Random stuff from Verfeil

Well, what's been happening lately? First of all my chum Kathryn arrived from Boston Mass. and we had a fun week going off here and there. She is a professor of Egyptian archaeology at Boston University so she was very excited to go to Figeac and see the house where Jean Francois Champollion was born. He was the man who worked out how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. She was even more excited however, by the chocolate mouse/mousse cakes which we had at Cordes one morning. Chocolate before Egyptology that's what I say.

Then we took her back to Toulouse airport and then immediately dashed across to Rodez airport to collect our good friends the Moule family from East Harling. Of course another visit to the cake shop in Cordes was indicated yummmmmmmmmmmm.

We had yummy prawns for lunch one day and guess who immediately came out in a fabulous all over pink rash usually only associated (for me anyway) with crayfish. Erk one bottle of witch hazel later I'm still like a strawberry milkshake all over, including in my hair, but at least I don't itch any more! I'm hoping that it was because the prawns had been touching crayfish on the supermarket counter and that I won't have to give up prawns...a potential major disaster!

The cats as usual are unmoved by all this and remain dozy and restful for most of the day and manic and excited during the night when their two favourite games, chase up the stairs, and scratch the fluffy wall paper, can become a little trying at 4 am! John enjoys his beer and lets everything (except the beer hahaha) wash over him! Even the man we saw in Albi who was celebrating his stag night by dressing up as a willy! What more can I add to that!?

Enjoy the pix.

Petit Randonee a Septfonds

A few days ago we managed to have our first walk of the year. Mercifully, the weather has been much cooler than we we expecting and there has been a gentle breeze and even a suggestion of rain. This makes it very pleasant to walk and we did about 7km all around the village of Septfonds. We were hoping to see ye famous old dolmens and amazingly we actually found one, the tomb of the giant. It was really fascinating and as you can see the countryside was looking fresh and beautiful. I love walking because you get to see all the butterflies and plants which you just don't see from a vehicle. The little bees were having a lovely time in the teazles.

Here in Verfeil it is weeing down with rain which is actually rather lovely, as everything is green and fresh and feels cool. The whole village smells of green, wet vegetation. Spike is fascinated by the rain drops; as he is, by and large, an indoor cat he's hardly ever seen rain close up but here when the screen door is up he is virtually outside. It's hilarious watching him as he tries to follow the falling drops. He can't keep up with the speed and it looks as if he is nodding furiously.

Rain aside we have had some good days so far with a combination of productive work and little trips to keep us busy. We've sorted out all the sheets and ordered some more ready for the coming influx of guests, John has been working on his play and Ive been sorting out the WG pottery report. Yesterday we had a trip into St Antonin. It's such a beautiful drive and it always makes us nostalgic because it was the route we took when we first came to see the house in 2003. Verfeil is completely screen by trees as you approach it from the road ans we couldn't see any sign of the house or village until we were here whereupon we fell in love!

St Antonin is the home of the most wonderful soap shop. My dearest friend Joey jokes that I have shares in it because we always take visitors there and because at home in East Harling the bathroom looks like an outpost of the shop. Anyway, as you will see from the pictures the shop is the most marvellous Aladdin's cave filled with glorious scents and colours and as the soap is made with all natural ingredients it does not make me itch! Orders now being taken for such delights as coffee, vanilla, lychee, rose, orange blossom and tutti frutti, all of which smell heavenly and come as liquid or bars. The bathroom has never smelt better!

Spike supervising the process

All finished I wonder how long it'll last?

Mmmmmmmmmm or in French Miaaammmmmmmm

All ready to go into pots

Boiling it all up was hot work

Hurrah Hurrah we've arrived, so far I've slept for two and a half days and with the other half day I made jam. The strawberries which grow in this area are amazing. They have an intense and perfumed flavour which actually makes you go mmmmmmm strawberry.

