It’s been another busy week work-wise, with not a lot going on elsewhere, so here’s a round-up of the happenings from the last 7 days.

Lola loses one of her 9 lives

The biggest news of the week was on Friday. The cats had been out and about in the morning, as usual, and returned at lunchtime for their usual afternoon sleep. By 5pm we thought they’d had long enough and Joe woke them up to send them outside for a breath of fresh air. Charlie went charging off, but Lola showed no interest. In fact she looked very unwell – lifeless and struggling to breathe. We couldn’t tempt her with food or drink and we started to get really rather worried for her.

So I took her straight down to the vets for a check up, but the vets in the village was closed. So, Lisa rang Judith and she gave us the number for the one they use in Coulonges. I placed a quick call to them and they confirmed I could bring Lola in straight away. So I set off, picking Judith up so she could show me the way. When we arrived at the vets we were greeted by a sign that they had moved! Argh! So we jumped back in the car and headed off to find the new location, not far from the Super U in Coulonges and quite a bit more conveniently placed.

The vet turned out to be a very nice chap and the building was a modern, spacious one which made me feel confident from the off. He gave Lola a thorough examination and concluded that she must have had some kind of trauma. This didn’t surprise me, given how adventurous Lola is. She could well have been hit by a car, fallen from a tree of been struck by a falling log. Goodness only knows really, but at least she didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

The vet said to let her rest and come back on Monday if she didn’t improve. So, relieved, we took her home where she slept all night. In the morning she seemed a bit brighter, managing to get up and walk around and even eating a bit of breakfast. Very good to see!

And today, thankfully, she has been out and about, running around and generally looking a lot more like normal. And Charlie is certainly happy to have her back – he had seemed very sad that she wasn’t up to playing for the last couple of days. So fingers crossed she is on the mend and will soon be back to her usual tricks. Birds and mice beware!

Getting in touch

This week we have spoken to regular readers Lynne and Alan, who are having a new house built in the village (as is Curtis, another reader). It was great to get in touch via skype and we were more than happy to help out with answering questions about the area and giving them the benefit of our experiences of setting up home in Foussais. They are a lovely couple and we look forward to having them just round the corner soon!

Superstar Joe

Joe had more handball matches on Saturday. Once again we had an hour’s drive to get there, though Joe has promised that next time he will go with the rest of the team in one car to save us the treck. The results were not so good this week as Foussais lost 2 and won 1, but Joe played really well and scored most of the goals, which was great to see. He used to play football back in England, but never really got on too well with it as the focus was always on those that could play really well and score goals. This meant that Joe usually got looked over and this really knocked his confidence. Now with handball he is playing well and scoring goals and getting lots of encouragement. The whole ethos seems to be far more on playing well as a team and everyone gets a fair share of time on the pitch, which works really well. Joe is loving it and its doing his confidence the world of good.

Fun on the field

Today we decided to finally tackle some jobs on the field. First there was the task of trying to fix the trampoline that had rather unceremoniously been dumped upside down on one of the pear trees during the storm the other night. With a bit of hammering and twisting and a bit of string, I managed to put it back together again – lets hope it holds until the summer at least!

There are miles and miles of brambles winding through our trees, plus we have a great vine that twists its way through the fence and trees at the back of the field. All needed cutting back and sorting out, so today we started hacking.

While I attacked the vine, Lisa plowed though the brambles. After 3 hours of solid hard work, we didn’t seem to have a lot to show for our efforts – Lisa had cleared about 2m of hedgerow and I had chopped back a similar length of vine. A lot of effort for a rather disappointing result, but at least it’s a start, and we did end up with a big pile of branches for a bonfire!.

Hopefully the vine will once again produce lots of lovely grapes but this time they’ll be rather more accessible.

So the water-less day came and went without any problems. We filled every available jug, bottle, pan and bowl with water first thing in the morning to keep us going through the day. but as it turned out, the water came back on just after lunch, so we didn’t really need it in the end. Quite remarkable that something like that actually finished ahead of schedule!

Family but no fish

This week has been a bit hectic as both my parents and my sister and her two boys are visiting. We’re having a lovely time catching up – something that there wasn’t much time for at Christmas – and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for some decent weather at the weekend so we can get out and about. We were going to head to La Rochelle aquarium but unfortunately it is closed this month.  Still, a visit to La Rochelle may well be on the cards, and a coffee with the Dixies perhaps…

It’s a snip!

