Up spoke a young lady from Lascazeres town
“I do hate those trees” she said with a frown
So early one morn
God sent a storm
And blew the bloody lot down!
Bollocks…
Note:
A bit of poetic licence in the above:-
1. Jan is not a lady, oops sorry, Jan is not young
2. Lascazeres is not a town
3. There might not be a god
On Friday 23rd January the BBC weather forecast predicted a hurricane in South West France overnight, continuing into Saturday. Amazingly they were right!
Matthew and 2 of his friends, Marcus and Jed were here on a short skiing break. I heard the wind in the night, from outside, not from Jan, sounded quite bad but not worth worrying about. We got up at 6.30 to get Matt etc their breakfast before they went skiing. However, the wind by then was so bad they thought it best to stay in bed.
I checked the garden just before 7am and all trees were intact but a few minutes later I heard the unmistakeable sound of a tree crashing to the ground. One of the tallest pines had fallen across the road, blocking it completely. End of the lads staying in bed!
Very effective road block!
We moved the cars out into the road away from any danger and to prevent anyone driving into the tree should they be daft enough to be out and about. We also roped off the road from the south as well. We then just watched as over the next hour the trees continued to fall, every pine tree on the fence line eventually went, taking some of the other trees with them in the process. The road was blocked from the gates to the end of our property, about 35 metres…
Luckily no damage was done to the house although the door to the metal garage was blown off but didn’t cause a problem. We lost 21 trees in total, most of them over 15 metres high.
Once all the trees had fallen we started to clear the road, good job we had a petrol chain saw as by then the power had gone off (there was a brilliant pyrotechnic display for a few seconds when the top of a power pole snapped, short circuiting the wires).
Our neighbour Bruno, rang the Mayor to let him know the road was blocked, he turned up a few minutes later, checked we were all ok, asked if we needed any help, wished us good luck and drove away. About 20 minutes later several cars and vans arrived, all with local villagers armed with proper chain saws! In less than 3 hours, with help from Bruno’s JCB and digger the road was clear and the trees cut back to our fence line, amazing!
Neighbours Bruno and Sylvie amongst the mayhem
As soon as they had finished our trees they had a quick coffee and then dashed off to clear other roads around the village.
Once the locals had left we cleared up the road of all odd bits and pieces, had some lunch and then it was time for the lads to head for Toulouse to get their flight home. Lyn and Barry came over in the afternoon to help, they bought a roll of chicken wire so we could put up a temporary fence to keep the dogs in as the fence along the tree line was totally buggered. The one by the road wasn’t exactly at it’s best either!
We used to have a garden here....
Same view after the trees were cleared, much better
As you can see from the pictures there was an awful mess in the garden. Our first task was to cut off all the branches from the main trunks and take them to the back garden to eventually burn them. However, Bruno saw us during the following week and said the community would pay for the provision of a skip for the removal of the branches. He loaded the first one up using his digger, we had to do the rest by hand (ably assisted by many friends). In total we needed 4 skips to take all the branches. We saved the thicker branches for the woodburner so we already have a wood pile over a metre high and about 7 metres long
Once they were out of the way I started cutting up the tree trunks into half metre lengths for the wood burner (although they will also need splitting but that’s a job for another day). When I had done all I could with my chain saw I asked Bruno about cutting up the rest and the removal of the tree stumps and roots. He gave me a quote for the insurance claim but then spent a day cutting the trees and removing all the stumps before the insurers had seen his quote! I’ve erected a temporary fence on the south boundary and done a bodge job on the roadside fence until the insurance is sorted. We now have nearly 400 logs to split, whoopeeeee!
Click on the link below for more pics, when the new window opens, click on Slideshow, the slideshow may take a while to load. You can alter the time between slides at the bottom of the screen. If you have problems with the captions not changing, return to the first screen where you can view each picture individually, double click the first one, then use the arrows to move on or back. They may appear blurred at first but will become clear after a few seconds, depending on your download speed.
To see more pictures of the disaster area, please click HERE
The difference in the view from the house now is amazing and the whole place is so much lighter. It will take a while for the grass to recover but at least it looks almost normal again.
2 Months of hard work later...
Well that’s enough about trees, I’ve been dreaming about the bloody things recently, as they have been the main focus of our lives for over 2 months (Jan says it makes a change from the other type of dreams I have!).
One final thing, a big THANK YOU to all who helped us get the garden back to ‘normal’:-
The villagers of Lascazeres
Lyn and Barry
Graham and Irene
Bob
Monique and José
Bruno and Sylvie
Matt, Marcus & Jed
Also thanks to Bruno for supplying us with electricity from his generator for 3 days before EDF could restore the power. I’m sure the extension lead across the road would contravene several health and safety regulations in England but no one seems concerned here! Also thanks for all the other work he has done in advance of the insurance pay out.
Right, back to the normal things in life….
I finally finished the chimney for the log burner in early December. I had to get a bit made to join the outlet from the burner to the chimney pipe as I could not get a ready made piece to fit. A local guy charged me 30€ to make it in stainless steel, excellent value for money.
