Cat sitting...

David our French neighbour has gone to visit family in Paris for the weekend and asked us to look after his cat 'Rikiki'. This does not entail much other than putting some food out as she (the cat) like most of her species is very independent. When she is too late on returning from a 'night out' and it's past her curfew time she has taken to sleeping in our barn,not his, anyway so it will not be too traumatic a time for her.

 I had thought she was quite fond of me but her response at being told that I would be responsible for her, now has me doubting this!

We used to have cats and they were all different in the way they behaved. One 'Fluffy' who must have had a hard time out with his mates with a name like that, used to follow me down the road and sit by me as I waited for a lift to work, much to the amusement of my travelling companions. We had another 'Jasper' who thought he was human and demanded the same attention as the baby at the time -strange but lovely cat!

They are an interesting breed - we also have a cat in the village who has at least three different names and homes - it must be a mood thing.

Here is some cat trivia for your amusement (or not!)

Ailurophilia is the "love of cats."

There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world, with 33 different breeds.

A cat's heart beats twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats per minute.

25% of cat owners blow dry their cats hair after a bath.

The domestic cat is the only cat species able to hold its tail vertically while walking.  All wild cats hold their tails horizontally or tucked between their legs while walking.

During her ‘productive life’, one female cat could have more than 100 kittens.

A single pair of cats and their kittens can produce as many as 420,000 kittens in just 7 years.

Sir Isaac Newton, discoverer of the principles of gravity, also invented the cat flap.

A cat will amost never "meow" at another cat.  This sound is reserved for humans.

The weirdest cat on record was a female called Mincho who went up a tree in Argentina and didn't come down again until she died six years later.  While treed, she managed to have three litters with equally ambitious dads.

People who own pets live longer, have less stress, and have fewer heart attacks.

The greatest number of mice killed by one cat?  28,899!  Towser, a tortoise-shell tabby in charge of rodent control in Scotland*, killed 28,899 mice in her 21 years.  This is about four mice per day, every day, for 21 years.  Towser died in 1987. *Don't think they mean the whole of the country!

The most popular names for female cats in the U.S. are Missy, Misty, Muffin, Patches, Fluffy, Tabitha, Tigger, Pumpkin and Samantha.

In French, cat is "Chat."  In German, your cat is "katze."   The Spanish word for cat is "gato," and the Italian word is "gatto."  Japanese prefer "neko" and Arabic countries call a cat a "kitte."

The Giraffe, Camel and Cat are the only animals that walk by moving both their left feet, then both their right feet, when walking.  This method of walking ensures speed, agility and silence.

A group of kittens is called a "kindle." (must be a nightmare trying to read)

A group of grown cats is called a "clowder."

Cats are the sleepiest of all mammals.   They spend 16 hours of each day sleeping.  With that in mind, a seven year old cat has only been awake for two years of its life!

Each year Americans spend four billion dollars on cat food.  That's one billion dollars more than they spend on baby food!

All the above must be true as I got them of the 'net - Mmmmm...

Guess what...

Jean from A very Grand Pressigny gives you these from time to time, so I thought I'd challenge anyone out there with this one.

No--no-- Its the top of my least redeeming feature (do I have any?) 

Anyone who knows me, knows I am folically (and can't spell)  challenged and as such have little protection when it comes to the odd bump or two on the head - I seem to get more than my fair share - which could explain a great deal - the latest was against a nasty big protruding nail as I worked at trying to remove a tree stump from beside a wall (that's another story). I am nearly always carrying the scars of a recent bump, so much so that a friend (Karen) bought me something she thought might help at a local brocante,

I didn't think it was nearly as funny as our other friend Liz obviously did!

Lest we forget...

Photo:http://www.flandersfieldsmusic.com/story-behind-poem.html

Dreadlock donkeys and a dead-end street?

Another pic. from our recent visit to Île de Ré

Had to stop and take a picture of these two - looks like they are reggie for it now. 

Last in the series...

Loved this skull in a corner of a building near the church in St.Martin, Île de Ré, don't know if it belonged to an unfortunate bailiff from bygone days! 

Changing colour...

It would appear that it is not only the leaves on the trees that change colour at this time of year, the Boulanger in Le Grand Pressigny has had a dramatic and bold facelift. What do you think?

Dreich days

We are very fortunate living where we do here in the Loire Valley. Our location in Southern Touraine south of the river Loire provides us with our own little micro climate that for most of the year is actually comparable to that of Nice.

