Le Couvent Diary

Happy Valentine's Day to you. I hope you're having a wonderful day surrounded by love. Here in Roujan it's a bitterly cold, but sunny Sunday, so we're within 3 metres of a roaring log-burner watching the Winter Olympics. Ali's shocked as it was a very muggy 36 degrees when she left Western Australia earlier this week. I drove through thick snow on the road to Toulouse Airport to pick her up, but the snowploughs and salters had done an excellent job, so it was pretty clear on the return journey.

 

 

I'm praying the temperatures will rise over the next two weeks. We're expecting our lovely team of volunteers at the end of the month and the work will pass so much more sweetly if we're not battling freezing winds. Each year we advertise for volunteers and unbelievably we get takers.

 

 

They pay to get here and they offer their labours for a week. In exchange we make them work like Trojans in the vineyard, cook gigantic meals, and suffer fairly spartan conditions in our under-heated house. But amazingly it all gets done with spectacularly good humour and we laugh all week long. People get fitter, happier, and sometimes fatter and they leave the vineyard looking stunning. We simply can't thank them enough. Meanwhile, Kit the dog won't be wearing her new Australian coat. It's a bit on the tight side so she obviously feels ridiculous.

 

If you ever think of importing a car to France, forget it. It's a squillion times easier to buy one here, even if second-hand cars do cost the absolute earth. I've finally managed to get the paperwork together for my Mum's old car which now lives here. This is the pile of paperwork that's just gone off to the authorities.




Tomorrow we're hoping to finish the very last of the pruning in the vineyard. That'll be around 5500 done - each tended by hand. I actually love the pruning as it really is the time when you kick off the wine-making year. As you approach each vine you think about the wine you want to produce, trying to find the balance between quantity and quality. Last year we made a mistake which cost us dear later in the year. There were extremely violent winds during last Spring and we lost at least a quarter of the long young shoots to the gusts. Only subsequently did we hear that the locals say that you should leave enough for the wind when you prune. Our Grenache and Carignan is particularly vulnerable as it's in an exposed position at the top of our land on the side of a big hill. I'm not going to make the same mistake again.

Last year's wine is coming on very well. We're hoping to bottle at the end of April and we're currently talking with a wonderful ( and famous!) designer about preparing us some labels. More news later. The labels we codged together last year were amazingly successful, so we'd like to keep a mixture of the sacred and profane if we can. Who knows. Better ideas may come.

We have a new booking system on this website and it's working very well. In the past potential guests have had to engage in an e-mail dialogue with us, all of which took time, especially with differing time zones involved. Now enquirers can see immediately if their chosen room is available for the dates they want, and can book, pay the deposit, and have the stay confirmed without waiting for us to respond. As a result our bookings are already up on last year, which makes us very happy! So if you're hoping to come to Le Couvent this year, why delay? Go on, it'll give you something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, I'm off to watch the Italy vs England rugby match.

Phew, that's the excitement over for a while. We had a spiffing Christmas, with all the Gosling family together for the first time in donkey's years. My mother came to stay for a month and slithered back to Suffolk just before the heaviest snows fell. We had the best time while she was here and I'm sure she thinks we do nothing but party, so frequently flowed the invitations.

 

 

Ali hasn't had such a good time of it. First she snapped a front crown clean off on Christmas Eve. Mercifully our lovely dentist took pity on her and welded in a temporary one to stop her looking looking like a witch for Christmas. Now she finds herself stuck in snow-bound London, having popped over to Oxford for lunch a week ago. I'm very much hoping she makes it back on her revised flight tomorrow, otherwise I shall begin to suspect that she's avoiding the follow-up dental appointments and the pruning.

 

 

 

 

Having spent so much time frolicking about with my mother, December passed with barely a vine pruned, so now we are severely behind. We've also decided to burn all the off-cuts as we go (to save tripping over them all summer) so it's a painfully slow process. But the new pram-burner, Hot Pegasus, has worked like a dream. Coupled with the new, second-hand super-warm jacket I bought on Pezenas market last Saturday, I was sweltering today. Nevertheless, I was eventually driven home by sleet, yes, SLEET, in the vineyard. Ridiculous. This is the south of France so it is supposed to be sunbathing weather all the time, right?

 

 

 

The only irritating event over the past month has been the theft of my carefully devised plumbing system in the vineyard. So I'm about to replace it and I'm going to super-glue it in place, then dust it with that stuff that stains thieves hands. I'll then sit at the bar in the village and try to spot the miscreant. With a bit of luck I'll catch him/her red-handed.

And finally. Flynn won't go anywhere without his leather bone at the moment.  Here he is in the van, on the way back from a walk.

 

 

Happy New Year to you and yours. xxx

It's hurling rain down in a waterfall. Ali and I have spent an hour mopping up the office which has beautiful, if completely ineffective, doors. These ancient crusty blue doors are full of holes and let in all weathers, but we're loathe to replace them with something modern that will scream at the rest of the house. Idem the windows. So when it really rains we have to circle bearing thick towels, mops, buckets and crossed fingers.

Last weekend was terrific, however. We spent three sunny days doing a fantastic dry-stone walling course just north of Montpellier. It's an hour from Roujan so we had a pretty early start, driving through the sunrise. On Sunday morning there was a huge dead wild boar lying in the outside lane of the autoroute. I doubt it would still have been there by the time the cops arrived. White vans were slowing down, the drivers imagining a long slow casserole for supper. 

Our fellow wall-makers were all French and worked for Credit Agricole bank. They were so charming I didn't have the heart to tell them we'd moved our accounts to another bank after being driven to distraction by CA's inefficiency. Credit Agricole (like all other huge institutions in France) has this excellent system that sponsors part of the cost of such courses for their employees. At least if the bank overcharges you or makes erroneous deductions you can rest assured that their employees will be able to stonewall. 

During the course we dismantled a collapsed wall of around 12 metres and rebuilt it from scratch to it's new former glory. We can't wait to get going on some projects in our vineyards. We have tons of stone, and most of it's flat, making it much easier. Watch out you volunteers, we have surprises in store!

 

 

 

It was a relief that Ali could come dry-stone walling. She'd spent the previous week horizontal after having fallen down the stairs whilst carrying the cat. Gouttiere got off scot free but Ali suffered two twisted and swollen ankles and a badly bruised and twisted knee. Thankfully she's walking OK-ish again now as were off on our hols in two days' time.

We will be flying from Toulouse to Heathrow, then on to JFK New York. We have the lovely Lee coming to dog/cat/hen/house-sit. The dogs adore him as he's around ten feet tall at least, and he plays with them. Unlike me, on both counts. They'll have a very good time, as long as the rain clears up. Thanks too, to all our pals who said they'd box and cox if we really couldn't find a dog-sitter. A thousand thanks to Lee for stepping up to the plate.

Just in case three cars weren't enough, we've just bought another. It was just too pretty to pass by, and I adore driving him. Ali will too, when she can bend her knee enough to use the clutch.

 

 

Marcel the Renault is 29 years and 7 months old. The age is important. The French government has just changed the classic car age from 25 to 30, so in changing his registration plates (which you have had to do here on the change of ownership since 1950) he has to have the yukky new-style modern plates for 5 months until his birthday next March when he can have the lovely old type again. Daft eh?