The (almost) finished chimney
From the room above the lounge the steel pipes run inside ready made chimney bricks. I built these bricks up to roof level (with reinforcing rods in the corners for strength), then Barry helped me to build them through the roof. I still have to cover the bricks with mortar but that will be a summer job. I used the spark guard from the old chimney for mine, fitted just fine.
So, with everything in place we lit the woodburner, only to find there were a couple of leaks around the hotplates on the top. That was soon sorted with some fire cement and we finally had some warmth.
There was another problem that appeared 2 days before Christmas, Marc was here and noticed what seemed to be a drop of water on the outside of the chimney in the lounge. It was actually tar and had run down from one of the joints of the chimney. I had assembled the sections with the joints the wrong way round, stupid arse!
So Christmas eve, Marc and I had to remove all the sections, luckily they were not permanently fixed together, clean them up, turn them round and replace. Since then everything has been working fine, the lounge has been very warm and by leaving the door to the stairs open the bedrooms are warm as well. We only need to provide additional heating upstairs if the weather is very cold.
Warmth at last!
Marc and I removed several of the old radiators after Christmas and I’ve taken out all the remainder since then plus lots of the pipes as well. The radiator in the kitchen was incredibly heavy, we couldn’t lift it between us, it weighed around 28 stone! Most of the others were much easier to move, they’re all in the shed now until I get them to a scrap dealer. As the price of scrap metal has fallen I’m waiting to see if it rises again before I take them.
Talking of things falling, the state of the pound against the Euro is bloody hopeless, my pension seems to get less and less each month. Good old Gordon Brown (some say that, personally I think he’s a plonker). If I didn’t love living here so much I’d come back to the UK and claim unemployment benefit just to get my own back on the bloody useless buggers! Please note: The above is my own opinion and may not reflect the opinion of the majority in the UK, mind you if it doesn’t I’d be amazed!
Our main TV finally went tits up a few months ago, we used our smaller one but it was difficult for Jan to see it. Luckily Irene and Graham had bought a new gi-normous flat screen TV so they gave us their old set. It works fine and the picture quality is great. Since then, Matt has got us a 37″ flat screen TV but it’s in England at the moment so it may be a while before we can get it over, looking forward to seeing everything in HD (not that we can get HD with our current satellite receiver set up!! Minor detail).
I’m now the proud owner of a ‘new’ laptop, actually Matt’s old one, it’s only a couple of years old and works fine. I’ve now got more PCs than hands so will need to use my feet as well if I want to make full use of them all…
I’ve sorted out the odd satellite dish and PC for friends during the last few months, makes a pleasant change from the gardening and tree cutting.
My latest money making idea is to open a bank, borrow money to lend money to anyone, preferably people who have no chance of repaying it and then go bankrupt. The government will then bail me out, give me millions to lend to others. But, here’s the best bit, don’t lend this money, keep it!
What do you mean this has already been done successfully by banks all over the world? Bugger.
Matthew, Debs and friends went to Lake Tahoe skiing again in February, there was an amazing amount of snow and they had a great time. Marc didn’t go with them this year, he went to the French Alps where he found the slopes a bit more challenging.
Getting the garden ready for the annual vegetable planting is now the number 1 priority. The initial enthusiasm for digging a large veggie plot is now wearing thin (on my part anyway). Sorry to all you keen gardeners out there but I find digging the garden only slightly more enjoyable than watching paint dry. As for double digging the veggie plot, there’s more chance of me being made the Poet Laureate on the strength of the little ditty at the start of this update!
Mind you, the way standards are dropping for everything in England, who knows…..
However I will persevere and I’m sure we will have a good crop of veggies, surrounded by a magnificent crop of weeds!
Marianne and Ian came to stay in early March and helped us dig over the potato patch at the top of the garden. The main veggie plot was still waterlogged then, it dried out enough to allow me to dig part of it and plant onions and leeks. We’ve now had several days of rain so no chance of more digging just yet.
Marianne and Ian’s dog Darcy, always makes himself at home here as you can see below…
Darcy in Roxky and Daisy's bed, showing them he's the Boss
Aside from the recent rain, we have had some excellent weather in the last couple of months. A lot of the time I was working on the trees I didn’t need to wear a jumper. T shirt weather in February and March, great!
One bit of really sad news, as I mentioned in my previous Blog, India (Judith’s daughter) was expecting a baby in April. However Zack was born prematurely in December and only weighed just over 1 pound. He struggled valiantly through various problems but unfortunately lost his battle to live just over a week ago. Our sympathies go out to India and Dan at this very sad time.
Although my French is better than it was, I’ve reached a very strange state where I’ve forgotten certain English words and can’t remember the French one, thereby rendering me totally buggered when I want to say something. This condition manifests itself randomly and either the English or French word will return to memory sometime later. Oh dear, it’s another sign of old age I suppose!
Doggies
Rokxy and Daisy are both fine, very happy now that the fallen trees have been cleared and they can chase each other around all of the garden. Daisy had another phantom pregnancy soon after her last season, she wouldn’t leave Jan’s side in the evenings, always wanting to be cuddled, poor confused doggy!
Well that’s all the news from us for a while
I do hope that some of the parts made you smile
But now Jan has a plan
More work for her man
“Cut up that wood, build it into a pile!”
Bollocks…
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