JUST LIKE ICING A CAKE

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know it's a bit late in the day, but I am very excited about my latest discovery... Filler!

My experience of filler hitherto has been of polyfiller, in a tube, putting in it in small-ish holes left by my inept drill-work.

Imagine my excitement when I discover that filler also comes in a big sack! You have to mix it with water but you can use it to fill ENORMOUS holes left by someone's over-enthusiastic hammer-work.

 Just a quick word of warning to those who are prone to getting over-excited... it's worth reading the instructions and concentrating when you are mixing it. If you forget that 1:2 means 1 cup of water to 2 cups of powder and blithely add 6 cups of water to your 6 cups of powder, you'll have to add more filler, make twice the amount you were intending to and end up having to smash a few more holes in walls just to use the damn stuff up.

Luckily, I'd made such a mess of my walls last year that that wasn't necessary. I'm already on sack 2



As with lots of things, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I am now, by virtue of having done it a couple of times, a fully qualified hole filler. And it doesn't stop there. This is crepi. It's meant for the outside but used indoors will cover a multitude of sins... especially if you buy the 'rustique' finish.





I had someone in to tile the hearth, he had lots of tile cement left over and let me tell you, it's mighty useful stuff. It may be intended for tiling but it goes on wet, sets hard and although it's not as easy to use as proper filler, I'm not about to waste a sack I've paid for waiting for some tiling jobs to come up. I'm getting quite handy at this now! The trick is to slap it on and smooth it over, pretty much just like icing a cake.




Quick aside: If you REALLY want to know how to ice a cake properly, you should ask my mate Maz. She writes an excellent blog on all things culinery (and more) and has just written this book. On how to cook with truffles. Like you do.




Before I sign off, a word of warning for the terminally stupid: If you use filler (or crepi or tile cement) to ice your cake, you will break your teeth. If you use icing on your walls, the repair won't last long, but they will taste nice when you lick them.

Lx

NICELY BABY, NICELY CRAWLING

Well those seven months flew by!

The nicely baby is now nicely crawling, nicely standing up and nicely marauding everything in sight. He's also starting to talk, well kind of. Shouting is really what it is. Today we had "MAMA!" for the first time. His very first word was "DOG!". Poor Dog. The wee one chases him all over the little house.  He looks at me helplessly with a "Please DO something!" expression. This is what he's up against:

The Little House has morphed from a building site into my home without me really noticing. It started when I stopped trying to force the living room into what is definitely the kitchen. I know that's where the wood-burner is but honestly, having spent a winter huddled on a tiny sofa in front of said wood-burner, I can tell you, a living room it aint. It's the M1 from the front door to the upstairs. Not cosy. Unless you plonk a bloody great kitchen table in the middle of it, like this.

The attic is looking lovely. I agonised for literally months about whether I should adhere to the regulations and ask permission from the Architect de Batiments de France to change my metal framed sky-lights for velux windows. I am opposite the church. I am supposed to consult the ABF on everything. If I write my name in the condensation on the windows, they have to approve the font. That said, the roofs around me are peppered with veluxes and apparently none of them have gone through the proper channels. The only person I know who asked for permission had her application rejected.

I am not brave enough to openly defy the Marie who told me in no uncertain terms that a declaration preleable was required so I asked the advice of the Conseil d'Architecture, d'Urbanisme et de l'Environment and after a bit of back and forth a REALLY nice man told me, in writing, that if I intended to keep the attic as a storage area, permission was NOT needed. Of course I plan to use it as a storage area! Have you seen how much stuff a baby generates? And I definitely need somewhere to store my guest bed...

We have had a wonderful summer drinking rosé, swimming in the lake, spending time with the various lovely visitors who passed through and now a new chapter is about to begin. The tall one was made redundant from his work 'for financial reasons'. A tip out there for all you who want to continue with your current employment:

When your boss asks you where you see yourself in 2 years time, do not, repeat NOT say "Well frankly if I'm still working here I'll chew my own arm off." It doesn't go down well. Hence the redundancy.

However, what we were not expecting to discover is that the company haven't been paying any tax or social charges on his behalf since January, and when it came to light, they cobbled together a retrospective letter pretending they'd fired him at the beginning of the year for unexplained absence. Erm... I think you'll find that's called paternity leave? Now if this was me, I'd see them in court. He has work emails, has received work cheques blah blah blah but no. He wants to move on.

