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Le Pisserotte30 May 2009
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Sat 30th May---Weather:-a pleasant 27? degrees
Lurcy le Bourgh is a charming little hamlet not far from Bourges in the French country side, if you travel on for about another 3 to 4km along country lanes, abundant with birds and wild flowers you reach a little 3 farmhouse town called Le Pisserotte and that is where my cousin and family have bought the ‘out buildings’ (barn, etc) and an acre of land from an old farmer who because of his artistic leanings wanted to spend more of his time in the pursuit of art then maintaining these huge old buildings. We are talking about 50cm stone walls and huge old oak beams---buildings that have stood for hundreds of years but in the last twenty years have suffered through fire and wind and storms. At this stage one of the buildings has been made into a home by hard work from the family and in years to come when the main building is tackled it would be a perfect subject for one of my favourite TV programs called ‘Grand Designs Abroad’. There is even a little creek and pond a few paces down the laneway with frogs living in it from time to time. The first afternoon that we were here I was startled to see a squirrel rushing up a tree and going about is business. This place is the perfect antonym to the home that they have on the banks of the channel that takes the ships in and out of Rotterdam Harbour.
The arrival of the 3 children (now grownups) all studying at university, with a couple of their friends and Jobs’ brother swelled our little group from 6 to twelve and suddenly we had handy men everywhere. Job and his brother were fine tuning a solar hot water/floor heating system that he had designed and installed, this also stops the water pipes from freezing and bursting during the cold winters here. One of the boys was fixing the lawn mower for it had been working overtime since the family’s return from overseas, the grass was about 2 foot high and paths had to be cut and clearings organized for the tents that the next generation is using---in order that we may stay in the main house (isn't that nice of them). Herman and I have not looked closely at what is available in the camping market of late but we were fascinated to watch one fairly roomy 2 person tent go up with a twist of the wrists and another huge ‘Karsten’ tent that went up with the aid of an aqualung for instead of pole supports it has a cross brace made out of inner tubing. Normally you would to use a foot pump but these clever people installed a couple of bicycle inner-tube valves so that it can be inflated in a much quicker manner. My other cousin and her husband have been billeted out to the farmer’s house on the other side of the laneway and one of Rolfs’ passions is photography so he is spending a lot of time photographing anything that flies, hops or crawls then with a little fine tuning on his computer you would think our insects are aliens from outer space.
The day progressed with shopping and preparations for the four course BBQ + salads followed by delicious French Gateau, coffee etc. While preparation was going on my thoughts were ‘who invited the army to dinner’ but I was amazed that the twelve of us all participated in emptying all of the salad bowls and most of the barbequed morsels—to the extent that Herman had to skip breakfast this morning (Sunday).