Charlie and Lola (our kittens) have now been “done”   They were very well behaved for the vet and coped admirably with the operation. Poor Lola was very wobbly when she came round and was clearly in some pain as the anaesthetic wore off, but after a big sleep that night she was much brighter in the morning. They are both now back to normal and up to their usual tricks!

Plotting our veg

Michel our soon-to-be-permanent neighbour called us over earlier today with some good news. he has a JCB at the moment which he is using to level a lot of his land off as part of his renovation project next=door. He is very kindly going to also level off our little patch of land at the back of the house which we have earmarked as a future vegetable plot. Wahoo! In a couple of weeks we should be able to get planting our own veg, so look out for some posts all about that coming soon. Anyone with any tips in this area, feel free to leave a comment.

And finally…

Next week I have to endure a trip back to England for a big company meeting over 2 days at the Center parcs in Longleat. Sounds nice, but I’d really rather be here with my family, drinking Pineau round the fire. Ah well, one day…

We love ours.

We love the way they come and sit on your knee at night for a sleep.

We love the way they are pleased to see us when we come home after a day out.

We even love the way they wait outside our bedroom door in a morning to say hello.

But one thing we certainly don’t love is the constant stream of mostly-dead animals they insist on bringing in to play with!

It started with just one lizard. “That’s okay”, we thought, “we can cope with that”.

Then one day we returned from a day at the beach to find the living room full of feathers. Yes, they had brought in a starling to play with and stashed it under the settee when they heard us come back home.

Lola then started coming home with what looked very much like pieces of another cat’s tail. Quite how she got those we do not know.

Then came the first mouse. I was on the phone when the cats in the other room suddenly went quiet. Worrying. A quick investigation revealed Charlie tossing the poor creature around the room. I managed to wrestle the mouse from his mouth and fling it over the fence, much to his annoyance. It was only later in the day, when the cats were sniffing around the bottom of the settee, that we realised that the mouse had actually left it’s head behind! Argh!

A series of lizards were next in line for the treatment, inlcuding one live one who really didn’t want to be picked up and rescued!

Then, while I was away in England, I had a call from Lisa. Charlie had brought in the biggest prize yet – a rat! She was shaking. Luckily the rat was dead and she managed to scoop it up with the dust-pan and dump it outside, though Charlie put up a good fight for it. I was impressed with Lisa’s bravery, but not impressed with Charlie’s increasing appetite.

And so it continues. Today saw another dead lizard and a dead mouse join the list of casualties. What are we to do? I know it’s great that they catch rats and mice, but does anyone have a suggestion about how to stop them bringing the corpses into the house? All ideas gratefully received!

I tell you, it’s a good job they’re cute…

With this new-found freedom came some inconvenience for us humans, as they need to get in and out at regular intervals. As is is now well and truly autumn, leaving a door open for them was certainly not an option and getting up and down to let them in and out was way too much like hard work.

So, we finally relented and bought a cat-flap.

For me, nine times out of ten DIY is not a straight-forward job. What should be a 10-minute task generally turns into a full day of cutting, sawing, sticking, drilling, cursing and swearing, punctuated by several trips to the DIY shop to buy the vital tools, screws, sticking plasters etc that turn out to be essential for the job. So I was hoping for a change in fortunes with this one…

First task of the day was to draw round the template provided.

This revealed the first fatal flaw in the plan…the door has panels, and the cat-flap was just too wide to fit inside one of the panels. So I was going to have to cut out some of the panel surround to fit it in, Now it was starting to feel like one of my normal DIY jobs…

Unperturbed, I carried on with the job in hand, drilling the holes and cutting out the space for the flap to fit into. This bit went ok thanks to the trusty jig-saw, although from now on the pressure was on to complete the job before night-fall!

Next came the cutting and chopping to make the frame fit. Generally I hate working with wood as i always seem to lose control of it and end up cutting too much off, or splitting the wood in the wrong place, or cutting at the reverse angle and wrecking the only materials I have. However, with hammer and chisel, this time i managed to avoid all the usual pitfalls and actually cut out a good snugly-fitting hole for the frame to fit into.

Okay so it may be a little rough round the edges, but aren’t we all?

As you can see, it was well and truly dark outside by the time I finished, but finish I did!

