A Perfect February Day

A Perfect February Day
Yesterday I got up, went into the village for bread and had a breakfast of bread, honey and coffee. I've recently renewed my supply of mountain honey, collected from hives high up in the hills. I'm not sure where the bees there get their nectar. There is lots of lavender high up but the hives hadn't been placed in lavender fields or the honey would have been called lavender honey. Anyway, it is quite dark in colour and rich in flavour; my favourite.

Having looked through the news online through various papers and news aggregators I put in an hour staining cross-beams in my bedroom. The bedroom is my last major project in the house (I hope). The walls are currently covered with a horrible custard-coloured wallpaper. I shall paint them, off-white, over the paper if it is firmly fixed as it seems to be. The big job is the cross-beams, 64 in all, laid from a large central beam across to the walls either side. They are covered in white paint which I have been scraping off for quite a long time. It's a three-part process: first, scrape off most of the paint; then dig it out of cracks, knots, and as far as possible from under where the beams overlap with the plaster between them; then go over them with a wire brush to remove the dust and any hanging bits of paint. I've done that for 32 cross-beams and am now staining them. I wanted to be sure I had the tint of stain required and, having now seen it on some beams, I know have: medium oak. When the 32 cross-beams are all stained I shall move the bedroom furniture to the other side of the room and work my way down the remaining 32. Anyway, there is now visible progress so that was satisfying.

Then it was off to Daniel's for lunch. Daniel doesn't cook but gets paella from the man in the village who sells it on Saturdays. Two of his sons were with Daniel so we had a good chat and lunch. It would actually have been warm enough to eat on his balcony but we ate inside. I agreed to meet them on the boules ground at 3.00 and then went home for an hour to let the paella go down and catch a bit of football on the television. At the boules ground it was too warm at first to play with a pullover on. I don't know what the temperature was in the sun but around 22-23 degrees at a guess. And the sky came up trumps, cloudless and a deep shade of blue that must exist elsewhere but which I can't recall seeing outside Provence. We played until 5.30 when I again returned home to finish preparing a meal I'd started the previous day, a “daube provencal”. It's a more or less conventional stew but with bacon and olives added to the beef and vegetables. I thought I'd try it with couscous rather than potatoes or pasta and that worked well. Steve, Jo and Mana were coming to eat and duly arrived around 7.45. So we then had a pleasant evening eating and talking, After which I retired to the living room with a coffee and calvados to watch some more football before bed.

There's nothing dramatic in all this but it was a very satisfying and not untypical day in February. I'm not sure where else I could have had such a day at this time of the year.

Apart from the remaining cross-beams to look forward to(?) I have started on the translation of the text of a film Daniel and Martine (from Pierrelongue) have made on the olive tree and it's role in the life of the region. The translation is not proving difficult so far but I will then have to review it while viewing the film to check timings before recording the English commentary. I get friend Steve to check my English as, somehow, when I get immersed in French I tend to come up with some awkward English phrases. The whole process will be interesting as I haven't done it before. And Daniel and Martine have started making another film, this time on fountains in villages in the area (there are 11 in Mollans).

And then it will be spring............................