Le Couvent Diary

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.

Just in case there aren't enough photos on this site to whet your appetite, I thought I'd show you how it looks today.

 Le Couvent from the upper garden, where the pool is.

The kitchen, just after breakfast.

Your sunbed by the pool.

Post-swim.

Balcony waiting for this evening's aperitifs.

Tempted?

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.

We're open for business again for the summer and as I sat waiting for the guests to come down to breakfast I read the excellent news that Carol Ann Duffy is the new Poet Laureate. The first woman in 341 years to hold the post. Brilliant. And I'm so glad that my vote counted. Regular readers will know that I cast my vote for her back in December last year in a blog post .

I wonder if she'd like to come to stay?

The forecast has been dreadful for the past few days, but the heavy rains just haven't come - yet. So this week we have taken up 450 vines that were on a slope too steep to manage. We're wimps really, the old boy who used to own our vines did it all by himself with the aid of a mule. Having nearly lost Queenie the Quad on an escarpment we gave up on the Cinsault vines at the top of the amphitheatre. So they've been pulled up.

But today was bright, hot and sunny so, albeit too late in the Spring, I planted two plum trees, one more cherry and three peaches. If the forecast rains come the trees will get a decent start. If it just turns hot I may lose them, but they were cheap so I'm giving them a whirl.

Around here they say if you can see snow on the Pyrrenees it's going to rain within three days. This photo was taken this morning at Rochelongue by my good friend Chris Kemp. Looks like the trees may get their chance.