Chicken Mother for the Soul!

April 15th, 2009

Wednesday began overcast, a sloshy kind of gray sky that just seemed satisfied to churn itself into submission. By 10:00 the sky had cleared enough to proclaim it officially a beautiful day.

Most important today was the dinner we were having that evening with Christian, Corinne and Francois, from whom I purchased my little CGV. We also had to make sure that all of the invitations we had made up for our upcoming party Saturday, were handed out. That party would be our “coming out”, a presentation to the community of Montlaur and beyond, including the Mayor, the Cooperative and to the region that we were here to become a crucial part of reinvigorating the farm and the Chateau de Montlaur. I personally delivered most of the invitations, getting confronted by the anti-social small black dog, which lives across the square from the farmhouse, in the process. He is a vicious little bugger and courageous far beyond his size. The only thing that stops him short of taking a piece of your leg is to face him straight on and look him in the eye. He won’t attack then but he’ll annoy the crap out of you.

Rob and I had talked over dinner plans the day before and so we were ready to head out for a provisioning run to the local stores. As it happened we picked up a stereo system at the local cash converters (read pawn shop) for 50 euros and then visited three grocery stores to get all of the ingredients we were looking for, including brandy, which was remarkably difficult to find. Apparently the French don’t drink a lot of it and what we found was suitable only for cooking or perhaps for the final stages of sclerosis of the liver.

Armed with the provisions and anxious to get home to get some work done we enjoyed a little jaunt through the French countryside in CGV before arriving back at the “ranch”. While Rob busied himself in the “cuisine” I made ready to grout the new floor. This turned into the floor grouting from hell. It turns out the French don’t use polymerized grout. (I know you guys are all shaking your heads, “How could they not use polymerized grout?”) That’s what I thought. But here it is, they seem to know their way around the various products of masonry and tiling. Still the grout I made up seemed dry to start, prone to drying quickly and when in contact with the old tiles dried immediately to the consistency of hardened wet sand. What I thought would be a couple hours of grouting and washing turned into 6 hours of arm cranking hell. Oh, I adapted. After all I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck but I stubbornly did two thirds of the floor the way a North American would do it before succumbing to the simpler stratagems suggested in the all French instructions. They called for soupier grout, pre-wetting the tile and scraping off excess grout before I washed it out. Still what I would have given for a dozen bags of polymerized grout right then is scary.

Having run my grouting time right up to dinner I barely squeezed in a shower before our guest of honour, Francois had arrived. Francois does developmental work for an aid organization based in France and working with several African countries He is affable, charming and speaks English well if with some hesitation (and he represents yet another single southern French gentleman after Benjamin who would do well to meet a few of my clients!). He has two (I think) very nice sons who live with him and he hopes to send them to the US this year for their vacation.



Rob had prepared a very impressive meal and set a wonderful table. He had also brought over a bottle of his favourite bourbon to share with Christian, something that Christian appreciated very much. We spent an enjoyable evening with the fireplace crackling behind us while wine flowed and food was consumed. Somewhere in all of that Rob earned his nickname. I can’t remember the specifics of the circumstance, perhaps it was his oversight of Corinne and I engaged in a chocolate fondue battle during dessert, or maybe something he said to Christian…anyway Christian, in his idiomatic French, referred to Rob as being a real “chicken mother”. Now I think we all knew he meant “Mother Hen” and he meant it in the most benign of ways but somehow “Chicken Mother” just sounded more epithet-ish.



Whatever, it was the hilarity of the moment transcended all else and we happily bid them adieu that night and made ourselves off to bed.