Sunday, the sunth of Feb.
Things are different here in the winter. I’ve forgotten what it was like, I think the last time was when Jenny & I were out here with Martin & family at Christmas. But that was a festival with friends, and now it’s more like it was when I signed for the house in the first place. That was November, this is February, but I’ve been over here in January and March before but perhaps not February. The sky is different, the trees are bare, the air is crisp, the crisps remain uneaten. There are no tourists, different things are open and closed and those that are open are open in a different way. A practical, welcoming sort of way. They clearly know there are no tourists about. And today was the first day when the light is longer than the dark and it was a beautiful day. Spring if ever there was one. The sky was clear and the sun was gloating in it, so the birds obviously wanted to celebrate the fact by singing and twittering to their friends that it must be at least 12 degrees already. They don’t bother with Facebook.
There was a frost about when I woke up, and even still when I got up which was probably later than 10.30. But then it was a Sunday – so what do people do on a Sunday apart from Church? Yes they wash the car and indulge themselves in a little rest. I couldn’t settle down in front of the telly in the afternoon to watch the match, but I felt something would come to mind. The van was very dirty so I moved it into the sun which was also in reach of the hosepipe. I didn’t have any car shampoo, but thinking that a shampoo must be a shampoo whatever it was designed for I searched around the bathroom to find a suitable alternative. A full bottle of Tré Semée Extra Special Shampoo for Dry or Damaged Hair Restores Moisture and Growth. I checked the ingredients and they were exactly the same as that of a very defunct bottle of nasty Amway car shampoo that was knocking around from the last century. So I rinsed then shampooed the van in the morning sun and all began to look white again.
It’s a bloke thing probably, but it’s good to wash your vehicle by hand. You get to see all the marks and scratches and bumps and scrapes and blemishes as you wipe your hands over the bodywork with a frothy sponge. …. Yes a bloke and lesbian thing.
My thoughts turned to dad (nothing to do with the lesbianism). It was one of the last things he did for me wash the van. I never meant him to because he was 80 already and I just wanted to borrow his driveway and his hosepipe for a quick wash. But while I was in chatting to mum he was out there giving it a good clean. By the time I’d finished my third caramel shortbread dad had come in pronouncing that he’d washed the van for me and did he want me to check the oil. So dad did a wonderful job with the van but I was horrified to think that he’d been up a stepladder to reach to the roof and then stretched around the van’s extremities to give it a thorough chamois. The van looked good initially, but in a harsh light I could notice the smear of lighter and darker areas that I can only assume was polish, or an area that dad had worked harder at than it was worth. The problem was that dad had cleaned it better than I ever did, but just slightly less consistently than I ever would. It meant that there were areas of complete brilliance, and others that needed work. That’s the trouble with white vans – there so much more bigger and obvious than a grey – sorry silver – Fiesta.
Yes as I said it’s a bloke thing. One has to feel the contours of one’s own van. I appreciated the commitment and love and attention dad had given to the needs of my van and me, but really I wanted to clean it myself.
In a French courtyard the van looked great, and smelled of something unmistakably vague. Like hair.
Actually it smelt of Jenny’s hair. And that’s unmistakably vague in my mind even though I would give anything to smell the real thing again. But the Trés Séme Extra Special Shampoo for Dry or Damaged Hair Restores Moisture and Growth was a one of a job lot of bottles I got for jenny when there had been an extra special offer of shampoos quite a few years back. I thought it might have been a good investment since it was her favourite shampoo but we went and did that split-up thing and then she went and did her dying thing which is never going to promote growth in the hair or the relationship department.
. …. Good, well that’s got the grief of my dad’s and jenny’s death out of the way … all over a shampoo connection. They do watch over us and laugh don’t they!