	Av. max. in May	Av. max. in June	Av .max. in July	Av .max. in Aug	Av. max. in Sept.
Tours	19	26	28	28	24
Nice	19	28	30	30	26

It is only when we slip into winter that this changes and we sometimes experience what we Scots describe as dreich weather. The 'Urban Dictionary' gives the following description; "A combination of dull, overcast, drizzly, cold, misty and miserable weather. At least 4 of the above adjectives must apply before the weather is truly dreich" Well yesterday we had that. 

We find it hard to get motivated on days like these and a little guilty that we don't really need to - the 'choice thing' is probably what we appreciate most of our  lifestyle here. The short winter will come and go before we know it.

Whoops - just when you thought it was finished!

My recent joy at the roadworks being completed and the end to dust and noise has been short lived. Yesterday morning I was alerted (its not difficult) to the sound of a pneumatic hammer drill just outside our gates. Surely they cannot be digging up our lovely new road surface? Oh yes they can..

Seems they have covered over some manhole covers and are having to dig them up.

 Now if they put 50mm of tar on top when they were laying the new surface I wonder how they have raised it level - bet you a pound to a penny that we shall have a little problem here in future.Although judging by my pic. we could have some divine intervention. It is always difficult to patch tar successfully but that won't be a problem they have cemented it in ! 

But where can we mix the cement - not on the new tar surely...

It's really not reassuring that it is the same the world over.

Two footnotes: 

1) Manholes - In a previous life my company (as was then) helped to come up with a solution to the sinking manhole problem and eventually convinced Blackpool council roads department to 'trial' it - worked a treat but no-one had the budget to commit to it - so they decided to continue wasting money on  continuous small repairs.

2) Intervention- The band our son Michael plays keyboards in have a track called.. You guessed it  'Intervention' He also put together the TOP2 ish video.

Which way street and changing priorities...

The Sunday market at nearby Descartes is popular with locals and tourists alike - although at this time there are fewer of them (tourists) about. Over the summer most of our guests visited the market on what was normally their first full day in Southern Touraine.They almost all had a problem with regards to getting in and out of the village.This was down to the ever changing priorities on Rue Descartes,the road leading up to the main parking and market place. The commune have been trying to find the solution to the problem of a road that was never designed to have parked cars plus high volume through traffic.Indeed as far as I can see, here we have a town around which the region has built a bypass that fails to do just that bypass!  Maybe there is a future plan but it has been this way for a long long time. Anyway in an effort to find the solution they made the street one-way in a way that meant you had good access to the town but it was a bit of a problem, especially for visitors,to get back out!. They then tried it one-way in the opposite direction! You can imagine the confusion this caused as this was happening over a consultation period of weeks.

After pressure, I understand, from the commercial enterprises and general public of the town, sanity has prevailed and things are back to where they were with a slight change in that  priority is given to traffic entering the town.Lets hope this is the end to the experiment and next summer our guest will have less of a problem taking advantage of what is a great asset to tourism in this area. 

Lack of cairn on Île de Ré.

Back to our visit to Île de Ré... Some of the main tourist attractions on the island are its soaring lighthouses. We visited the ones at the most  northerly point, la Phare des Baleines which stand proudly beside its smaller predecessor.

The 57-metre high 'The Phare des Baleines ' (left) - was built in 1854 to replace the original lighthouse at 21 metres high built in 1682. The lighthouse has a 257 step spiral staircase which you can climb to reach the viewing balcony at he top where the views are, we believe, spectacular. We decided against the climb,tempting as it was, as after all the tower climbing and street trawling in La Rochelle our legs and feet weren't up to it.



The beach immediately behind the lighthouse has become haven for cairn (a man-made pile of stones) builders with hundreds of examples built by a variety of people and changing from day to day.

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On the day we visited the tallest cairn we was pretty impressive and finely balanced, towering over all who surveyed it.

That is until this bunch came along and they all proceeded to pose beside it, individually, in pairs, trios and every possible combination, If they took one photograph they must have taken 20 - its a pile of stones for goodness sake!  As soon as they started leaning against and touching the stones everyone around them knew what was going to happen- and it did. The picture above shows them trying to keep the remnants of  it balanced. They failed, so what did they do?

Take more pictures of course -

"This is us by the best cairn on the beach after we reduced it to insignificance." 

People!!

French signs 2

I just love French signage, my first post on the subject was to be as informative as they sometimes can be (Jean of A very Grand Pressigny  has stolen my thunder-she's very clever that lady) My first example (there will be more) is at a junction on a country road near Martizay,if my memory serves me well. It tells you where you have come from, if you turn your head around at the junction - and also lets you know where turning left will take you but as for turning right well you will just have to guess! I turned right in the certain knowledge that I knew where I'd come from and knew I didn't want to go left - easy really.

French signs

Not informative!