So we are... to the Netherlands. He has been offered a nice little job as an account manager for a company that supplies oxygen machines for heavy snorers or people with sleep apnea. My mother is VERY excited. I'm excited but for different reasons. We'll be living somewhere near Amsterdam. Theatre, cabaret, galleries. A support network.


It wasn't until I saw this poster in the salle polyvalente in my village that I realised how culturally deprived I have become.

I'll miss France. Don't get me wrong. And I'll miss my little house. But we'll be back. Keep the rosé in the chiller.

Lx

THIS BABY IS VERY NICELY

This is the verdict of Dr Royere of St Germain les Belles following Rufus's 2 month check up. If anyone has any doubts about their parenting abilities, I recommend a visit to him, its a great morale-booster and well worth the trip.

He is VERY enthusiastic about how healthy Rufus is. He tells me I'm a great mother, that my breast milk is obviously of the highest quality and that everything about Rufus is 'impeccable'. He almost applauds when Rufus cries briefly at his vaccinations but immediately stops when I comfort him. He performs a little jig when he discovers that Rufus is 5cm longer and 1.3 kg heavier than his last visit.

We love his enthusiasm, we love his compliments, we love that he tries to speak English. We wish he wouldn't park is car in front of my house. Oh well, better him than the Belgian.

2 MONTHS LATER...

I have the most amazing baby boy who smiles and coos (and shits and cries but let's not dwell too long on that).

When the trauma has faded sufficiently I may write a post about my incarceration in the Hopital de la Mere et de l'enfant in Limoges, but for now the important facts are as follows:

Midwives' doom and gloomery all proved to be bollocks as 'tiny baby' Rufus storms up the baby size charts from the bottom three to the top twenty five in a matter of weeks.

I seem to have to lucked out on the caesarian front. Despite having to be stapled together thus:

my stomach muscles seem not to have been affected too badly. In fact immediately following my 'op' the only thing that stopped my chasing one of the midwives down the corridor and giving her a good kicking was the fact that I was tethered to the bed by my drip and a catheter tube. Ouch.

DIY is taking a back seat as I mostly have a baby attached to me in some form or other. However, he is conveniently undisturbed by the noise of the chain saw and sleeps through it. Did I mention that the Tall One bought me a chain saw for Christmas? All the better for sawing up this lot:

Mr. D-the-lumberjack from whom I bought the wood suggested a bow-saw was sufficient. It would be. But it takes much MUCH longer than the chain saw and isn't half as much fun.

My sis in law gave me a novel for Christmas on yummy-mummyism. "Take some time for yourself" it advises. "Have a pedicure". Not in my world. "Take some time for yourself. Play with power tools"

MORE DISTRACTION

So effective was the distraction that you may have missed key information hidden deep within my last post.

My amniotic fluid is stable, my placenta is winning beauty competitions but they still want to induce me. Tomorrow. At least, I have to go to the hospital tomorrow, with my cases, one for me, one for Rufus, who already needs more stuff than me and he's not even out yet! Whether they actually get around to giving me the drugs tomorrow is anyone's guess. It may be the following morning.

Anyway, enough of my yacking! (Anyone who can tell me the source of this quote wins a pair of throwaway hospital pants. Used or unused. Your choice.)

I never got around to showing you my €10 bargain from Le Monde Allant Vers, the depot vente where I go for all my €10 bargains. This time it's une commode. Not as one might suspect a grown-up potty for the incontinent (or a shit-chair as the Tall One so succinctly puts it) but a chest of drawers.

It is made of plywood. It was brown and really quite nasty, although rather... erm... commodious which is what attracted me in the first place.

On the excellent advice of John Wallace, I covered it in sous-couche (undercoat) then used a water-soluble, quick drying wood paint in blanc cassé.

A bit of artful trickery with some sandpaper to make it look distressed and you have something that could, possibly, be in the same room as THIS (see below) without blushing. Check out the posh Scandinavian crib in the background, courtesy of the Tall One's lovely sister.

Please don't focus on the last piece of grey and pink rose-motif wall-paper behind the posh Scandinavian crib. Blame the medics. If they'd let me go another few days like the Clark Kent look-alike intern that did my scan suggested, we'd have had that mirror down and that wall paper off before you could say "nesting instinct". I have a fantasy that if things start to go wrong, the intern will shed his glasses, turn into superman and rescue Rufus from my womb without the need for surgery. Do you think it would be cheeky to ask him to sort out the wall-paper too?

