
Electric Bees and Autumn Leaves
Hello again
I hope you have all had a good week, in spite of lockdown for those dealing with that this week?
I had promised you a completed front hall this week. Well things are not going quite to plan! C’est la vie!
My younger son returned to the UK at the weekend, after being here with us in the Tarn for a year. Trying to shoehorn as much of his stuff into a couple of suitcases without going over the luggage weight limit was a little time consuming! I have no idea when I can get over with his things, so he needed to take back as much of the basics as possible. Anyway he is safely back quarantining and arrived just in time for lockdown! We will miss his cooking and help in the garden, particularly with the latest load of autumn leaves. We are constantly raking up, only for more to appear – makes great leaf mulch eventually.

A car service, a pile of admin and work, helping out a neighbour and time socialising the kittens – another week gone by! Louka did sit on my lap for the first time though – very cute!
So – the hall:
As a space it is quite dark when the doors are closed so we want to brighten it up a bit. The old floor tiles are beautiful, all wonky and worn from years of use. I love imagining all the people who have passed through this hall in the last 200+ years. We plan to change the wall colour below the dado rail to a bright green, leaving the upper walls white. I am using Annie Sloan’s Firle green – such a great colour. Quite a change but I think it will create a dramatic entrance. Another slight setback is that the current petrol bluey/turquoise colour is very old paint that does not want to come off, be painted on, and clearly wants to stay. After much searching and visits to a number of DIY places, we have finally found a solution, we hope. According to expert advice from our local Leroy Merlin (a DIY store over here), we have to re-clean the walls with some special product and then use an undercoat specifically for old paint! It must be a thing here. More on that soon.
We have some amazing bits of the house’s history to put in frames, along with photos of a man we think might be the Attorney General of Paris who lived here in the mid-1800s. We believe he upgraded the south end of the house, adding the tower. Still digging around for more on the house’s history. We found some old papers from the mid-1800s in one of the attics – a bit the worse for the years but still legible – one is for an order of chocolates delivered from Paris to the house! Wow!
This is our front hall from both ends, looking through to the salon and looking out to the courtyard and future rose garden:
View towards the salon View towards the courtyard
Watch this space – I will return to the hall in the coming weeks when I have got further than undercoat and some repairs – and Sid the spider has moved house!

Life is a bit of an adventure and we should all try to live the dream if we can. This is our dream but sometimes, I have to admit, the reality doesn’t quite feel like a dream – well not a good one anyway! Powercuts, a bit of flooding, endless paperwork, a pandemic, and a free-for-all for wildlife coming into the kitchen at times can stretch the positive mood. In spite of this, and the fact I am typing this in a freezing cold office, as central heating is back on the longer term to do list, no regrets. We just relocate down to the kitchen and work at the table with the fabulous woodburner keeping us nice and warm. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but sometimes try and do a bit of work in our office for a change of view – until our fingers freeze!
One thing we are having to get used to is the powercut – at times it feels a bit like going back in time! Over the summer we had a number of powercuts – some brief and due to storms. This is a common occurrence in rural France, but takes a bit of getting used to. We also had a series of unexplained powercuts, each lasting for up to a day. Each time following a call, engineers came out, but could not find any reason why this was happening just to us and our 2 neighbours. One day whilst out on the terrace having a coffee, I heard a loud bang and looking up saw a large puff of smoke coming from a junction box on a pylon. The engineers found that bees had set up home there. They backed off fairly quickly – the engineers that is. The electric bees, as we called them, were fine, but had to be relocated. Problem solved – we thought, until a few weeks later – another powercut. Power reinstated, no explanation, then the same again. Annoying! The electricity company could not find the reason but has now decided to replace the pylons as they are very old. We shall see. Meanwhile plans for an induction range cooker for the kitchen are on hold while we look at mixed gas and electric options, so that if there is a powercut we can still make a coffee! Sometimes delays to decisions happen for a reason, so thank you electric bees. Whilst I am not keen on bottled gas in the house (we are not on mains gas here), it would seem that an all-electric kitchen just won’t work.
That’s it for this week – please let me know your thoughts on the blog so far. What would you like to hear about? I have lots of plans – renovation projects, our local area – places to visit and gorgeous markets, recipes, gardening projects, history of the house and some of our finds and more. Any suggestions?
Before I sign off – a random recommendation. If you feel like watching a fab film, try The Lighthouse of the Orcas – set in Patagonia, stunning scenery and a beautiful story. Enjoy.
See you next week
Merci et à bientôt
Ali x


2 Comments
Susi
Future blog posts?
Definitely more history of the house as you find it out
Would love to hear more about the local people and life
More kitten photos!
Exactly what you’re doing 🙂
Ali
Thanks Susi. More history on the way. Will definitely write about local life, places to visit , etc. Thank you for the lovely comment. Ali x