The Chateau Diaries

Today we had to make a quick trip to the centre of Paris for some emergency camera repairs. If you ever need a sensor clean in Paris, we highly recommend the relaxed (2 hour lunch break), friendly (gave us blueberries) team at Mat Photo. And the area around the shop – République – is a good spot to hangout while you wait. It is just how we hoped Paris would be, little streets with cafes, art galleries, fromageries and fancy tea places, with ladies on bikes riding passed with baguettes. We don’t have many photos of this, of course, as we were one camera down. But we did get this lady sunning herself on the République statue.

In the afternoon, we visited The Tours Aillaud, a housing estate in Nanterre. Also known as Tours Pablo Picasso or Tours Nuages (clouds), the towers are located just outside La Défense, which is the Parisian equivalent of Canary Wharf. The main architect was Emile Aillaud and they were built in 1977. WE LOVE THEM.

We parked under the Grande Arche de la Défense so it would be easy to find the car later (under the ginormous arch) and walked, quite a long way as it turned out, to the estate. We first had to cross a busy road with a rather scary looking multi-storey car park on the other side. Ah, we thought, the view must be good from the roof of that car park! So up we went. The roof was deserted and completely overgrown with trees and discarded sofas, a perfect spot for some filming and a picnic. Big shout out to our guide Judith who it turns out is 18, not 19. She got us out of quite a few sticky situations and didn’t mind scaling a graffiti covered concrete monstrosity that reeked of piss for that all important angle. Merci beaucoup. It was a bit overcast today and when the sun did come out it was rather inconveniently pointing in the wrong direction, so we are planning to go back one morning to stake it out again.

We took our lives into our hands driving home on the Boulevard Périphérique (you should hear the satnav trying to say that one, bless her), a rather hair-raising experience. Nutjob Parisian drivers, sci-fi tunnels and deeply confusing signposts. Not aided by the schizophrenic satnav asking us to keep right and then immediately deciding we should keep left, which is not easy on 8 lanes of traffic. We were relieved to make it back to the Chateau for a well-deserved lager.

We are eagerly looking through our footage now and tomorrow we will try out a few edits with the audio of the bells to see what works.

All in all, a good day, apart from forgetting to get Hermine the 2kg of apples she requested. No Tarte Tatin for us tonight! Bugger!

We would like you to meet the seven new family members soon to be taking up residence in the Chateau gardens:

Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful and Sneezy.

It was strange because we had discussed only the day before the ‘disneyfication’ of modern times and how that masks the underlying lack of meaning in our lives. (Philosophical or what?) And then who do we discover at the brocante but these beauties. How could we resist? Plus we do love a garden gnome (see Blooming Britain) and think they will look just lovely in Hermine’s organic wild garden. (She feigned mock horror, but we don’t believe her, we are sure she’ll grow to love them).

We had a bit of a rest day today after yesterday’s antics so we lay about drinking tea and writing a list of essential items to improve Chateau living:

More hot water bottles
Bed socks
Tupperware
Long bread bag (the bread is REALLY long)
Milk frother (turns out they don’t do cappucinos in France)
Thermals
Fingerless gloves
Bed hats

This evening we ventured out to warm up a bit, returning to a field of wheat we had seen undulating beautifully in the wind the other day. But there was no wind at all today, not a bloody ripple, it was as still as millpond. So the video footage was a bit, how can we put this, stationary. We did manage to get a nice clean recording of all 200 bell tolls, due to the lack of said wind, so I suppose we can’t have it both ways. We then filmed the sunset, got bored and set off home just before the sky turned the most glorious shade of red. Bollocks.

Hoping for better luck tomorrow in the rough estates of the Paris suburbs. We are taking a French guide with us. Not a native Parisian but a 19 year old girl from the countryside in Normandy who is as quiet as a church mouse. Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go….

Today was a biggie, it was the day of the annual Sacy-le-Petit brocante. The 5am kick off was so cold we just pulled our clothes on over our pyjamas and headed out to set up our stall. We found ourselves to be the first people to arrive – turns out Hermine is very keen. Here is our stall in all its glory:

We secretly hoped Jonathon our chuckie doll wouldn’t get sold as we felt he had found his rightful home in the Chateau. But he got snapped up! Along with all the jubilee mugs, biscuit tins, the vinyl, the Beatles photographs and various other bricabrac. The Frenchies loved our English themed tat! The only thing left at the end of the day was an Elton John Candle in the Wind CD and some plates in the shape of a cabbage. Oh and unfortunately the Princess Di glasses smashed in a gust of wind. Quel dommage!