THIS is my gorgeous antique 'shabby chic' French armoire that I paid a fortune for in the UK (Ah... those bygone days when I had disposable income) that JL kindly repatriated for me when he came to collect Ash. Although it looks gorgeous, it was never really much practical use as a wardrobe as it is too shallow to allow a full adult-sized coat-hanger to sit sideways in the manner required by 21st Century life.

However, as a baby storage unit it's perfect. And I should add that it is extremely practical in that it is what's described as a "knock-down" wardrobe, i.e. it comes to pieces and is held together in the most ingenious fashion by 2 bolts and 2 wooden brackets. Nothing else would get up my cute French stairs.


That's your lot. Distraction over. Tick tick tick...

Oh my. DO you think there's ANY chance I'm going to sleep tonight?

ALBI THE RACIST DRAGON & PASCALE THE FECKLESS ROOFER

I am sitting at my computer watching the excellent and hilarious Flight Of The Conchords on youtube in a bid to distract myself from my impending (and probably painful) induction.

If you'd like to be distracted from thinking about it too, I'd recommend "Albi The Racist Dragon"

If you don't like Flight Of The Conchords, how about an update on the Belgian? I saw him the other day. He was explaining to one of the locals that Pascale had been 'working' on his roof for 2 and a half months and had yet to lay a tile.

If you have been losing sleep over what happened to Pascale's scaffolding, this is for you: Neatly laid out against the side of the Belgian's house by the johnny-come-latelies. One of the excuses Pascale gave to the Belgian was that he felt too "faible" to do any work, so the Belgian probably doesn't want to risk him falling off. How thoughtful of him. Notice they cleaned up all the old laths and off-cuts before I could get there, dammit!

I commiserated with the Belgian and offered my assistance should further roofing assignments be undertaken. We exchanged email addresses. I don't think he suspected for a minute that I was an undercover blogger and nosy neighbour.

Twitch.

HONOUR AMONGST ROOFERS...

There obviously is no code of honour among the French roofing fraternity.

I got terribly excited this morning when I heard hammering and male voices coming from the Belgian's roof. Could it be Pascale, returned from a fortnight of festive frolicking, determined to make the Belgian's roof an accomplishment of 2011?

Alas no. When I went out to check my post box, I recognised the johnny-come-lately roofers who only yesterday finished a repair to the house across the square. The Belgian has obviously decided enough is enough. Poor Pascale.

According to Michelle (the toothless one-eyed cadger with a speech impediment) Pascale has been in the grip of la grippe for the last 2 weeks. I tend to take most things Michelle says (when I can decipher them) with a pinch of salt as it's usually a meandering prelude to trying to borrow money from me; however... In this instance, when I think back to the horrendous weather, and the poor little Frenchman being lashed by torrential rain trying to nail down laths and insulation in the teeth of a fierce gale, I wouldn't be surprised if she is right.

Will the Belgian's roof ever get finished? Will Pascale ever get his scaffold back? Will anyone notice if I sneak out under cover of darkness and collect the old laths and off-cuts for kindling?

Twitch Twitch!!

CURTAIN TWITCHERY

My name is Michaela Paine, and I am a nosy neighbour.

Now, the Belgian that lives round the corner is having his roof done. I know this to be true because sometime in early November a man arrived and put up a scaffolding. He also removed a significant number of old slates, covered the roof with a blue tarpaulin then disappeared.

In the following week, the lady next door had her ENTIRE roof replaced. For an idea of the scale of this job, see left. It took the roofers a week. Granted there were four of them and they had cherry pickers; but they started at 8:00h and worked through til 18:00h being careful to observe the mandatory 2 hour lunch break in the middle of the day
(photo credit Nick Terrett)


Exactly WHY she, at the age of 93 has decided to have her roof done now is another mystery. My dear friends the Halls-Holmsens are particularly curious as she owns a bit of land that backs onto their property that she has hitherto refused to sell them...

The Belgian's roofer is called Pascale. Whenever I pass comment with any of my other neighbours about the spectacularly sedate pace at which work is progressing on the Belgian's roof, I get a conversational rap across the knuckles and told how sympathique he is, and how amazingly good at his job. I'm not passing comment on his skill, how could I? I'm yet to see any of his actual work.

Mid December, just as the weather changed from temperate and sunny to very wet and windy, the blue tarpaulin came down. Poor Pascale spent a few horrendous days up on the roof, which now looks like this. I felt so sorry for him, I took him out a hot cup of coffee and a biscuit; and then he buggered off again for Christmas. It doesn't take Hercule Poirot to work out that his priorities are not with the Belgian's roof.

