Win(d)ing down...

Monday, February 23, 2009

I think the paint fumes have gone to my head. Waking up this morning was so hard. Even though I did get up around 8:30 I dragged myself out to the shower. Thankfully the morning dawned bright, clear and warm with a little southerly breeze coming in off the Mediterranean. I lingered for ten minutes under the hot water of the shower. It felt like I imagine heaven to be.

Today the wine was coming. Yippee! I wanted to get those freshly painted shutters up. I also wanted to get the materials for the gate in case, hope against hope, that I would find the time to build them. The damned shutters were still too wet so I puttered around for a while, went into Leroy Merlin and picked up the wood for the gate and then came back and stopped by the cooperative. Bruno was there and the wine was all ready to go.

He met me at the farm with the truck and we unloaded the cases into the temporary cellar. The new one will be started this year and hopefully be ready for the fall. He commented on how beautiful the view is from the farm and I agreed, looking out across the valley and off into the distance where we could still see snow capped Cevennes mountains perhaps 40 miles away. We talked about the farm and the Chateau project and he offered to come back sometime and help me point some of the stonework around the farm. “A good dinnair, a good bottel of wine, zat’s enuff!” We shook hands and he departed, glancing back and waving as he left the courtyard of the farm.

Then I began to install the shutters. I of course chose the most difficult one to do first. It was high and had not place to stand. I could only work the heavy shutter up the ladder, balance it precariously and then try to shimmy around it and screw on the hinges. Bang! Crash! Ker pow! It dropped 12 feet to the ground, slipping out of my marginal grasp, getting covered in grass and dirt where the paint was still wet and having pebbles embedded in the wood at the point of impact. Damn it! This would be easier with two people.

I spent three times as long as I had imagined I would on installing this one set of shutters. In the back of my mind I knew that Christian and Corrinne along with their friend Benjamin, were coming for dinner around 7:30. I had a lot of food in the fridge I wanted to use up before I left so as afar as I was concerned the more the merrier. I kept feeling the time squeezed more tightly, like toothpaste at the end of a tube. I approached the next set with significantly lower expectations and strangely it went a little easier. Still, by the time the light had faded to the point where I could no longer see the screws I still had only one of the two shutters up. I decided I’d better clean up and begin preparing dinner.

I planned to christen the barbecue since it had not been put together yet and I had some beef and sausage to cook up. I also wanted to make my famous Sicilian potatoes in a French version with different ingredients. I had most of the food prepared and the barbecue coals hot when they arrived. The farmhouse was glowing from lamps and candle light, wine was quickly uncorked and ready for pouring and Corinne brought a fantastic fruit salad with her for dessert.

Benjamin, as it turns out, speaks pretty good English and is a very interesting character. He runs a driving school geared to people who want to learn how to properly rally race on dirt. With a mall fleet of Subaru’s his business offers several products designed to give their customers a sense of control while speeding the car around the dirt track race course they use for a school. It didn’t take too long (30 seconds tops) to have me committing to taking a spin on my next trip over. I’ve always fancied myself a race car driver and floating through the turns of a dirt track sounded just about like heaven to me.

We passed a wonderful meal with a few choice local wines, including our own Marquis de Montlaur. Had a nice after dinner smoke and talked philosophy well into the night. Leaving the dishes for the next day I bade them a good night and quickly settled into sleep, knowing full well I had to hit the ground running early tomorrow morning.