The Chateau Diaries

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?

Today we wrote a leaflet announcing our arrival to the local community and forewarning them about our plans. It is of course in French, but I’m sure you can get the gist.

This fancy leaflet encourages people to come to the brocante on Sunday. We popped one through everyone’s door in the village this evening, the old school version of mailchimp if you will.

A brocante is a kind of French car boot sale, without the car or the boot. We are having a table there, that apparently we have to set up at 6am! Bugger – the bells don’t go mental til 7am! We will have to set actual alarms and look at watches. Good grief.

We have collated a mass of English themed tat to wow the villagers of Sacy-le-Petit, that will be displayed amongst St George’s flag bunting no less. We have the taken the doll out of its box and brought it into the house, as if it isn’t spooky enough.

We’ve been thinking a lot about our difficulty transitioning from city life to the countryside. We are living out our own version of City Slickers. Today in the gardens of the Chateau we were instructed to make a large thingamygig structure out of giant stick things for the beans to grow up and spent ages tying it all together with miniscule pieces of twine. PLEASE LET IT STILL BE THERE IN THE MORNING. We pulled up a ton of weeds. PLEASE LET THEM HAVE BEEN WEEDS. We both have nettle stings on our bums from crouching down without looking behind us first. We planted 10 green cabbages and 10 purple cabbages. PLEASE LET THEM STILL BE THERE IN THE MORNING. We are having to google every plant before we eat it. We cooked up rhubarb from the garden for pudding. Do we eat the leaves? DEFINITELY NOT. We boiled up the stems with some water. When Hermine found out we hadn’t soaked them overnight first she declared this sacrilege and a crime against rhubarb.

We are eating nettles, and dock leaves, and sorrel, and sage, and we love it. There is something good about getting your hands dirty. We are so removed from where our food comes from living in the city. We plucked rhubarb from the ground and cooked it and ate it, and despite it not being done completely correctly, we are proud. Don’t ask about the microwaved beans on toast we had beforehand. (Yes, toast in a microwave).

Rain stopped play today. We were holed up in the Chateau most of the day, listening to the rain and the thunder. So we decided to record some audio. We were of course still hearing the bells. After a few failed attempts we managed to record the 200 bell tolls that happen morning, noon and night. A kind of old fashioned clocking in machine for the workforce on the surrounding farms. Click the link below to hear them and share our pain:

DONG!

Just imagine that 200 times over. Dong, dong, bloody DONG!

We also found the old Chateau. And it WAS just across the road, masquerading as a sugar beet storage facility. How disappointing. We had envisaged crumbling ruins overgrown with weeds. Instead we got an industrial warehouse with bricked up windows. However, Hermine has mentioned some ruins in the woods that we are going to hunt out tomorrow. If it ever stops raining.