I've nothing against the Belgian (except when he parks his bloody huge car practically inside my front window) but I think if he spent a little more time in the Haute Vienne and less time in the land of Stella Artois his roof would be done by now. That said, when my roof needs doing, I won't be asking Pascale.

The reason I'm telling you this is that the Belgian has just re-appeared. Pascale has not.

Twitch twitch twitchetty twitch!

THE MYSTERY OF THE AMAZING REJUVENATING PLACENTA

There have been dramas. There has two days spent doing nothing but washing baby clothes and hanging curtains(me); and painting walls and ceilings (the Tall One). This allocation of tasks has nothing to do with gender stereotyping and everything to do with body size and mental application.

However, having been told that my amniotic fluid is disastrously low and my placenta is looking dangerously old on the Monday, I arrive, suitcase in hand expecting to be induced on the Wednesday only to be sent home again.

Subsequent scans reveal that my fluid levels are fine and that my ancient placenta has rejuvenated itself. We're ruling out Botox on the grounds that if my placenta decided to slip off for a spa weekend it would have to take the baby with it and that I would definitely notice. Everyone's a bit mystified but it means I'm given a get-out-of-hospital-free card that is valid until my due date; now agreed to be the 14th January.

I KNOW that my baby is fine. Obviously given that I have no medical experience and no previous experience of childbirth they're not about to take the chance that I'm right; and in their shoes I'd probably do the same. But watch this space. When the time is right, I'll be able to say:

JE VOUS L'AVAIS BIEN DIT

DUFF

A conversation with a Nina W's teenage daughter* lead me to ponder on the following:

BEING DUFFED UP

BEING UP THE DUFF

Two very different things entirely but both fairly terrifying for a teenager. As you get older the fear of the former (hopefully) recedes and the latter for some becomes much sought after.

Oddly, the word DUFFER is not a term used to describe someone who causes either of the above conditions, rather someone who is perceived to be a bit of a pillock.

It should be pointed out that just because someone is a bit of a pillock doesn't mean they won't duff you up or get you up the duff. However, the word "Duffer" is seldom used outside of Enid Blyton books so unless you're planning a Famous Five re-enactment event, confusion is unlikely to occur. Luckily.

*Just to clarify, Millie is not to my knowledge up the duff. Although she did get duffed up at school. That's what you get for using words of more than one syllable in front of people with fewer than the average quota of functioning brain cells.

Millie needn't worry. When she and her fabulous bohemian friends are in the vanguard of a new and exciting 2020s arts explosion, the violent thickos will still be struggling with the meaning of the word 'imbecile'.

I KNOW, I KNOW...

I know I said no more knocking off of plaster, but I couldn't hep it! It came away in my hand!

When you discover this:

it makes you curious to know whether it could be turned into something like this.

So you do a bit of this

until you get this.

Then you either have to wait until Paul is free to do the same kind of pointing job he did on the second picture, or you have to read the chapter in the DIY book on pointing and have a go yourself.

This (below) is too much and will require you to either escalate the plaster removal to the entire wall and window surround or stop immediately and read the chapter on 'amateur plastering and the gentle art of botching it'

Oopsie.

The Good, The Bad and the Partially Diabetic

A while ago, Paul Hipp, a friend from across the big pond wrote a satirical song about the world healthcare rankings and America's position therein (No. 37).

Check it out HERE

From this I learned that Britain is ranked #18 and FRANCE is ranked #1. Not sure that in this post-Bush era this still stands but I'm certainly getting a huge amount of attention from the healthcare professionals here.

THE PARTIALLY DIABETIC

There's a routine test over here where you go in starving, they take some blood, give you a glass of glucose-laden, radio-active poison then make you wait an hour on the hardest chairs outside of a monastery. Then they take more blood, make you wait ANOTHER hour, take yet MORE blood before releasing you into the autumnal morning; cold and nauseous, with a very sore arse.

On one of the tests, I'm .4 of a gram over what they expect so immediately I'm packed off to Diabetic School with the unhealthy and the clinically obese, where I'm given lectures on how to eat and exercise properly. The only thing that prevents me from chewing my own arm off is the fact that it is all in French. Big thanks to the Tall One for sitting through it with me and giving a convincing impression of someone who is at least half awake.

