Spring is Sprung

Our first Happy Holidaymakers of 2010 arrived last week, although they were not quite as cheerful as they are supposed to be when they saw what the weather was like here. However, they have come from Sweden and anyone who has seen Wallender will know that almost anywhere is an improvement on those bleak and windy shores.
Actually I was hoping that at least one of them would be Wallender although they hadn’t said so on the booking form. Now they have arrived I can confirm that none of them are. In fact, they aren’t the kind of Swedes I had imagined at all – sadly far more root vegetable than Bjorn Borg – so short and round they could almost be Belgian. Never mind, they do seem very pleasant, which is obviously the main thing. Appearances, after all, don’t count at all.

Le Comte has moved out of the new gite, although he hasn’t finished it, and is now draining and pressure washing our agricultural basin. Taxes on swimming pools are quite high in France but as le Comte is officially a farmer (on account of having a couple of chickens and a raspberry plantation), he quickly realised that what he really needed was a 12m x 5m agricultural basin in order to have an abundant supply of eau for watering through the summer months. So that is what he built. He built it by himself, working all day every day for several months. When it was built he surrounded it with decking and sunbeds incase any of the Happy Holidaymakers should wish to lounge beside it with their dry martinis. The sunbeds, however, are precariously close to the water’s edge and every now and then one of the guests falls in and accidentally does a few lengths.

No chlorine is permitted in said pool; le Comte has insisted that watering the raspberries from the basin should remain a possibility. The original plan was that it would be cleaned by reed beds and plants backed up by a UV ultra violet light. Unfortunately these are no match for the suncream oil slick created by the HHs when they fall in, so this year we have purchased Chinese ozone units to turn CO2 into CO3. I have no idea what effect this might have. Watch this space.

The first year the basin was in use le Comte insisted that it should be a genuine ‘natural pool’ and include fish. To this end he ordered half a dozen Koi carp from Japan. Swimming with Carp did not feature on our website and several of the guests were nonplussed when they discovered they were sharing the pool with real Mckoi. The fish also contributed to the blanket weed problem. Come September we managed to persuade le Comte that the experiment had not been a success and the carp were removed to the old stone basin on one of the terraces where they are still occasionally spotted flitting amongst the reeds.

In the early days at the Chateau le Comte took his agricultural mandate seriously and one year planted 700 tomato plants – beef, cherry, standard English, plum, he grew them all. This period has passed into Coldspot legend as ‘The Tomato Summer’. As hardly any of them were sold (everyone has their own tomatoes in high summer), I ended up making tomato flans, tomato chutney, tomato sauce, tomato soup, tomatoes stuffed with tomato stuffing – you get the idea. If tomatoes are a super food we were the healthiest people on the planet that year.

Using the land in this way and generally ‘getting closer to nature’, was one of le Comte’s visions when we moved to Coldspot. Unbeknown to me at the time his visions for our Chateau were many and various and they continue to be so. One of his early ideas was the ‘lavender-lined drive.’ On our arrival here the drive was so untidy and overgrown you couldn’t actually see the house from the gate. This obviously had to change.
‘Lavender’, le Comte pronounced . ‘Tres Mediterranean.’
The drive is long. We did our calculations with the help of Pierre the tree surgeon and bought 400 bare-rooted lavender sticks. These had to be planted before the end of February while they were (sensibly) dormant. In my opinion everything should be dormant until the end of February.
Much of the ground was still frozen unfortunately, so we had to light bonfires on it before we could make the necessary holes for our twigs de lavande. They grew quickly and now attract numerous varieties of butterfly and lots of large, peaceful black bees. And although cutting the bushes is a chore, Luna and Daisy do have the sweetest smelling lavender straw beds.

Princess 1 has been even more French than usual this week, demanding anti-stress pills for the run up to her Baccalaureate exams. I thought I would humour her and so went to the pharmacy grinning broadly;
‘Bonjour, my daughter would like some ‘cachet’s anti-stress’ to take before her Bac.’ I said, expecting a loud guffaw in response and instructions to tell her to get a grip, but I had forgotten we were in la belle France. La Pharmacienne looked instantly sympathetic and produced a whole selection of homeopathic remedies of varying strengths which she would not hesitate to recommend. The choice simply depended on the level of the Princess’s distress.
Since Princess 1 already has trouble staying awake for an entire day I picked the gentlest formula I could find in the hope it wouldn’t chill her out too much – a certain amount of pre-exam adrenalin is good, surely? She hasn’t started taking them yet but every now and then opens the cupboard to reassure herself that they are still there for when the need arises.

Meanwhile, in the deepest south-west of dear old Angleterre, the Lib-Dem posters are proliferating. Thanks to Prince Arsenal, a corner of Cornwall is turning such a bright canary yellow it can be seen from the moon (apparently).