Poppy the chicken killer

She may look all sweet and innocent...

But in fact she is a wannabe chicken killer.
We went round to some friends and left Poppy to run around outside while we went in to enjoy a cup of tea and a chat. The tea was just ready and we were about to sit down to with some cake when she was spotted pinning a dead looking chicken to the ground and pulling out mouthfuls of feathers. The poor chicken's owner rushed outside with Doug. Poppy was pulled off the chicken which turned out to still be alive. The last time we saw it, it was sitting in a box looking not quite dead and covered in iodine to help deal with its cuts and bruises. We are waiting for an update as to whether it pulled through of not. We will never be invited back - which is a shame as the cake (which we eventually did manage to have) was very tasty!!

Improving the driveway

Our drive is a bit of a mess. It has various structural issues that I will go in to later when we look at them more closely, but at the moment the thing that is bothering us most is the mud. It has been raining LOADS recently and the mud makes it hard for us and others to get up the drive as well as creating a giant swamp at the top where we park the car which means everything gets covered in mud.

It is much worse when it is wet

We are currently in a short interlude between rainy spells so we thought we had better try to do something about it. We started with the very top section as that is a very short steep bit coming in to the turning circle/parking area at the top and is the most difficult bit to get up as well. It is also where the mud bothers us most where we get out of the car.
It seems there must have been a better surface some time ago which has filled in with mud, we guess from rotting leaves as well as what washes down the hill. The surface underneath means the water takes longer to drain out of the mud compounding the problem.
We decided to scrap the earth off back to the harder surface underneath and then top up with gravel.

Area with the mud scraped off

Gravel added

The earth we removed

 The two strips you see above yielded something like 6 wheelbarrows full of earth so it is going to be quite a big job to do the whole muddy patch here as well as others similar at the corner and bottom of the drive. Something to look forward to!

This wouldn't happen in London!

Iain is visiting us for a bit of skiing.
We set of this morning nice and early to take advantage of the fresh snow that fell overnight.
But we came upon a minor hitch going down the drive.

It rained a lot overnight and I guess it was windy too.
Luckly, although it had landed on the phone line and knocked it down, it had not snapped it. Phew the internet was safe!
We went back to the house and changed out of ski gear in to tree removing gear, and collected the chainsaw, log turner and a chain before returning to contemplate the matter.

 Doug cut as much as possible off

with some help from Iain

then I pulled the remains out of the ground to make cutting it easier. It was the first time we used the low range 4 wheel drive on the car which was exciting (although perhaps not strickly necessary). It was also the first time we used the tow bar. Exciting!

Once it was on the ground it was easier to chop up smaller.
Finally we dragged the remaining stump, that we couldn't really cut up (mud is bad for the chainsaw and it was a bit big for the chainsaw anyway), down the drive and disposed of it in to the woods beside the road.
By now we had missed the first lift (!) so we retired to have lunch before actually managing to go skiing.

We still need to do something about getting the internet (aka the phone line) reattached to it's pole, we are not quite sure who to call about this. We should also consider cutting down some other trees on the drive before they go the same way.

Back in France

I am back in France now. You can read on Lorna's blog about the funeral etc. Of course it was a very emotional time, perhaps made a little easier by being expected, but not much. I still feel kind of disconnected and weird, and frequently a bit tearful, but I plan on continuing to ramble here about our exploits here  in France.

I spent a fee days in London staying with my bro before coming back home. I went to the Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and the British Museum as well as to a number of shops including Fortnum and Masons and Liberties. I just wandered around a bit in Covent Garden, Regents Street and Oxford Street. I met friends, ate and drank in a number of pubs and had a nice snowy walkon Hampstead Heath.

I lived in London for over 20 years, but for some reason lots of places remind me of my parents. They both visited frequently. I suppose my mind is on them a lot at the moment, although even when I lived in London for example the British Museum always reminded me of them both despite us visiting often without them.

It was snowing when I left London and it was snowing here when I arrived here! At least here is is useful and we hope to get skiing soon. I was very glad my flight wasn't one of the cancelled ones, it was a little delayed, but nothing much.

I am writing this on an iPad and haven't worked out how to add photos yet.

Sad news

Sadly my mum died yesterday. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009 and long outlived the doctors expectations. She kept active up to very near the end as you can see here.
http://sealorna.blogspot.co.uk/
I am in the UK at the moment and will be here a little while as we arrange the funeral and other things.
Thanks everyone for the supportive, texts, emails and blog comments. She was a very special woman!

Sold Chamonix Flat (probably)

We have accepted an offer on the flat in Chamonix and the buyer has signed the 'Compromis de Vente'. This means they have 2 weeks to change their mind and then they are commited (subject to some searches and proof it is really ours to sell etc - but no mortgage). It will be longer than that until the sale is finalised while all the searches etc are done. Usually around 3 months.
Sad to see it go, but we need the money to pay for this place, and we don't have any reason to keep a place there.
It is hard to believe now, that at one time a cream sofa was not a totally impractical idea!

The Architect

We have somewhat come to expect that when people say they will come in January they really mean February or perhaps March so we were suprised when the architect (who said he would come in January) phoned and said he was coming on the 3rd of January!
He has already talked with us about our thoughts and ideas, so he came round to do detailed measurements and take photos so he can put together a number of 'sketches' for us. We have an appointment at the end of January to review these with him.
There was a bit of a technical hitch when he dropped his camera on the floor and it stopped working. He finished the job with ours and I transfered the pictures on to his memory card. Phew.