After coffee I found a plaque made of tin in the garage that had an interesting angel motif on it and l’union stamped out in letters like an interesting numberplate. It’s not everyday that one stumbles upon something so unusual and so I thought I’d give it a new lease of life and then it could become a memento. I need a memento, not just pots and pans fabriquée en France that have been in my cupboards, but something that I’ve only just found as I’ve left. So I brushed and scrubbed the tin plate and got rid of the tarnish and then I knew exactly what it wanted.
For no discernible reason I could gather either now or then I decided to spray it silver. This is beginning to become a habit. If I was a dog with a silver spray then much of the house would be silver by now.
Anyway this particular piece of silverware was coming home with me. And then I unpacked my packed paints and started colouring it over in all the appropriate stamped areas. White for the wings of angels, Shimmering violet for their roles. Gold for their coronets. Darker yellow for the lettering, glimmering green for the laurels, or whatever vegetable they have hanging round their heads. I think the pictorial relevance is probably something deep and meaningful for the French but I saw through that and gave it a contemporary primary colour sort of grace. Oh and I painted one angel black and the other pink to emphasise the UNION of the meaning of the original artist. So I’m happy that it’s coming home with me because I can put it away until I find a perfect place to put it, and then I can be mementoed whenever I come across it.
The other big difference being here at this time of year is that there’s no insects. It’s only eventually that you notice that all of a sudden you’re not being attacked or buzzed, or zipped, or swooshed or stung or bitten by some bloody insect. In fact nothing happens at all as you walk through the air as if it were yours alone. Breathe in, breathe out, respire if you like, lean your arm right out next to the jam jar, smear your body in honey – nothing is attacking you. But inevitably as the sun came out all day today, the air temperature just got above that critical threshold value to get the insects a thinking. This afternoon I heard a buzz, and a black bee flew into existence then into the barn for a reconnoitre. So it’s started. The birds and the bees, all in one day. February 6th FFS !
Apres midi and the Tronchettes arrived to take a look at the sofabed. Sebastian had bought Christel to inspect the goods and have a go at the “everything” game that is taking the locality by storm. ‘surely you’re not selling ….’ Yes especially that.
Sebastian had learnt from his mothers bargaining and offered me 50 euros for the sofabed. That didn’t sound right to me so I said 60. Then after a short silence Christel asked me if the saucepan set was for sale because it all looked so nice and neat and new in the box I’d just packed it in (wooden, brass hinged lid). I don’t know how much a saucepan set is worth, but I wanted to regain the haggling high-ground so I said that if she took the saucepans and the sofa together it would cost 70 euros. ‘And the vacuum cleaner?’ she asked.
What that knackered old vacuum cleaner I thought. ‘ Yes you can have the lot for 75 euros.’
I don’t know what else I would have done with over twenty saucepans in my life. Some days you’ve just gotta realise that a man can only make a finite amount of sauce in pans. But they took the lot there and then (although haven’t paid me yet), and Sebastian helped me down with the old yellow sofa that I am to take to the dump tomorrow. It was an exceptionally comfy sofa but the old yellow had turned to grey and it had become to smell of something unmistakably vague.
I celebrated the sale of two sofas and the new found emptiness in the living room with a glass of wine and some music from RFM La Meilleur de la Music. But one’s celebrations can only take so much of Phil Collins no matter how good the Bordeaux. So I got back to the task of putting things in boxes, sorting through clothes that have never been fashionable and never fitted me. Which ones should I keep? I thought like an Ilka – ‘if you really feel your life will be lacking something by not taking this old tee-shirt into the future with you then just take it’. There’s not many tee-shirts that would pass that sort of test. It brings it all into a tee-shirty perspective. And so my throw pile is now MUCH bigger than my keep pile.
This evening I stole some more leaky WiFi from the hotel in the town square. It enabled me to check my email and see how Arsenal got on. The email was the highlight. That and finding out that a friend of a friend of a group that I joined after having ‘liked’ a comment of a geotagged colleague had just opened a bottle of port. The birds must be ashamed that they can only Tweet© about the weather.
