lundi 27 février 2012

27.02.12

At last the weather has improved and we are now getting some fairly warm sunny days although it is still cold at night!
We had a fairly busy weekend , on Saturday we went and collected a stare of wood for the fire. We had run out of wood completely, except for stuff which we had dug out of the river, and that either did not burn or burnt so quickly the fire kept going out!!  We had underestimated what a stare of wood would look like and ended up making 2 trips to the countryside to collect it as it was too much for one carload.
Yesterday I was woken up horribly early, and on a sunday too, because John wanted to go to Chablis market!!

 We went but the stalls we wanted were not there, so we took Patrice for a walk around the town. Although we have been there many times it is such a beautiful place I never tire of walking around it.

John particularly liked the silhouettes one hotel was using to advertise its menus, there are rather nice actually.



I cooked us our sunday roast when we returned but poor old Patrice was worn out by the day and slept like a baby...... literally!!!

dimanche 12 février 2012

12.02.12

Well, another week has passed with very low temperatures (-14C) with a windchill factor of -19C!! It really is so cold but it is a different cold from that in the UK, because it is dry! We dont have the black ice that has caused such havoc in the UK news this week! but never the less we are firmly stuck to the port wall with thick ice that cannot be broken and we are moored on a river not a canal.!

Patrice had a bit of a shock yesterday when he went walking on the ice and of course fell into the river when he came to the edge! However he proved how grown up he is now and calmly climbed out again all by himself!  He shot daggers at us all evening until he had finally dried out.... mind you his fur is lovely and glossy so John and I are thinking of washing our hair in the river but then we remember what we pump into the river.....??!!??

We have spent our usual busy time entertaining on board or else being entertained by others!! Last night we had 5 visitors to dinner, I cooked a great big chilli which went down really well, with seconds enjoyed by all the men.  After dinner there was much hilarity as we all joined in a couple of raucous rounds of 'Pass the Bomb' a christmas present from my daughter, Dominy.  It is really surprising how one's spelling goes completely to pot when holding a small plastic ticking 'bomb' in your hands!! We are off out to dinner tonight on the barge at the end of the port, Philosophe, owned by Phil and Julie (an australian and a New Zealander).

I built Patrice a new house out of cardboard boxes and he spends many a happy hour hiding in there. Sadly he always feel the need to rebuild the houses by destroying them from the inside out, tearing them to bits with his teeth, so Im not sure how long it will last!!

That's all for now, we are going for a brisk walk to see if the nearby Nivernais canal is frozenup too.

Just returned from a freezing walk, and yes, the Nivernais is frozen up!! In the photo where it looks dark it is ice too, not water, it just isn't as thick as it is at the sides where the ice is white!! You can see our shadows in the ice!!

This cold is really getting to John, But then I did say going naked in this weather isn't a good idea I'm not surprised that he appears to be deaf.......