2nd April 2014
Today’s photographic offering from an early morning tour of the garden is one of a host of different hellebores.
Jackie and I continued to marvel at our new home, as we struggled to acquaint ourselves with its quirkiness and to find our way around it.
The colour schemes are somewhat bizarre, and a really serious deep clean is required. Some things don’t actually work, and others require more than our combined intelligence to understand. 
An example of the first is the beautiful ceramic door handles of the spare bedroom in which we spent our first night. When they came off in our hands we realised that they had not been screwed into the connecting bar. Strangest of all is the cooking arrangement which we are still unable to fathom. The equipment is part of a top quality Moben kitchen installed in 2009. 
The unconnected and unused oven sits perched on top of a work surface. Instructions suggest in belongs in a floor-level cupboard below in which it would not fit. So, no effective oven.
The Neff hob unit nestles in the opposite work surface. This appears to have a child lock applied. We would need an infant to help us unlock it. So, a possibly effective hob we cannot fathom.
As we wander about the place, we keep our eyes peeled for a telephone point. The only one we have found is in a bedroom upstairs. Mind you, most walls are obscured by assorted belongings for which we haven’t yet found a resting place. The task of sorting things out might be eased if we got into our heads which doors lead where. It is the ‘royal we’ I use here, because Jackie has a better idea of our surroundings than I do.
Our predecessors had their washing machine plumbed into the garage. Ours lies, inaccessible, in there behind boxes of books. We’ll run out of underclothes soon.
The sellers left a kindly informative note welcoming us and saying that they had left a few items we might find useful. Some, especially the treats in the garden, will come in handy, but we will need to hire a skip.
My tongue is not in my cheek when I say that this is going to be a fun-filled adventure we will relish.
We are not fastidious people, but when we took ourselves back to Curry/PC World in Christchurch to buy a fridge/freezer we were pleased there was a B & Q behind it, because the need for three new lavatory seats was urgent. We bought two, one of which Jackie installed.
After this, we went in search of Wi-Fi. Lymington was the nearest area adequately suppled. Just as we reached Costa, they were switching out the lights, which was a little disappointing. The Angel & Blue Pig hostelry made up for it. After I had posted my blog entry for the moving day, we dined on their excellent meals. Jackie had pork cooked in two ways followed by Grannie apple crumble. My choice was burger and chips followed by sticky toffee pudding. Peroni and Ringwoods Best were respectively imbibed.
Tag: hellebore
A Watershed
1.2.13
It is ivy on the wall attracting my numerous noisy little avian friends, not the virginia creeper which isn’t yet foliated. Last evening, no matter how long or how often I sat patiently waiting, camera in hand, they scarpered at my first movement. A flurry of feathers and they were gone. All would be quiet. Thinking that was that I would walk back inside. Then the rest of the flock would silently emerge from the foliage and flit away. Sometimes a tailender would follow afterwards. It became a game of hide and seek that I was always going to lose.
This morning, before setting off for Eymet, I worked on the garden, trimming and cutting back. In what is no more than a small courtyard; where plants must be grown in tubs or makeshift beds merely inches deep; uninhabited for most of the year; subjected to often intense heat and long dry periods in the summer, it takes a while to discover what will survive. This time I seem to have lost only one cistus, though its companion on the front steps has lived. I am delighted that the hellebore I planted last summer is now in bloom.
Magpies rattled away.
It was a sunless day with light rain on and off. I walked to Eymet via Ste. Innocence and Fonroque. The roads were all undulating and snaking, the stretch leading to and past Ste. Innocence being predominantly uphill. Some way past this village there is a series of steep S bends dropping down to the D933 at Fonroque. A right turn there took me into the town, and to Maggie and Mike’s home in Chemin de la Sole, which was my goal.
I passed the wayside shrine at Ste. Innocence which I described on the 8th June last year (posted on 10th). I wasn’t adding photographs then.
This walk was something of a watershed. The last time I made it was in 2009 when I did not know that the pain in my left leg would not go away until I had surgical intervention in the form of a replacement hip. When I arrived at this famous Bastide town to meet my friends at a restaurant in the mediaeval square, I was completely unable to climb into the bench/table at which we were to eat. I had to perch on one end without attempting to fold myself up in any way. On that trip Jackie had phoned me from England to see how I was getting on. Learning how much my leg was hurting she politely indicated that I might not be quite right in the head. ‘It’ll be OK’, said I, ‘you just have to walk through the pain’. Well, you see, the dictum for marathon runners hitting ‘The Wall’, that point where physiological changes make them feel like stopping, is to ‘run through the pain’. To me it seemed like a transferable skill. It wasn’t.
Today’s call whilst I was on the move was from Saufiene, confirming the time for tomorrow’s door measurements. I don’t think he thought I was quite sane either, but he probably considered it a bit impolitic to say so. For the record, I felt fine on completion of today’s challenge. Just a bit achy in the calves.
After the usual aperitifs and nibbles Maggie served up a tasty roast chicken meal and a varied cheeseboard. A good red wine went with it. We then watched English television during which both Maggie and I dropped off to sleep. Reminiscent of a Firs gawp described on 2nd June 2012.
Lydie drove me home and we shared our usual warm greetings and entertaining conversation.