A Weekend In Normandy

Ok, so I went away to Livarot to help my girlfriend's parents with some improvement works to their house and the internet went down (gasp!). I'm quite grateful there was no internet, though, as I was able to enjoy and saviour something that I fear a lot of millenials dislike and take for granted, the sublime act of simply existing with no real urgent need to do anything like check facebook, or watch youtube, or play a videogame, or message friends. I simply enjoyed sitting around, sharing an occasial drink, conversing, playing music and lying about in the garden in the lush green countryside. So, straying from the A Day In the Life theme, I'm going to briefly sum up my weekend instead (which was actually more of a week).

On Wednesday, my girlfriend and I caught a ride with her parents out to their place in Livarot, Normandy, instead of taking the train which is always just a bit of a pain in the arse and a tad expensive. Our mission for the coming few days was to help tidy their country home a bit to make it look schmick for some bloke who was coming to value the place. Still being winter, the everything we saw out of the window on the way was a bit bleak and dead, except the grass (always the grass! I swear it just doesn't die out here, unlike back home where it seems perpetually dead). This had us a little worried as how is someone meant to get an accurate idea of the true value of your house when all the trees are lifeless and theres not a single flower in sight on the many beautiful bushes in the garden which has seemingly been away on holiday for the past three months? We concluded to just leave out some photos of the place during summer and hope the guy gets the hint. Arriving in Livarot, we had a lovely dinner of... I forget, but it was in their cozy, blue kitchen that is heated only by fireplace which creates a brilliantly comfy atmosphere. After a few drinks, we had an earlyish night by our standards (1am) in order to rise earlier than normal in the morning (9:30am) and get to work.

The next day, we started with the cutting back and destruction of all the vicious blackberry bushes growing around the boundry fence of the property. They're an absolutely menacing plant that is bent purely on sinking its thorns into your clothes and skin and hanging on for dear life until you are brimming with pain and annoyance. As a result, you feel beautifully satisfied when you finally triumph over them and end up throwing their withered carcassess into a firepit and burning them all to hell. If you have ever had the task of trying to cut an overgrowth of these bushes back, you'll understand how someone looked at them one day and thought "I'm going to make some kind of wire with barbs on it to keep things simultaneously in and out of my property". We were making really good progress with the bramble bushes (to be fair, I'm using both names as I don't really know the difference*), and we were finally beginning to see the view of the hills on the other side, when the sky suddenly decided to open up and rain on us. Naturally we took a break, after we were absolutely sopping wet, and sat down to lunch and a few glasses of hard-earned beer. Once the rain had cleared up, I donned this ancient looking leather coat, which I believed suited the country work I was doing, and set off outside to turn some branches into mulch with a small woodchipper that my girlfriend had named "le crounch crounch". It was a satisfying job as the woodchipper destroyed just about any small branch we put in it with a pleasant crunching sound that earnt it its cute nickname. Once the yard was cleared of all the branches and new firewood that my girlfriend's father had created, we began mending the shed that housed all the "useful" things, like old sinks, cupboards, signs, spare car bumpers and metal. When it was looking relatively tidy and no longer like a junk pile, we called it a day and celebrated with a dinner of pasta, beer, wine and cider.

On friday, we returned to the war on the evil, thorned flora on the boundary fence. refreshed with a night's sleep and digested energy, we soon enough had it all pulled back and heaped in a pile, ready for future decimation via petrol and flame. We then chipped some more wood that had accumilated about the place (there's a lot of it in the country, for those of you who have never left a city). As night began to fall, we fought back the darkness  with our many fires we'd built about the property before calling it a day and celebrating with a roast, I think. I'm really terrible at remembering as all the food was excellent and kind of falls on random days in my head (I just really like food). Afterward, we watched the heartwarming film Big Fish on the projector in the loungeroom, with a fire in the large fireplace.

As you can see, there's more or less a pattern forming here of just tidying tasks, followed by a break, followed by more tasks and then food and alcohol. Saturday wasn't really all that different in that regard, but it was more relaxed. Outside of building a new gate for the side of the house and cleaning the new water tank, we were able to mope about the place a little more and enjoy the weather which had cleared up a bit. I sat in a swing at the bottom of the garden a little bit and enjoyed the beautiful sunset over the hills and also spent some time following the chickens about the yard. The dog also assumed we were going to take her for  walk, but we never did, which made me feel guilty so I kicked the ball around with her for a bit. As the day drew to a close, we enjoyed dinner outside.

On our last day in the fresh country air, I helped my girlfriend's dad fix the fence that keeps the donkeys in their field. It was in poor shape as they had eaten some of it, god knows how, and pulled some of the rest awy from scratching themselves against it. We took our time and had a nice chat together despite my girlfriend's father having only a low level knowledge of English. It always makes me feel guilty that I never learnt to speak two languages, but it is nice to know that people accept me regardless and work to make me feel welcome. I am trying to parler le français**.

The next morning, as we made our way to the train station in Lisieux, to head back into Paris, the sky darkened and then began to hail. Apparently a storm had rolled in on the coast. The weather oddly made things feel quite comfortable on the train, as it enhanced the feeling of being inside, in the warmth and light. Before we knew it we were home and a little sorry to be back in the hustle and bustle of the city. I always enjoy getting away from he city, from all the stress and the noise and the pace of everything.  It is most likely bcause I grew up out of the city, and even then, the city of Adelaide barely even feels like a city sometimes in comparison to London or Paris. Overall, I am happy to head out to people houses and tidy them up or fix them if it means I can get away from all the troubles of life for a while.

*Ignorance is bliss, right?

**My girlfriend had to correct this