They prescribe me an apparatus for testing my blood, and I am yet to see a result that is even vaguely worrying. It's not like the British Justice system. I am diabetic until proven innocent.

THE BAD

The same SAGE FEMME (midwife) who packs me off to Diabtetic School for .4 of a gram also tuts and huffs about my baby being small. BAD lady. He's NOT small. He's fine.

THE GOOD

Madame Huffy-Tutty Pants books me in for more echograhie (scans) and gives me a prescription for a private midwife to visit me CHEZ MOI twice a week. This is amazing on so many levels.

i) Someone is paid to spend up to 2 hours per week with me obsessing about my baby.

ii) We listen to his heart for a full 30 minutes at a time. I even get a print-out.

iii) I don't have to travel to Limoges for the privilege.

iv) As my attestation for my Carte Vitale has come through, I don't have to pay a thing. €90 per visit. Woo hoo!

v) The Tall One found me a midwife who not only speaks a bit of English, but also trained in the UK and KNOWS THE NHS SYSTEM. Together we deduce that the reason Mme HTP thinks he is small is because they have my dates out by at least a week. The French count the start of your pregnancy from conception. The English from the first day of your last period. 2 weeks difference.

vi) This fabulous lady is also my personal admin terrier. It transpires that even though my attestation has come through, because I don't have a piece of paper confirming my pregnancy from CPAM I'm not officially pregnant. She is on the phone to them, sorting out their bureaucratic asses.

So there you have it. Whether I am diabetic or not, whether or not he is small (he's bloody not), the good far outweighs the bad. Hurrah for France. Number 1 healthcare system in the world.

Slaying The Hydra

I stand victorious. I scoff in the face of French bureaucracy. Afraid of a few silly bits of paper? MOI??

Never let it be said that Lallymaggoo doesn't know her CAF from her CPAM. I've sent both organisations mostly everything they asked for, plus a few extra bits for good luck. I even sent the CPAM woman a copy of the letter from CAF for good measure.

French letters are very formal. A bit like those dances in Jane Austen costume dramas where everyone walks around sedately in simple geometric shapes. They look quite dull on the surface but are actually quite fun when you look at what lies beneath.

My favourite bit is the sign off.

Dans l'attente de votre réponse, Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, l’assurance de ma considération distinguée.

There's no real English equivalent but the sense is something like:

I will sleep by the post box in fond expectation of a reply and with your kind agreement respectfully climb up your poo-hole.

Depot Vente versus Castorama

Mme Smith went to the Depot Vente and she bought:

2 x lengths of aluminium pipe €10 (cost at casto €22,40)

2 x paint trays €3,80 (cost at casto €9,60)

1 x bumper pack of raw plugs €1 (cost at casto €100 probably)

1 x second hand sechoir €5 (clothes horse. Cost new horrendous, €25 or something ridiculous)

1 x antique cupboard €10 This I am très excited by. She gave it to me cheaply because it is un peu abimée and has mouse droppings inside it. It's lovely and has old metal locks with all the keys and everything!

This is why we love the Depot Vente. Even though the bloody man wouldn't let me use the loo. At 7 months pregnant.

Mme Smith went to Castorama and after she'd used the loo she bought:

1 x insulated fireboard. Yay! Thank you Nick HH for letting me know that it was called a plaque pour hotte. Who would have guessed? €56 but apparently worth it.

3 x sets of long cotton curtains in different weights and colours and a matching cushion in the sale, €20 the lot. Bargain!

1 x chrome collar for a 125mm aluminium pipe €8 Bloody rip off but the depot vente didn't have one.

Assorted radiator fittings totalling €40! Daylight flipping robbery but Paul is coming to fit my radiators on Monday and I'd rather be over-stocked than under. Hopefully, he won't need half of it and I'll be able to take it back.

This is why we hate Castorama a bit but can't really do without it. We love the curtains in chocolate brown, cerise and white but we hate that the sales assistant left the ink-spraying security tags on. Useless bint.

Sealing The Chimney

This morning I wanted to tell you about my neighbour. The cheeky bint who thinks because she's nearly 70, has no teeth, one eye and a speech impediment that I'll let her use my phone to make premium rate phone calls when I know she has a phone herself because she gave me her number.

Instead I'm off looking for something to seal the chimney. Paul says there is a product that exists and is for sale at Casto that is an insulated, fire-resistant board. Fire resistant plasterboard I can find. Insulated? Nope.