At lunchtime Hermine served homemade quiche outside the house with a large glass of Rosé. She told us the story of how she met her husband Hugo in London the Swinging Sixties and how exciting it was at the time. We loved hearing her recounting her memories.

After lunch we carried on the Rosé theme, this time ‘Rosé Pamplemousse’ which was rather too drinkable. Each time we went to the bar to order we got a round of applause for ordering in French so we kept going back.

Hermine had lots of vintage dresses for sale on our stall (truly amazing) as well as plants potted up from the garden, homemade jam and gateau a la rhubarb. As a true act of kindness we ate slices of the rhubarb cake noisily to try to drum up cake sales. In total, we ended up making 90 euros for the local charity from our stall. We also met loads of lovely people, including the village eccentric, who did 3 outfit changes for the day. We were the butt of quite a few jokes in French that we couldn’t understand, apart from the term ‘roast beef’ that we are taking as a complement. I mean, who doesn’t like a roastie?

Pissed and with slight sunstroke, we wandered round the other stalls and yes, you’ve guessed it, bought all sorts of unnecessaries. We also noticed that if you photographed an item on someone’s stall they thought you really liked it and gave it to you for free. Nice one. Well, nice unless you were photographing it because it was so random. You should see the shit now taking up home in the garage.

There was one particular set of items we had our eye on, but at 100 euros was way out of our league. However, once we were home and having a well deserved cuppa tea, Hermine received a phone call. She started ringing the bell and shouting for us. We thought the place was on fire or something! We rushed downstairs to be told that they would take 30 Euros from the English people. We hot-footed it to where they were packing up and collected our prize. More on this tomorrow, but let’s just say we are VERY chuffed with the new additions to the family.

Today was mostly about filming the wildlife of Sacy-le-Petit. Bees, ants, creep-crawlies of all sorts, flowers, nettles and trees. It mainly went like this: spot a lovely bee, set up tripod, get focus, sort exposure, bee flies away, spot another lovely bee, repeat for 4 hours. We did discover a friendly ladybird, but he turned out to be just a bit too idle and didn’t respond well to direction, as you can see below.

All we can say is big respect to David Attenborough (who hopefully is still alive by the time you read this).

We did fit in a quick trip to Lidl where we bought 2 different boxes of Rosé wine so we can have a taste comparison before the Petanque next weekend. Wine is a TRES serieuse matter in France.

Tomorrow is all about the brocante. We are hoping to smash it. Judging by our language skills today, being left alone on the stall (plot 5) could be interesting. This evening, Julie told the brasserie owner that is was a shame the monkey wasn’t shining today, and Debbie kept repeating Si, Si, Si. WRONG COUNTRY DEBBIE. We just need to know numbers for haggling, right? Unos, dos, tres, quatro.

Oh yes, there was a bit of an incident earlier whist sorting out all the brocante stuff in the garage. We lost the garage key. This is a huge brass number, pretty difficult to mislay. There was a good ten minutes of sheer panic and horror. Julie in hysterics: “Just give me something to kill myself with now.” Then we discovered it on the hook; some kind person had placed it back in its rightful place. Crisis averted and we won’t be sleeping in the cellar tonight.

Anyway, Hermine is putting the very strong coffee on at 5.30am so better try to get some shut eye. Adios amigos!

Hermine came to see us with some terrible news today. She said she was awfully disappointed and had to come up to tell us straight away. Our faces dropped. What had we done now? “It’s my wine merchant” she wailed, “He’s on ‘oliday til Wednesday!” Poor thing was distraught. She was concerned for us as she knew we only had half a bottle of Rosé left in our fridge. You may think its uncivilised here but we think having your wine and bread delivered daily is the height of civilisation and the only thing keeping us hanging on. Lets hope the baker doesn’t develop consumption.

This morning we thought we would record some audio and decided to practice on some cows. Once we had navigated our way passed the chien méchant (literal translation – wicked dog), we found the moody French cows not too happy with our presence. The cows stared at us. They did not take their eyes off us. But they mooed a lot, so that was good.

Moo!

On the way back we passed a bush covered in bees, so we recorded audio of that too. We had some wind issues, but after looking up ‘how to make your own dead cat’ on youtube we returned to said bush only to find all the bees had buggered off. Bast*rds.

Then we decided to record audio in the garden, while lying down. That went much better.

This evening we wandered round the woods looking for more ruins. Found none. Returned home to sink the last of our Rosé. We may have to venture out on our bicyclettes tomorrow for some provisions.

On a positive note, we’ve had an idea, yes an actual idea, about what work we can create for the exhibition. Some actual bonafide inspiration. We are planning a recee to the suburbs of Paris next week. We’ll either come back with some amazing footage, or minus our cameras. What could possibly go wrong?