Le Couvent Diary

A few years ago we had a lovely jazz singer to stay.  She has a friend who lives close by here who makes soap and she told us that her friend's soap was exceptional.  Now, I don't know about you, but to me the notion of making soap seems somehow rather arcane.  It's a process I know practically nothing about, I just know that like anything that's good, it takes effort, knowledge and skill to make it terrific as opposed to ordinary, and, hey, we all know that most bars of soap do the job in a wet and suddy kind of way but, basically, ordinary is missing the point.  Isn't it? 

So.  Ripple, lather, dissolve.  For the last couple of years we've bought our delicious organic soap from the Savonnerie de Saint Privat.  (Her lavender soap, by the way, is the very same gorgeous, purple stuff sold by Neal's Yard.)  Anyway I phoned the savonerie yesterday to find out if she or her partner were going to have a stall at Clermont market.  She told me she'd just had a baby and wasn't going to be making any soap for the next year or two.  Eekamouse.  PANIC.   

So today, on her advice, I headed for the Olive Oil Co-operative at Clermont l'Herault which is where all the local growers take their olives to be pressed.  I discovered that it also has rather a fantastic shop, which apart from olive oil also sells regional artisanal products like wine, pottery, honey and wine.  And soap.  Lots and lots of soap.  And also our girl's soap. 

I bought it out.

So, when you arrive, you may find in your soapdish:

Lavender (lavendre)

Honey and Geranium  (miel et geranium)

Rosemary and Spirulina (romarin et spirulin)

or

Orange and Cinammon (orange et cannelle)

I drove back with the car heavily, headily, drowsily pungent with all of the above.  Oh my, oh my, it smelt good. 

We can't actually afford to give you a whole big bar of these soaps because, like most things good, they're pretty expensive and it would be enormously wasteful to throw out almost all of a bar each time.  So we hope you enjoy trying a taste of something that couldn't be more real or more local. 

Halfway through last season we decided to take the plunge and use a commercial laundry.  On the face of it this doesn't seem much of a leap.  Sheets need laundering.  Laundry exists.  QED take sheets to laundry. Plus, four years of ironing huge cotton sheets in the height of summer isn't one of my happiest memories though it may be my hottest.  There is a hurdle to leap on the road to laundry-heaven though, and the hurdle is size.  It does matter. 

If the laundry already has a week's laundry which takes a week to process, and the house is full of two night stays, how many sheets and pillowcases does that come to?  Well, the pillowcase answer is 144 and the sheet, 80 (assuming there are no twins and no duvets.)   This, of course, is a "worst possible scenario," though in a world where "worst possible scenarios" usually involve earthquakes or famine, my laundry list obviously doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Nonetheless it is MY hill of beans and with not a shop selling super king-size sheets this side of Oxford Street, we just didn't have enough, not nearly enough, to go round.

So last year we bought more sheets.  And pillowcases.  Then more sheets.  And pillowcases.

And now at least once a week I head off to the lovely CATAR in Pezenas, the blanchisserie behind Lidl.  CATAR is a work scheme for people with learning difficulties which is run, usually like clockwork, by Monsieur Tall (grey curly hair and blue eyes,) Madame Roland (blond hair and glasses) and Madame Short (enough said.)  The only times the clockwork goes lumpy is when M. Tall breaks his leg or a machine breaks down. (M. Tall I'm thrilled to say is now back in harness after 5 months.) 

Each Christmas Lizzie and I drop off a huge gift-wrapped tin of Quality Street.  The resulting sugar-high makes me enormously popular with the troops and accounts for my name of Madame Ballantyne-Bonbon.  Despite the Everests of laundry being scaled each week, I've never been sent home with someone else's candy-striped flannelettes or surgical scrubs for which I'm enormously grateful.  Mille mercis to all at CATAR for making our lives cooler and cleaner.

The Yanks are coming back to France. (Is it rude to say Yanks?) For a few years we have had three or four American couples each season, but this year we have dozens. So what's changed? I've been talking with our current American guests and we are unable to decide. Is it that liberal Americans are travelling now that they are proud of their President? Has the US media stopped saying, erroneously, that the French were anti-American? It surely can't be the dire exchange rate. Either way, we are thrilled to have you here. Thank you.

However, despite our bookings being just as high as last year, we do have far fewer guests coming from the UK. Is it as a result of the forecast of a heatwave in Britain? Or the media endlessly talking up the financial 'crisis'? Or shame at a government in disarray? I really don't know, but we'd be very happy to see more Brits taking their hols in this lovely part of France.

Yesterday was a 'stay in front of the computer all day' kinda day. It was raining, so the garden maintenance was out of the question. There's always plenty to do to get ready for the new B&B season which starts on 1 May each year. So yesterday we trawled through websites looking for new bath sheets. Big fluffy Egyptian cotton ones. We'd already searched in more local shops, but no-one had the 18 we need so we settled on the lovely John Lewis in Oxford Street, London. Maria, my new friend in the export department,  has secured us a big parcel and they are on their way. A mere 500 quid including delivery.

That's the problem with a B&B. Everything you need to buy comes in large numbers. When we were setting up six years ago we would find a really beautiful bedside lamp at £100, then realise we needed ten of them. Eeek. And things wear out fast. For example, we have struggled to find good poolside sunbeds. I'll guess that in the past we have bought at least a dozen that were absolutely hopeless after one season. So last year we went to the people that supply all the sunbeds they use on the big beaches here on the Mediterranean. We bought a dozen - more than the number of people we have staying - and they were cripplingly expensive. But, mercifully, they look the same now as they did at the beginning of last season. So, the moral of this whingeing tale is, spend the money, buy the best. Don't hesitate. It's a saving in the long-term and you'll enjoy the item so much more.

Yep, it's my fault. I'm responsible for the rain here in Languedoc today. Yesterday was bright and sunny so I was eager to take the cover off the pool to start its pre-season warming-up. Ali and I spent the entire day working on it. Ali jet washed the paving - a long and noisy job, while I set to cleaning the pool. It looks fantastic and the sun shone so brightly I was tempted to take a dip. I'm guessing it's around 16 degrees so it'd feel like the Arctic. I resisted.

Still, the vegetables in the kitchen-garden are happy.

Today we're going to do repair jobs round the house. You know, all those niggly little jobs you don't do unless someone's coming. And we have lots of people coming - all through the summer, to Le Couvent, Roujan - the best bed and breakfast in Languedoc. There, the day isn't going to be entirely wasted. I managed to get in another shameless plug.