So now we just have the somewhat-more-taxing job of trying to persuade the kittens to use their nice new private entrance, rather than whining at the window.

At the moment, we have to come to the door to hold the flap open as they haven’t yet figured out that they can open it themselves. And the noise it makes as it swings shut tends to scare them off…but they are starting to get the hang of it. Hopefully they will soon be coming and going without any assistance, and then we’ll never know where they are!

So, we finally relented and bought a cat-flap.

For me, nine times out of ten DIY is not a straight-forward job. What should be a 10-minute task generally turns into a full day of cutting, sawing, sticking, drilling, cursing and swearing, punctuated by several trips to the DIY shop to buy the vital tools, screws, sticking plasters etc that turn out to be essential for the job. So I was hoping for a change in fortunes with this one…

First task of the day was to draw round the template provided.

This revealed the first fatal flaw in the plan…the door has panels, and the cat-flap was just too wide to fit inside one of the panels. So I was going to have to cut out some of the panel surround to fit it in, Now it was starting to feel like one of my normal DIY jobs…

Unperturbed, I carried on with the job in hand, drilling the holes and cutting out the space for the flap to fit into. This bit went ok thanks to the trusty jig-saw, although from now on the pressure was on to complete the job before night-fall!

Next came the cutting and chopping to make the frame fit. Generally I hate working with wood as i always seem to lose control of it and end up cutting too much off, or splitting the wood in the wrong place, or cutting at the reverse angle and wrecking the only materials I have. However, with hammer and chisel, this time i managed to avoid all the usual pitfalls and actually cut out a good snugly-fitting hole for the frame to fit into.

Okay so it may be a little rough round the edges, but aren’t we all?

As you can see, it was well and truly dark outside by the time I finished, but finish I did!

So now we just have the somewhat-more-taxing job of trying to persuade the kittens to use their nice new private entrance, rather than whining at the window.

At the moment, we have to come to the door to hold the flap open as they haven’t yet figured out that they can open it themselves. And the noise it makes as it swings shut tends to scare them off…but they are starting to get the hang of it. Hopefully they will soon be coming and going without any assistance, and then we’ll never know where they are!

More fun with friends and families

Last weekend was another throroughly enjoyable one.

Saturday was spent entertaining some friends who have a holiday home near Cognac. It was a beautiful day so we erected our big old makeshift table alongside the normal one to make a long surface for Lisa to fill with a wonderful French-style feast.  When we discovered the old wooden door we envisaged it being used as a table for such an occasion and it was nice to finally make the most of it.

We had a really excellent day with great company, lovely food and brilliant Vendéen sunshine.

Then on Sunday we took my parents, who were staying for the week, across to Ile de Re for the first time. As chance would have it the Dixies were also entertaining parents at the time and we ended up meeting them on the beach and having a great day together. The respective grandparents got on just as well as the parents and children do, which was really good to see. The kids were especially impressed with Kevin’s dad, who showed great creative flair in building a landspeeder and a pony out of sand. Very impressive and far more than Kevin or I could be bothered to do could hope to achieve

Our favourite felines…

Charlie and Lola continue to entertain us. In the last week or so they have been exploring the great outdoors, having finally had their injections (thus leaving us another €100 worse off!). They are thoroughly enjoying themselves chasing around the garden, climbing the trees and hiding under the cars. We do really need to get a cat-flap though. The days are still pretty sunny but the autumn winds are getting chillier and having the door open half the day is making the house feel like an ice-box! I feel a trip to the pet shop coming on.

A room with a view

This week I decided to rearrange my “office” (I like to call it that but really its nothing quite so grand). Some friends very kindly gave us a corner desk that they no longer needed and very nice it is too. However, this has meant that I have spent the last 6 months facing the corner of the room, which is not particuarly interesting or inspiring and made me feel rather like a naughty schoolboy! So now I have taken command of the room by rearranging things so my desk looks out of the window and I have the whole room in front of me. A much nicer arrangement which allows me the chance to appreciate the fine view out of the window and down the lane to the lake.

The only downside is that now I look rather like a receptionist. Not physically of course, but the arrangement of the desk is such that Lisa feels like she has come to make an appointment when she comes in the room!