I made 3lb of wonderful deep red deliciousness ready for immediate consumption and hopefully also to take home. Now, those of you who know me will be saying "jam, jam, she doesn't eat sugar so why is she making jam?" Well fyo I made it with fructose, proper pure fruit sugar, none of that nasty glucose fructose syrup malarkey but low GI fruit sugar using 3kg of strawberries and only 500g of fructose, (kindly not the use of European friendly weights!). I added lemon juice and because the fructose is very sweet it really works although you need to keep open pots in the fridge. One teaspoon of this now and again is fine for me so cheers cheers. The kitchen smelt heavenly and Spike only tried to help one, narrowly avoiding a nasty jam burn. Silly boy.

Anyway these very special strawbwrries are called Mara des Bois and they are a cross between a culitvated stawberry and a wild one so they are quite small and quite expenseive, but the nice strawberry man on the ,markewt in St Antonin gave me a good deal on some less than perfect specimens meant for the purposes of jam making. Merci mon brave.

All this french houswifery which has also included washing and waxing the floors...don't ask, attacking the wisteria which has gone mad and defending John and Spike from a hornet has all taken its toll with a touch of Verfeil backache so Im going to lie down now. More anon.

Mystery of the black pot!

Hello campers and Hi de Hi. Sorry about that we have been watching Maplins on the computer and it seems to have rubbed off. Still having difficulty uploading pix so I think you'll have to wait unti we get home. In the meantime we have discovered a mysterious black pot which is wheel made and burnished and definitely not Egyptian. It was inside the new cave which which is now open but so full of sand it is hard to tell what might be in there. It is a big mystery but it might be Aegean or Near Eastern. Hmmm the big problem is that it is in about two zillion bits so guess who has to try to stick it back together and then draw it. We are working hard on all the rest of the pottery and think we might have found a bit more from Crete which is exciting. They also have masses of bits of wood from ships and we found a wooden spoon and a sandal, both perfectly preserved.

We had a mini trip to Cairo last week and ended up volunteering (err being volunteered) to collect some special chemicals which our conservation specialist needed. These turned out to be metal cans full of white powder. Not good when you are flying. Nevertheless, armed with a letter from the Italian Embassy and a whole rash of official looking seals and stuff we presented ourselves at check in, smiled sweetly, explained the situation and brandished our letters and bingo we were in. The bag was covered with stamps and stickers and that was it. Phew.

Aside from that it has been around 30 degrees here the last two days and I managed to sunburn my arm yesterday. The first time I have ever been burned in Egypt. Stupid girl. However, our plant and botany specialist soon came to my aid. Identifying one of the local desert plants as an aloe she chopped a bit off it (rather a prickly looking bit I might add) and started rubbing my arm with great enthusiasm. I must admit I was a bit worried at this point but apart form turning rather green and slimy my arm soon looked and felt better. It just goes to show how useful it can be to travel with a botanist!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=171772&id=532473012&l=6a617ec8a2

Just a quick blog to say that you can see me and my bits of pot at my face book account the address is the title for this blog. Its very slow to upload anything so make the most of this. NB Facebook account is Sally Swain. We have begun to clear the entrance to the cave and its is sealed with mud brick so everyone is keen to know what is inside. Yesterday the stele was cleaned and uncovered and joy of joys it is a royal inscription of Sesostris II who was king of Egypt in the 12th dynasty around 4000 years ago. We have deck planks and other ship timbers including bits of oars and also a wooden mallet. Even better the inscription on the stele mentions the famous land of PUNT, so we know the expedition set off from here to go to Punt. Its wonderful, a bit like finding an inscription that mentions Atlantis! As the stele was cleared we all stood and watched. The Hieroglyph of the sun god had colour left on it. You can imagine the excitement as the royal name was revealed.

Hi I'm having another go at adding some pictures but the connection is very slow so this might be another pictureless blog.Work is going well and all the pottery is behaving as it should which is a relief. Work is going on to clear the entrance to the cave and the stele which marked the cave entrance was lifted yesterday. It is covered in sand and can't be uncovered until it has stabilised a bit so we don't know what it says yet but the hieroglyph specialist arrives tonight so we might find out soon. Its so exciting. It's a really big stele and you can see that it has writing on it but without brushing more sand away it is impossible to see what it says. Happy New Year to you all. Try looking at Facebook and I'll see if it's any easier to put pictures there.