and then "The white silence"...

From T-shirts and 25 degrees last weekend to this:

our first nuthatch in seven years!

 

Malemute Kid out checking snares (see http://www.online-literature.com/poe/110/!)

"The stillness was weird; not a breath rustled the frost-encrusted forest; the cold and silence of outer space had chilled the heart and smote the trembling lips of nature. ... The woman threw off her gloom, and in her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord..." and the late birthday present brought home from the frozen wastes of Yverdon:

return of the holidaymakers

Antje and John returned from the not-so-azur côte and we had an enjoyably lazy morning as temperatures dropped. 

In the evening, as snowflakes blew around, we lit the stove for the first time this season.

the no DVD evening

The launch of the DVD club was a huge success - we ate like kings and had a happy evening talking about everything from books to money to skiing to handicapped people's rights... No time for a film!

Meredith was in denial regarding the need for glasses but couldn't have looked better in mine:

the shelves that Jacques built...

My rdv with Jacques took place as planned, and there ensued 3 hours of effing and blinding (qu'est-ce que c'est que ce bazarre! purée! putain! merde et encore merde! c'est à se faire chier!) as we hit solid zone after solid zone in the breeze block. Lean on me! he yells, as the drill whines. And together we apply all the force we're capable of until the drill pops through and, slapstick, we fall on top of each other. And this was only the first part of a painfully drawn-out process. The screw-rawl-plug connection only worked one time in three - more swearing as trashed rawl plugs had to be prised from the garage wall.  And all the while I hovered nearby, the lady in waiting, with Jacques barking in English: spirrrit levelle!, drrrill beet!, move the laddaire!. It was only at the end of the morning that we realised the screw attachment had been designed to work flush with the object being attached to the wall - not possible with the shelf mounting we had been using. Ample confirmation that drills and shelving are tricky animals, and best avoided. But I am thrilled with the result. Thank you, Jacques!

autumn firework display at Villard Reymond

Writing my blog on a Sunday evening is my favourite way of distracting myself in the hours that follow Juan's departure for Yverdon. Now in darkness it feels worse. But I know my perspective will change tomorrow morning.

Paid work being light last week, unscheduled tasks took up the slack: eg I screwed myself up to tackle some shelving DIY, drilling into the breeze-block garage wall and blasting through the outer shell into - er - a void. Then, massive anti-climax, none of the rawl-plug thingies I'd been sold fitted. I found myself in familiar damsel-in-distress territory, on the phone to Jacques, and (thank goodness) we have a date for next week.

I was happy when Friday evening arrived, and not only Juan, but our Oxford friends Antje and John and the girls - now relocated to Lausanne, arrived from Switzerland (they birds of passage, en route for the Côte d'Azur). It was a riotous evening of games, paella and catching up. They had expected to spend Saturday morning with us, until discovering it was almost 5 hours of driving to get to St Tropez. Vaulnaveys is - and isn't - the south of France!

The rest of the weekend followed a well-oiled sequence: gardening (in gorgeous 25 degrees), walking, more gardening. I nearly persuaded Juan to come wine-tasting for the last day of Millésime 2012 but his troublesome wisdom teeth gave him a good excuse for staying home. So we sat tight, and watched The Third Man (1949). It's the third time I've seen it and now, no longer hanging on the plot outcome, I could really savour the post-war Vienna backdrop and the cinematography. There's no way the film would work in colour. The scene at the end in the sewer where Harry has run out of lives and Holly Martin closes in on him - and that final look they exchange - is pure, classic cinema. Love it.

Blessed with yet another weekend of sun and unseasonally high temperatures we chose a circuit last done with our friend Alison exactly 3 years ago: Villard Reymond to Villard Notre Dame. These photos give an impression of brooding bleakness. What we were aware of as we walked was the gorgeous thick blanket of russet beech, searing red maple, green-tinged yellow birch and deep green conifer and pine that draped luxuriantly over the shaly contours characteristic of the Oisans.



 



autumn-flowering crocus

So here's to the new week. It has started well: on returning from the Oisans we found that our neighbour had hurled a delivery of horse manure from his trailer onto our veggie patch. So we enjoyed a brief shit-shovelling fest before the evening wind-down.

AND... I have just found a year-round camp site near Zermatt! Yes, you can camp through the ski season, just off a cross-country piste. Tiens tiens. The Swiss are made of tough stuff. But are we...? Snow is forecast for next weekend. Watch this space.

autumn is here

This blog has become a catalogue of my weekend fun. Is there life in between our hikes, cooking fests, DVD sessions and spurts of gardening? Yes and no. The weekend has a rhythm (weather allowing): a walk on whichever day is fairest, pottering chez nous on the other day, perhaps (less likely) venturing beyond the perimeter of no. 287 to see friends or hit the big smoke for a film.