Preparing for Paella

Tomorrow night is paella night – a big social event in the village organised by the school. Everyone will gather in the salle polyvalente for paella (or chicken if you prefer) and a disco afterwards. This marks quite an occasion for us as it was on the eve of the paella night last year that we first came over to see the house with the kids. We met Marion, our estate agent, the morning after and it sounds like it was a pretty wild affair. This will be 2 new firsts for us – our first French disco and our first taste of paella.  Fear not, I will be posting a full account of the evening in due course!

Get in touch

Finally, you may have noticed I have added a “Contact Us” tab to the top of the site. Here you will find details of the various ways in which you can get in touch with us. Feel free to connect with us using any of these methods and say bonjour!

On Saturday we entertained Nathalie (Joe’s teacher and the one who Lisa goes in to help with the English lessons) and her family. What a lovely family they are, and we had a really good time. We were a little concerned at our first major “night in” where we would only speak french, but I think we managed it pretty well. The dictionary was out, but we only referred to it on a couple of occasions and made ourselves understood for the rest of the night. Lisa made us all a beautiful meal and we finished the evening playing guitars and singing – something we haven’t done for ages, and we never thought we’d get chance to do again.

The kids meanwhile were off entertaining themselves with playstations and DVDs, breaking down the language barriers in the way that only kids can do. We had a wonderful night and hope to have many more. We are so lucky to count them as our friends after such a short time in the country, and especially sharing a love of music – something that has been sadly missing from our lives since we moved here.

So then we barely had had time to wash up from one evening’s entertainment (oh, to have a dishwasher) and we were preparing for our next guests on Sunday. This time it was an ex-work-colleague of Lisa’s. Helen and her family come to France every year and this year they were coming to Les Sables d’Olonne. As this is only just over an hour from us, it was great that they could come over and see us.

Once again, we had a lovely day. They have two lovely daughters who got on really well with our three – amazing as this was the first time they had met. By the end of the day they were trading MSN addresses and promising to keep in touch. I had finally got some legs for the old door that we salvaged in order to construct a big rustic table, so we set this up on the field, under the gazebo, and ate another lovely meal our there. We ended up all playing cards and taught each other new games to play – great fun.  Sadly the €3 trestle legs the table was resting on started collapsing as the games got more vigorous, so it’s back to the drawing board on that one, but luckily we had another more substantial table to work with.

It was another fantastic day, just the kind of weekend we love, surrounded by great friends. Its funny how you really get to know people so much better when you see them out of their normal environment. We have noticed this with the friends and family that have visited us here previously, but it was especially evident yesterday. Helen had worked in the same school as Lisa, but they had never really socialised before. And the rest of us barely knew the rest of the family. But by the end of the day we felt like we were old friends and hoping to meet up again soon.

And of course, we ourselves have been entertained by our two new additions. Charlie and Lola have settled in well to their new home and are really starting to feel like part of the family. Charlie is clearly the biggest trouble-maker, finding the best places to explore and hide, then calling Lola over to join in. As I write this, they have managed to find the shelf under my desk and are both asleep there cuddled up together. I have the feeling that I may have this kind of company whenever I work from now on, which is really rather nice.

The kittens were all beautiful so last night we said we would come over to take a look at them before deciding which one, or maybe two, to have. However, we wouldn’t be able to take them home as we had no equipment for them and we have lots of days out planned for the next few weeks. Jaqueline and John made us very welcome. While we chatted over a coffee, the kittens gradually all came out of hiding and did their best to entertain us.  We had already picked one out – Charlie, the most lively of the bunch. But when we saw them playing together we knew they would only be happy in a pair. The question then was which one…

Lisa had lots of cuddles with Sooty, and we were about to claim her, until she got hold of Patch. Well, Lisa was smitten, and, I have to say, Patch did look very comfy. Everyone agreed, we would take Charlie and Patch. The only thing to do was change Patch’s name as we weren’t too fond of it. So, in a bit of Cbeebeies-inspired genius, I came up with Lola. Charlie and Lola.

As I suspected would happen, once we had decided it didn’t feel right leaving them behind. And Jaqueline said that they would be ok to be left for the day so long as they have food and water and a safe place to stay. So that sealed it. They gave us a cardboard box to transport them, a box for a bed and a selection of food to get them through the evening & next morning and sent us on our way.

And so that was it, we were pet-owners once again and I think these 2 little scamps will have a big impact on our lives, hopefully in a positive way. Thanks Jaqueline and John. The kittens are lovely and seem to be very happy in their new home. Rest assured I will keep you all updated on their progress here.