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. 

 

 

A couple of Sundays ago we found ourselves in Beziers, having visited our pal Maria in her rest home. We'd been told about a large and interesting brocante in a former Intersport warehouse. Ever eager to spend money we haven't got on bits of art and odd treasures, we went to explore. I saw lots of things I liked very much, but none so much as this little chap. He weighs a ton and has sticky out ears and a hole in his head. He would have had a metal prong with a half moon rasp where the hole is, but that's not there. He's a tool for scraping the flesh out of a coconut and I adore him.

I use the word him somewhat loosely since he has both male organs and pointy boobs, so I'm a little confused.  But I love how he swims towards the patineuse on the other side of the table.

 

 

 

Today we had the Roujan Foire, an event where around sixty or more stallholders sell stuff in the streets of the village amongst lots of noise and milling people. Someone on a microphone talks right through the day - irritating, but it keeps the buzz alive. The weather was fantastic so everyone looked in a jolly frame of mind.

 

 

I was thrilled to find a chap selling exotic citrus plants. He had some extraordinary stuff, and I'd have loved to have bought lots, but where to put them? So I settled for one beautiful lime tree.

 

 

Ali couldn't resist the charms of the saucisson man, so we have enough to last for a month.

 

 

I bought aubergine, tomato and pepper plants and they are all now planted in the potager at  Chateau Malaudos. One could take a lesson in Archery (Ali and I were both too embarrassed to have a go) or Fencing (both of us felt at least 40 years to old for that too), but the bit we had been very much looking forward to was a display of old photos of the village. In the event it was merely some copies of very familiar postcards so a little disappointing. However, I was rather taken by this one which I hadn't seen before. I especially like the look of the chap on the right.

 

 

So beautiful was the weather, we took lunch in our, now customary, new spot in the garden (thanks to the new bridge).

 

 

All in all, a very good day.

Yesterday was the first day this year that Ali and I found ourselves in our vineyards with no vital work to be done. All the pruning is finished, the fruit trees have been treated and pruned, the wild bits have been mildly tamed and everywhere is looking just gorgeous. OK, there are still about five square metres of the potager to weed, but there's no hurry.

 

So we took time to relax in the glorious sunshine at the top of the amphitheatre. Our stone seat there has a new name - The Lap of the Gods. We took sunbeds and squidgy cushions and flopped out under a blue blue sky and the only sounds were a zillion birds and the drone of the occasional small plane - and me snoring. Even Kit gave up her irritating guard-bark.

 

 

A halcyon day.

 

We're now into our second week of volunteers and I thought I'd drop in a quick word between all our guest bloggers. If you'd like to see what they've been doing you'll need to have a look at their diary .

When Ali and I bought the vineyard we've named Chateau Malaudos we thought it was beautiful. Abandoned for at least three years, it looked tired and neglected, but you could see those high cheekbones and exquisite structure nevertheless. However, we had no idea what a sleeping beauty the land really was until our volunteers started work. They've lifted off the dead skin, plucked her eyebrows, removed the blemishes, pulled the hairs from her chin, moisturised and given her some beautiful earrings. She has had a stunning new haircut and, needing no clothes, has revealed the body of a goddess. I think we're all thrilled at the revelation brought about by the volunteers and their fantastic work. Ali and I certainly don't have words enough to express our thanks adequately.

Each day two of our volunteers were responsible for preparing breakfast and dinner. For many this was the first time they had cooked for more than four - we were frequently at least 12 at the table.

 

 

Someone was always responsible for ensuring the dogs didn't get too stressed. 

 

So many excellent meals demanded hefty work to burn off the calories.

 

 

 

And when the volunteers had had enough of one job there were plenty of tools ready to start the next one.

 

 

But it hasn't been all work. On Saturday afternoon we all had a go at archery. It wasn't a wild success in the scoring department, although a couple of us did finally hit the target. Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience nevertheless.

 

 

 

 

Ali and I realised a long held plan when the first week's team painted a quotation from 14th century anchorite Dame Julian of Norwich on the wall of Le Couvent. It reads 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'.

We have just two more working days to go and our list has been well bitten into. Today is a day of rest and our current team has gone off to explore; some to the Mediterranean coast, others to St Guilhem le Desert, and one couple are travelling about chewing over the notion of finding a second home here. Meanwhile Ali and I catch up on e-mails, clean up our neglected apartment and plan her forthcoming trip to see her family in Australia. It's been an extraordinary two weeks.