This last weekend was particularly rich, including a concert, walk and (of course) food:
... the concert was part of Millésime 2012's "Vivaldi and the wines of Savoy" (ha ha, what would Vivaldi have made of that). Just a bit of performance-management would have avoided the amateurish on-stage shuffling, complete with fleece jackets, that preceded the concert, and the grumpy "audience, what audience?" expressions. But the music was ravishing and, in the end, the Grenoble Conservatoire kids did pretty well.

We then adjourned to taste six Savoy wines, savouring the wine-taster's analysis as much as the bottles: a non-agressif white which avoided l'attaque de l'acidité and combined the aroma of violette de montagne ("which mountain violet?" grumps Juan "in those heels I don't see her up any mountain") with hazlenut leaf (?!) and velvet. I walked the tightrope between thorough enjoyment of the nuanced, informative guide and the party-pooping disengagement of my husband. Lessons learned: Gamay goes with everything, from fish to charcuterie and an impromptu apéro if friends call by. (In my dreams.)

... the same day we had done a storming walk from Le Désert (en Valjouffrey) up the Bonne valley, arguably the most remote in the Ecrins, enjoying the annual explosion of autumn colours:

view towards Pic Olan

... where Juan's weekend was made by finding a sheep's bell:

All weekend we ate stupendous food (de manjar en manjar, says Juan), processing our friend Jacque's apples into (amongst other things) apple cake:

... and cooking late-season pears into a frangipane tart:

(Housewife's lament: How can I ever lose weight when I have a husband who so loves puddings!)

After Juan leaves on Sunday there will be a brief void before my topsy-turvey week launches, "launch" suggesting a coherent weekly pattern that ain't quite it. My Berlitz work varies from sporadic to full on (currently the former as the company is continuing to struggle to find students); occasional shiatsu rdvs and the semi-regular once-a-fortnight slot in the retirement home that keeps me believing in myself as a shiatsu practitioner. In between these two jobs I have a structure-free existence as a housewife,with a roaming brief (ha ha) that includes gardening, domestic chores, and admin of all types (tax returns,log deliveries and boilers blowing up being recent examples). Right now I have abundant time. But paradoxically, this creates a weird, false pressure - how to explain that I don't manage to sit down for a minute, yet have few concrete achievements at the end of the week? I find myself drawing Juan's attention to the now-clean paving at the front door. Aiee, has it come to this?!

At the beginning of Juan's job in Yverdon we said we'd "see how it went" in terms of where we live in the medium term. But from the outset Juan has loved coming back to his home and wife in Vaulnaveys, and a quality of living that would be impossible in Switzerland. So I am beginning to see my traditional female role, "awaiting the warrior's return", as semi-permanent, and even enjoyable. Seeing each other just two days per week certainly allows us to value each other in new ways. I send Juan back to his flat with food for the week and he is sweetly appreciative of this and my other, vague contributions to our well-being. I am slowly realising that I am a very lucky woman.

Sisters are doin' it for themselves...

I've just had a run of cracking days with Buff and Phil, and my man.
Phil arrived midweek, and we spent Day 1 walking to Lac Fourchu, the long way.
(Mental note, don't bother again with approach path prior to carpark!)

Two days later Buff joined us. We indulged at the hammam, and then Phil treated us to lunch:

Then all relaxation was lost as we shopped 'til we dropped...

... trying to get me to spend some money (which I eventually did, a leather jacket and two Desigual tops later). Juan arrived back from CH that evening, and we had a loud night in:

Juan then got our adrenalin flowing by raiding a neighbouring construction site to save a clump of autumn-flowering crocus from certain destruction. Nothing suspicious about a man (and three women) walking along the lane with a wicker basket and a trowel at 11pm.

The following morning we headed for the Ferrand Valley...

and a "flat" walk up to the shepherd's hut for a picnic lunch.

The recent snow gave even-more-exquisite-than-usual views of the Deux Alpes plateau (especially through x35 lenses):



Back down the hill Clavans-le-haut was looking its photogenic best (pics courtesey Buff):

... and Clavans-le-bas supplied the necessary witbier.

In the evening Buff took us out to the Basilic, aka Le St Martin, and Phil got her patisserie fix:

The following morning, alas, all good things came to an end. Phil left for Lyon airport.

Buff and I checked we could remember how the pedals worked with a little biking circuit around Vaulnaveys:

Juan commuted back to Yverdon later that day. Buff and I watched Louise Hay/Bill Bailey DVDs (for personal transformation/spirit-lifting). 

And now Buff has gone, too, and I am on my own again. Boo hoo.