Our extended team

It occurs to me, as our beautiful electrician, Fabien Castan, installs the new door-entry system (with a little help from his Dad) , that it takes quite a gang of us to keep Le Couvent looking swell. Apart from Ali being chief housekeeper, laundrywoman and single-handed maintenance team (with star appearances from Alex, our wildly over-educated part-time chamber maid), I have the occasional dead-heading and web-site updating to do.

Then there's the lovely Pascal & Nadine Vie who cook all the luscious breads and pastries for guests' breakfasts, the hens who lay the breakfast eggs and Christian Andral who supplies the breakfast fruit. (I flatly refuse to buy any supermarket fruit - it's picked under-ripe and never reaches full ripeness, flavour or texture.) Big Frank Perez supplies the saucisson for aperitifs too. And they're all in Roujan.

The fantastic Maintenance Thermique in Beziers keep our boilers running so there's lots of hot water for guests' showers. If ever there's been a breakdown MT have sent an engineer within a couple of hours - they are saints. M. Lafitte coaxes his little oil delivery lorry backwards up our drive and complains that our Banksia rose will scratch his pristine truck, but he arrives in an instant should stocks get low.

Our red and rose wines for aperitifs and guests' bedrooms come from the wonderful Domaine Bourdic and is made with Swiss exactitude and love by the handsome Hans and divine Christa. For luscious white wine Jaques and Francoise Boyer from La Croix Belle supply us with their fantastic No7. When we need good quality quaffing wine in quantity we trundle off to the Cave Co-operative in Neffies.

Our guests need places to dine well and we count on our good friends Didier & Karen at Restaurant Les Goutailles in Neffies, the boys at L'Entre Pots in Pezenas and the team at Les Jardins de la Mer in Bouzigues. We have to thank the ever-welcoming staff at Apres Le Deluge for being open on Monday nights too. We'd like to say the bar in Roujan is as good as last year, but truthfully, since the divine Arielle left it in the hands of a manager, it isn't anywhere near as much fun.

And finally for the moment, I have to thank my lovely builder brother, Justin, for coming to the rescue every time the drains get blocked, something falls off a wall or water comes through the ceiling. Then there's ma belle soeur Michelle who's done everything from mixing concrete to wiping up litres of dropped gazpacho moments before an event - what a star. Where would we be without all these good people keeping Le Couvent in fine form?

I'm in love with The Butler

For the first two years of our life with a pool I struggled with an automatic flappy pool cleaner which glued itself to one end the second my back was turned. I reverted to using a long sucking tube attached to an unwieldy pole with a brush on the end, which was alright until I broke my shoulder falling out of a hammock. Ali's sick of hearing me whinge about it every day so we've bought a hideously expensive robot pool cleaner which has been named The Butler.
It came in a box which declared it 'Plug & Play' which filled me with dread since Microsoft uses the same term and I've fallen out with anything Windows since the advent of Vista. Anyway, unlike software The Butler really was P&P. I just lobbed it in the water, plugged in and went off to clean some windows. Two hours later the pool was absolutely spotless. As you can see.


Any debris swept up from the pool arrives in a removable filter in The Butler. This filter has to be removed and cleaned out - a quick and painless process, and all rather amusing since the filter bears a striking resemblance to a pair of bloomers. Below is a photo of The Butler's Bloomers.

Wildlife

Each morning I leave Le Couvent at 6.30 with a basket and our two dogs. We bundle into the old van and head off for the baker's and greengrocer's to pick up bread, pastries and fruit for the guests' breakfast. The dogs remain patiently in the car. Then we drive up into the vineyards where I cycle like a mad thing and they run like the clappers. I yell 'run away rabbits' all the time to give the stupid creatures time to escape before the dogs spot them. So far they've been lucky. The yelling startles the birds too and I have wonderful displays of fury from the hoopoes who fly off with their crests raised in warning.

This morning I spotted two magnificent hares too. Boy do they have big ears.

Virgins a go-go

What do you reckon? I stumbled across the top photo on someone's blog yesterday. Apparently the statue is somewhere close to Carcassonne. The Madonna below is sitting on our roof, right above me as I type. I'll guess there was a statue factory around here during the 1800's - we've never thought she was contemporary with the 1650's building she sits on. Do you suppose one just went along and said "I'll have that one if you can deliver by Sunday"? I'd love to know a bit more background.

Au revoir St Ivel of Roujan

Well poor old St Ivel the hen (Ivy) popped her claws today. Her comb was blue and she was having trouble breathing. Ali gave her swift injection of antibiotics but sadly it was too late. She struggled for a few minutes until I asked her to give it up and toddle off to another more beautiful hen-house elsewhere. So she did. Ivy was a good hen. She gave us many eggs and no trouble. I hope she felt she'd had a good life.