thinks we’re at Le Mans. By this point I have however heard 3 times about how she got lost in Paris and ended up in the same carpark twice. The pressure is on me (and Google) not mess up the navigation here, if I miss a turn because it’s slow I will never hear the end of it.
Pleased to report that Paris was a dream, a super long tunnel, traffic was nothing major and we had gained another 4 min on the clock. ETA now 19.08 (and this covered the fuel stop).
Once past Paris, mum is still in the driving seat as there is no way I was finding our way through the capital, or that she would trust me with her car on the wrong side of the road through the city. During a quick stop for a delicious Burger King lunch, we agree that as we are on the motorway for the next many 100’s of miles. It’s my turn at the wheel! [I can tell you, I was rather anxious having driven an automatic (this car) only once about 5 miles, that Anya would be OK in the back where she couldn’t see me, and being on the wrong side of the road.]
After about 15 minutes mum hit the phone wrong and the navigation’s gone, 20 minutes later she loses the playlist, and we are sick with a rather poor choice of French radio. Whilst she’s certainly a good rally driver, it seems that navigation by technology is not her forte.
I am pleased to announce with 300 miles there’s 1 more fuel stop and I only got the finger from one French man for cutting him off – sorry – but we’re all safe. Eventually we arrive and Anya’s ready to go check out the new abode for the next few weeks while mum just wants to get the car unpacked and finally relax.
[Groundhog day – 26 September 2021]
Monday
Matt and I are back to work with a bump and sadly, having just had a holiday, no opportunity to take time off to spend with the recently arrived family. So the ball is over to them.
The coup has taken place… the blog is under new control (again)!
Yes, the British have invaded France – again. Mum, Anya and I [Antonia Chaney – new blog heiress and dictator] are now in residence for the next three weeks and I’ve taken this on (at least for a few days).
So, day one of the holiday, am I spending the day lying in bed and reading all the books I have been too busy working to pay attention to?
Of course not… Les Bengalis does not allow for such slacking even after a super long day yesterday. Well, that and I have a 10-month-old puppy that is in a strange house with people she barely knows, so the first job on my itinerary is to take Anya out for a walk around the gardens and show Anya her new home for the next three weeks.
So, “hers” was taken to a new level when I discovered this morning that whilst she had never actively chased a cat at home, this may not be the French way. Meow had come in this morning before we made it downstairs and Anya did not take kindly to finding another animal in the house, actively running her out the house and straight after her out the door. It seems the disinterest in cats was not the only thing that had been left back in Blighty, any sense of recall was obviously clearly behind us as I am running after her and blindly calling her name. After the French neighbours must have been wondering what on earth was going on, finally, she gave up and rolled over as I approached for me to tickle her belly.
The first thing mum did was start cleaning. Not an inconsiderable task on what is effectively a building site, but she is adamant it must be done. [Chantal – and a somewhat larger task than Hercules 5th labour but no less significant]
For me, I had been bestowed a spreadsheet of jobs to work through over the next three weeks, they do say that nothing good comes easy and I suspect that this may set the tone for my “holiday”.
Looking forward to some pleasant weather, I decide outside is where I need to be today. So, after chasing the dog who was chasing the cat – yes this is not the only time this trip that I will be trying to recall the words of that particular nursery rhyme (for anyone who doesn’t know google, I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly). I was out to work by Chan on Job 1 – put together the composting bins. It seems Chan may have had these for a little while but just not got around to putting them together. As Anya has been trying to forage in the compost pile and the sun seemed to be out I figured it was as good a place to start as any. Once Chan pointed to where she wanted them and Matt had cleared the brambles – no way was I getting cut to ribbons on the fist morning, I do have my limits – I was good to go.
I am already wondering if this could be the highlight of the trip? Thankless, boring, sweaty. All done and I ask what my next job is. Seems it is a garden day for me, as the next job on the list is moving grass. Yes, I said moving, not mowing! Matt has obviously been busy on the ride-on mower but it seems “near the pile” has been sufficient until now. So, after using the trusty garden fork, with some pretty back breaking work I stepped back to admire my handy work. Whilst I am pretty sure this huge and somewhat sweaty effort on my behalf must have reclaimed a good 10% of the garden, the pictures are not quite suggesting the same thing – I must have gotten the angles all wrong, if I only I had been a millennial and knew about photo angles to make things bigger/smaller before I started this madness.
So, forking all the grass around did not seem to be a huge success (although Chan seemed pleased enough). Quick run up to St Beat with mum to get some cigarettes and have a quick look at the river.
Next up was raking some (but definitely not all) leaves… another rather manual job, but one I got used to last year. Also the bonus of all the outside jobs was that a) I was outside in warmer better than London b) Anya could be with me whilst I could still get things moving forward.
The next thing on the agenda was to start trimming the hedges back. This was a key job that needed to be done before we could think about trying to put some fencing in to keep Anya in the garden and off the lead. A couple of attempts at getting extension leads that would get to the boundary and I was off with the electric cutters.
Alas, things were not to go quite so smoothly, just 5 minutes and about a foot of hedge the electric shears failed. Changed where they were plugged in a few times, then checked with Matt, but it appears this was not to be, hard labour was back on the cards.
Once I have the manual pair out of the shed I look at what is to be a behemoth of a task (later found to be 55 metres one side of the gate and 85 metres the other side). As you should all know, we Chaney’s are however made of sterner stuff, so not to be deterred on I forged with shears in hand. Much of the left side of the fence actually needed a path created between two rows of bushes/hedges, doubling the amount of work in places.
Having worked until dusk was well upon us, I finally hung up the shears, admired the first of what was certainly to be many blisters on my hand I was thankfully that Matt and Chan are in the kitchen tonight, whipping up a nice carbonara after which we retire to the salon and a relatively early night – after an 18hr journey the day before and all the manual labour we were ready for bed.
[27 September 2021]
Tuesday
Seems that the take over didn’t last too long. It’s hard work this update thing along with all the other jobs that need doing around here. More work for Matt and I so I’ll just report the small bit’s I’ve seen.
Tonia was out walking the dog this morning. On on one side of the house there’s a huge pile of sticks that need to go through the broyeur (garden shredder), on the other side is a big pile of wood batons (from the old lathe and plaster walls) with quite a lot of nails in. Of course, Anya was immediately drawn to the pile with nails in. As such Tonia has decided to go through the pile and take all the nails out. No matter how well she does it’s a bit of a thankless task as there is a never ending supply of them to come out of various parts of the house.
In the afternoon mum and Tonia were going to take Anya for a walk. They were thinking of going up to do the walk that’d done back at Christmas, I did warn mum that it was rather steep, particularly at the start. Seems that mum thought better of it and they took a slightly different route instead. Looks like they enjoyed it though.
Tonia: Rather than straight back to the house we even had a bit of a wander around the lower part of the village (one that I had definitely not seen at Christmas). We spotted some bees that we knew Auntie Chrissy would be delighted to hear about, and also a sign that I thought was fabulous and vowed to purchase for myself if I could find one.
Having got back to the house, it was time for a quick re-fuel and out into the garden again to attack those hedges. Whilst merrily chopping away, something caught the corner of my vision, I turned to see a pheasant in the garden and I must say I jumped out of my skin, I never have been a fan of birds and when they creep up on you and try and blend into the leaves is just downright mean. The very cool snail I found shortly after made me feel a little better though… what a shell!
With my arms aching and just about 10 feet to go I decided it was quite enough of that for the day. Time to head back to the house and have dinner, so to contrast the usual evening cat pictures, here’s a puppy picture.
[28 September 2021]
