Le Couvent Diary

Six hens weren't enough to keep up with demand for luscious boiled eggs for all the guests this summer, so we bought five more today. The new girls are Light Sussex and should lay creamy pale eggs to go alongside the brown ones our older biddies produce.

Although they are just babes at 5 months old, they will look like this in a few weeks' time, but for the moment they look like this:

Meanwhile, the old girls are looking mean and moody, ready to jump the new ones when they're released. We currently have the babes in their own quarters until they've settled in.

It'll be a week at least, by which time the old ones will have forgotten the new ones are new. This morning one of the white ones rewarded us with an egg. Just 16 hours after moving in. I guess that means she's happy enough.

I'm thinking of naming them after small Sussex villages. So we'll have Firle, Glynde, Ripe, Chiddingly & Cowbeech. God knows which will be which - there's not much difference between them yet.

Say, what do you think of this? Rather unnervingly, Google has interactive photos of chunks of Roujan. I'm to be spotted chatting to my pal, Mme Maria Picanço & my brother's family are all having lunch at the Grand Cafe. We're all looking gormlessly at the camera - I do vaguely remember seeing a survey vehicle during the Spring. Or maybe it was early Summer. The temperature outside Taxi Andre is showing as 26 degrees and the time on the Mairie clock is 1.15 - hence all the shops being shut and everyone off the streets having lunch. Maria has a bag of lunch scraps in her hand for our chickens. No more secrets eh?

Click your mouse on the picture and you can zoom in, travel up and down the streets and look right & left. Have a fiddle and see what you come up with.

 
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Will this put the end to naked bathing by the pool?

By popular request we've offered an alternative date in February 2009 to come to help at Le Couvent, Roujan. If you're up for some fun and hard work in the vineyards and here in the old house, do take a look at this page . We've had volunteers apply from several other countries, so the talk should be good and the jokes multi-lingual/cultural.

Don't hold back - this will be an extraordinarily interesting week/fortnight. You'll learn loads and get fitter into the bargain.

There's nothing like a bit of teamwork for getting things done.

'Is your life really the idyll it looks?' ask many of our guests. Without hesitation we reply that for us it is. We work for five months meeting and accommodating fantastic people and that means we are able to live in a beautiful house all year, seven months of which we have completely to ourselves. Now how hard is that?

Yet this morning, as we were in one of our cleaning blitzes, I realised something. Both Ali and I hated cleaning and housework before we moved here. But in the process of running the house as a B&B we've become so accustomed to it that neither of us ever thinks about it. We just get on and do it. We have seven bedrooms in the house, plus three sitting rooms, two offices, two kitchens and a huge gallery space - oh, and seven bathrooms. We have the lovely Patricia, our cleaner, to do our own apartment, but all the rest we do ourselves. We never get tetchy about it - indeed I don't think we even think about it - it's just another job.

But if you're considering running your own B&B, you have to be able to get over the fact that you'll have other people sharing your house and that there'll be a heap of cleaning, washing, gardening, restaurant-booking and wine-drinking to do. The pool has to be more spotless than it would be if it was just you using it. You can't leave jobs until tomorrow because the sun's out - it's almost always out. And you really must like people. Not tolerate them. Really like people - you know, genuinely find them interesting. Now, we're super-lucky because we have a stream of very interesting people who pitch up at this quirky old house. And they are super kind to us. The rooms are always left spotless, so we have a pretty easy job of it. Thanks to all of you - and come back soon eh?

An idyll? Most certainly. Work-free? Most certainly not. Fun - absolutely definitely. Personally, I wouldn't swap my life for any other in the world. As for the cleaning, I still don't relish the thought, but I love seeing the house in it's finest, cleanest clothes.

Ali's gone shopping thank God. That means I don't have to. Winding the windows down is the nearest we get to air-con in our ancient Freelander. It's around 36 today so inside or by the pool's the only place to be. So our guests decided to cycle around the countryside early this morning - how wise.

I'm on a diet so I spend hours trawling through recipe books for luscious things to cook for supper. Tonight we're on spiced chickpea cakes with red onion and coriander salad. If it's good I'll put it in the recipe book here. The diet's going well thanks to my mentor Rachel . Thanks hon!

The only fly in the ointment at the mo is the spider/bee in the potager that stung /bit me the other day. As a result I have a fat hand that is causing me some consternation as it's now three days later and it's still swollen. At least I have Jan the homeopath on the case & it is a little better today in that I'm not tempted to just cut it off to relieve the itching.

Since I last talked about the new restaurant up the hill at Vailhan, Le Presbytere , lots of guests and friends have been and all declare the food very good. Ali & I went again the other day too. The co-proprietaire Sylvia is a bit cool so the food and the view have to make up for the lack of dynamism, but they do it brilliantly. The view is unbeatable and the food tastes wonderful and looks like this:

Tempted? Go on a balmy night and sit out on the terrace.