Time away from the routine

Much of the past week has been rather different.  Last Saturday I picked up the ferry at Caen and went to England for a few days to visit family in Essex.  It's been more than a year since I was last over there, and I found I hadn't really missed the country, just a few people.  

Arriving on a Sunday meant that while I was horrified at the number of people on the road at what I termed "stupid o'clock", there weren't any major hold ups.  The M25, if it hadn't been foggy would have been no problem, and I was at South Mimms about three quarters of an hour earlier than I had expected.  I was horrified at the state of the roads.  The M25 between junctions 10 and 11 was so badly surfaced I worried for the state of my tyres and shock absorbers, but that was nothing to the state of the roads in Essex, where axle breaking holes could be anywhere.  I made it without incident, but I'm sure it took a good couple of days for my blood pressure to go down.

The relative I was staying with has a large pond.  Until I entered the drive and saw diggers, I wasn't aware that the pond was being renovated.  This massive exploit was fascinating and dominated my attention much of the time.  It was particularly fascinating to watch where the underground spring that feeds the pond was rising, in the middle.

In order to accommodate the estimated 400 tonnes of sludge and leaf litter, a pit had to be dug, and the spoil from that created a couple of mountains of clay and subsoil, covered with top soil.  The pit will slowly allow water to drain out and can be capped in due course, but for now it is a shimmering zone that could eat people, animals or machinery without leaving a trace.

I am always fascinated by the plants my relative grows - the dahlias are large, blousy and colourful, the rhubarb a source of envy and there are always novelties.  This time round I was fascinated by a shrub with bright red leaves - a cotinus "grace", from the same family as the smoke bush.  Indeed, so much so that I will be finding one for our garden if I possibly can.  The leaves are this colour all the time they are the bush apparently.

To earn my keep during my visit, I replaced the cane seat in a chair that had been in the family for a while.  I had ordered new cane and a cane bodkin, so despite not having done a chair seat for some 20 years or more, and having sore hand joints, I was still about to complete the work in about 5 hours.  Getting the old seat out took a bit more time than I planned.  I was pleased with the result and the chair now functions as a chair.

Once home at the end of the week, French life took over again, including discussing a faulty telephone line for some elderly chums, checking the removal of a hornets' nest from another friend's house and preparing a rant for the people who inspect septic tanks.  A week's work was crammed into two days!

I also got round to the final fruit harvest of the year, and got to it at just the right time too!  Medlars are an ancient fruit, and going back many years, before more fancy things came along, were one of the staples of late autumn eating.  The fruits have to be bletted, or allowed to go ever so slightly rotten, at which point, if they do this naturally, they fall off the tree if you just look at them.  So harvesting is done when they are just about to turn, and the bletting was traditionally done in a crock of sawdust.  Mine will have to make do with a fruit crate in the garage, but I got perhaps a couple of kilos, and once they have turned, will be made into jelly.

You map spot that a couple of the lower ones are darker than the others, those ones were ripe.  One fell off the tree before I could pick it, but we had the other one and a few others that were ready with a piece of stilton yesterday for supper, and it was jolly good.

So that was my week, next week may be a bit more normal, then again, it may not.  We shall see!

Have a good one!