M.La Gaffe

The French have a cartoon character who goes by the name of Gaston Lagaffe (modified his pic to look more like me) he just can't seem to put a foot right! Today I was that man. First of all I awoke to find I (or Madam) had left the passenger door  window open (thus my suspicions) and of course this allowed the rain to leave its mark. Then I went to our local dechetterie and after banking a few bottles I decided to drive up to a nearby unoccupied house that has always intrigued me - I was not just being nosey - although I can be - it was to be some materiel for another post. Anyway rather then reverse back down the lane I decided to reverse into a field to turn the car around. This proved to be a bit of a gaffe as, with all the recent rain, the ground was rather soft. David, my neighbour, first came to the rescue - by a simple request - but when we looked at how stuck it was and the lane surface,decided it may be harder then anticipated. Help was at hand as the local farmer had spied my predicament and came to the rescue.

He even had to show us where to fix the towing eye (often wondered what that was for) before wheeching us out. Tres gentil.

Should not have gone there!

Île de Ré

When we went over recently to visit La Rochelle (yes I know it's not in the Loire Valley) we spent our last day over in the picturesque Île de Ré . It was a short drive over the impressive bridge, built in the late 80's to what has become an island, of mainly holiday homes for people from all over France and beyond It costs 9 € from 12th September to 19th June and 16.50 € from 20th June to 12th September for a return ticket over the bridge.

The island's population increases tenfold during the summer months, from 20.000 to over 200,000, so October was a good time to visit. We visited the main port of Saint Martin which on arrival did not seem very appealing, but as we made our way down,  past the Gothic Église St-Martin, to the harbour we immediately understood its allure. When the harbour area opened up in front of us full of bobbing pleasure boats and surrounded by shops and restaurants, picturesque and inviting, we thought we had arrived at a film set!

We had a pleasant lunch looking on enviously at a lifestyle quite beyond our means.

It could have been the height of summer, are we lucky or  what!

The lengths some weeds will go to!

We have enjoyed our first little taste of the 'Good Life' here in the Loire Valley courtesy of our first potager and Pauline has started to clear out the beds for the winter. We still have a few late lettuces to pick and our strawberry patch is still producing  (in November!) but all remnants of our wild flowers that provided so much colour in the gites has now gone.

When we first had to clear the garden we had to contend with one particular weed which seemed to go on for ever - I had decided to try and get to the root of it and it proved quite a challenge. As you can see from the photograph it took a fair bit of digging out. 

When I got to the end of it there was a small tube attached which had a note inside - I knew I had been digging for a while but...

Mums and saints...

Some of us might think they are the same, mums and saints but yesterday and today they take on another significance. 'Toussiant' or 'All Saint(s) day' (Nov.1st) is the Catholic church's day for remembering its saints, this is followed today by 'All Souls Day', when in many countries people go to the cemetery to honour their deceased friends and relatives through prayer and the placing of flowers, mainly Chrysanthemums here in France,on their graves . Here the two days also appear to be combined, possibly to take advantage of the public holiday on the 1st.

Chrysanthemums at Martizay

Over the proceeding week retailers and markets are filled with Chrysanthemums as here in France these flowers are associated with death (couldn't find out why). In other countries they are actually a symbol of happiness and of the sun! We were not aware of this and are sure sometime in the past we took a present of this flower to someone - we can only plead ignorance.


Of course it isn't just 'mums' that are bought,there is a wide selection of flowers and plants, sadly many plastic, on offer.

Jim McNeill has an informative post on the festival of La Toussaint here...

Good information on the much maligned Chrysanthemum here...

Brocante 'birzarre'..

As I said yesterday we went to the Martizay brocante on Sunday which was enormous-300 stalls apparently  - it seemed to go on for ever and I was so overwhelmed that I forgot to buy anything - though Pauline did point out that this wasn't compulsory!

 This was my favourite item bar none.  

The same stall which was very retro also had curtains (extreme left) I'm sure my parents had in the 60's.They also had what (according to my pic.) appeared to be a unique 3 headed hair salon dryer to suit people of different heights.

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Reflections on the Claise

On the way back from the brocante at Martizay on Sunday I decided to take advantage of the fine afternoon to take some pictures along the river Claise - hope I'm not boring you with these Autumn shots.

Bridge at Martizay

From the bridge

Boats on the Claise

Big trees at Preuilly-sur-Claise

Footbridge at Preuilly-sur-Claise

Reflections Prueilly-sur-Claise

 From the bridge at Chaumussay

Other side of the bridge.

Hard to believe it was October 30th here in the Loire Valley !

The last three are from the bridge on our street, Avenue Andre Theuriet,in le Grand Pressigny.

On the 9th November.