late wet spring garden

We had a LOT of rain in the winter. It wasn't a bad winter but it seems to have held most things back. And then, in a week, everything seemed to come into leaf and flower. One day this week everyone's wisterias came into blossom on the same day.

 

And the lawn. I have mowed it 3 times in a week. I mowed it the last time on Thursday. I think it will need doing again on Monday. 

 

Pax - no sorry pactes - no sorry pacse

On 8th. April AD2013 we were PACSed. The PACS (Pacte Civil de Solidarité) is the French Civil Partnership - a marriage in virtually all but name. We had decided some time ago that we should have to have some form of legal arrangement between us as French law is very specific in terms of inheritance rules and we wanted to protect our children's positions, besides putting our responsibilities to each other on record.

The Partnership agreement itself is quite simple, the handwritten document which Ruth is holding in the picture is it. But the difficult stuff is obtaining all the documents - birth certificates, certified translations, proofs of good conduct, certificates proving that we are not married or partnershipped to anyone else in UK or France - which takes the time.

This photo shows us as photographed by the Greffier who PACSed us. To my left is a small part of the piles of paperwork she moved to let us sit down.



 

This is us in the restaurant afterwards.

 

And at home.

And our post-prandial champagne. Note (lumpfish) caviar and olives.

JUST A WEEK AGO

Last Wednesday I went for my last ski of the season. I don't normally go on a Wednesday, since this is the day the schools are on holiday and that makes for crowds. I reckoned that so late in the year, it wouldn't make any difference. It didn't.

So, here's a few photos of that last day, 10th. April.

The first shows the mountains taken about a mile from home.

A few miles closer:-

Le Pic de Jer, near Lourdes. My route lies to the right of the Pic.

I have done most of my skiing this year at Luz-Ardiden, but that station closed on 7th. April. Cauterets was open for a further week but, a couple of months ago one of the pylons on the main lift there was moved by an avalanche, leaving that lift closed for the rest of the season. This is the pylon. However, there is a smaller lift, which you can drive to, further up the valley.

These next 3 pictures are a bit white, but they show that there was plenty of snow still up there.

And this is the small lift, going down.

A roadside cascade, at the left of the road visible in the distance on the picture above.

The mountains seen from the supermarket car park on the way home.

Ruth busy in the garden when I got home.

So that's probably the last of the snowy photos for this year. Everywhere is closed now, except Piau which has opened this weekend (20/21st. April) to take advantage of the abundant snow which remains. They are talking of being able to ski in Ariege, along the Pyrenees towards the Mediterranean, in July.

Spring is Here

Ruth is working in the garden.

 

 

I have put up the hammock.

 

 

 

Is there a pattern here?

 

 



Candles and Cakes

After lunch we went back to the flat to open our presents and to cut the birthday cake which Ruth had made. You can recognise the birthday boys by the birthday rosettes which we are wearing. 

 

We should say a word about the flats we stayed in. We (me, Ruth, Ben, Graham, Irene, Pete and Lesley) were in one flat and Ieuan, Lucy, Amethyst, Jasmine and Thomas were in one two doors away in the same ownership. They were pretty good flats - light and clean with all the facilities we needed - but with one drawback; the stairs. In common with most of the buildings in the Barri Gotic they had narrow, and, it has to be said, fairly scummy stairs, which are the responsiblity of no-one and are thus uncared for. They were also steep and we were all several floors up so for the first minutes after reaching the flats we were all rather breathless and with rapidly beating hearts. That explains why when we wanted to meet each other, it was normally in a bar in the nearby Placa Reial, just off the Ramblas. I thought that climbing the stairs half-a-dozen times would easily be equivalent to running the marathon.

The Mad Crab 70th. Birthday Party

The day after the Marathon, I was 70. We had booked a table for 12 at El Cangrejo Loco some weeks before. The restaurant is situated in the Olympic port of Barcelona and has excellent views over the sea, harbour and city. Before going into the restaurant and while people were assembling, we drank cava and had tapas outside on the terrace. 

 

There were, in fact, two birthday boys celebrating on this occasion - myself and Graham, who has the same birthday as me, but is considerably younger.

Afterwards we moved into the restaurant for a splendid lunch with "sufficient" wine and liqueurs, our own waiter and at what seemed a very reasonable price.

Here I am having an apparently scary conversation with Thomas while determinedly gripping my brandy.

We can enthusiastically recommend the restaurant although what it would be like in the summer we can't say.

A Cheap Post - a Surfeit of Sanglier

Actually this Post is a cheat as well as cheap since I have copied it from our friend June Gadsby's Facebook post of this morning. To make acknowledgement, I'll print it in inverted commas.

"Today, I'm recovering from our wonderful Hunters' Banquet, an annual event in our village. Vegetarians please look elsewhere because I'm going to wax lyrical about what I ate yesterday. Bear in mind that I live in SW France [Gascony] a stone's throw from the fabulous Pyrenees dressed in all their snowy white glory at the moment. The meal cost 16 euros a head and was cooked and served by member ...of the Society of the Hunt [Societe de Chasse]. We started with Pearls de Japon consomme [tapioca in case you don't know what this is], followed by a huge slice of fresh salmon in a wonderful sauce. Then there was Civet de Sanglier a rich stew of wild boar cooked in the traditional way, I'm sure with beer and chocolate. Next up was the most tender slices of grilled sanglier with potatoes and green bean drenched in butter and garlic. To cleanse the palate there followed some slices of sheep's cheese and dressed lettuce. And for dessert a pile of profiteroles filled with ice cream with hot chocolate sauce and a topping of whipped cream. A good local wine was included, as was coffee. And when we all thought we might sink into the sunset - it was beginning to sink even though we had been there since midday - they brought around the Armagnac and the liqueurs. Oh boy. If I had died last night I would have died happy."

My memory of the final third of yesterday was write-only. I can't remember it at all. The last thing I remember was the Armagnac bottle being emptied into my glass. After that, I slept for 14 1/2 hours. And no hangover!