J'habite en France

It's official. I'm here.

I am now a true resident of the commune of St Germain les Belles in the Haute Vienne. There's no going back. Actually, that's patently untrue, of course I could go back, but why would I want to?

THINGS THAT ARE BRILLIANT ABOUT LIVING IN FRANCE:

Everyone speaks French. Don't talk to me about cleaning women, talk to me about femmes de menage. Pass me that rag please? Mais non, passez-moi ce chiffon. Of course, it's not all bon appetit and merci à vous, there are times when I cry with frustration, particularly on the telephone.

My Little House. I'm still 'indoor camping' but it feels like home. Paul came and fitted my wood-burning stove this morning and is returning on Monday to do the radiators. Furthermore, he and Nikki have got a new cuisinière and are giving me their old cooker. I will have 4 rings and an oven! I've scraped nearly a third of the lino glue off the wooden floor boards downstairs. I'm about to splash white emulsion everywhere to brighten it up. Please note: I am not decorating as such. There will be no prep and I will be painting over all manner of ghastliness in terms of flaky paint and holes in the plaster, but I have ceased kidding myself that I'm going to be ready to decorate this side of next Christmas so expediency is the name of the game.

Proximity of The Tall One. Whether or not the tile section of Castorama was to blame for my gravid state, we are both incredibly excited by the mingling of our genes in a whole new person and not being able to share that except telephonically has been torture. Not to mention expensive. And anyway, baby aside, I missed HIM. Now I can listen to his disembodied voice on the phone knowing that a) it's not costing the earth and b) I'll see him in person that evening.

Mushrooms. I'm sure they have them in the countryside in England but I have never managed to actually live in the countryside since I was old enough to relish fungi for anything other than their psychotropic qualities. Today I found a huge haul of shaggy parasols. Yum. Guess what we're having for supper?

I could go on, and I probably will, in another post. Just to balance the picture, here is a taste of the more challenging aspects of living in a foreign country.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME WANT TO CRY/SHOUT/THROW STUFF

The paperwork. It's insane. Declarations and attestations are required for pretty much everything. I'm currently wading through the paperwork you need to have a baby. I'm not allowed to go into labour until I have successfully negotiated the following:

i) A carte vitale. Essential for accessing free maternity care

ii) Declaration de grosesse. This little form seems innocuous enough until you send the copies off to the relevant departments (CPAM, CAF) and then, like a bureaucratic Lernaean Hydra, it generates more and more forms and demands for documentation that all have to be dispatched separately. My only consolation is that once completed, this mountain of paperwork may actually yield some benefits. Remember those? We used to have them in the UK once upon a time...

iii) Declaration of Paternity. When I saw the midwife at the appropriately named Mother and Baby Hospital, after she'd finished berating me for my lack of paperwork, she told me that until we'd signed a declaration at the Mairie, the baby is, until the divorce is finalised, considered to be the offspring of my dear ex-husband. Bizarre, non?

Luckily, the French calculate full term pregnancy at 42 weeks rather than 41 weeks. The rate I'm going, I'm going to need that extra week.

Did I mention that everyone speaks French? Yes, the charm of communicating in a foreign language can also be a curse. Especially on the telephone. Or if you need to get something done quickly.

Fortunately, part of The Tall One's business is looking after helpless foreigners who haven't a clue. Van Den Berg Immobilier will not only sell you a lovely property, they also have people to support you whilst you take your first baby steps on this alien French-speaking planet. I of course, being stubborn and a bit of a masochist prefer to wrangle with it myself and weep buckets to baffled and incomprehensible bureaucrats on the phone for hours first, but it's good to know I'm not alone.

Chorley Cakes & Torchwood

There is much to be done. I'm having a baby. In France. The paperwork and the organisation required to claim my reciprocal healthcare and maternity benefits are making me feel dizzy.

Marlene re-opens next week. I haven't a clue how it goes. I don't retain lines if I'm not using them. This is not laziness, but an inbuilt safety feature to ward off multiple personality disorder.

I need to do my tax return so that I don't spend what I should be giving the government. My pay cheques stop at the end of September. I need to generate some more!

I need to think through what the Herbert is going to need when he's born (the working title is courtesy of Jo Parkin, I actually think it's a girl). So many friends have so much baby stuff to pass on which is amazing but I need to make lists of what has been offered and from whom so that I don't end up with six breast pumps and no cot.

Hardly surprising then, that I feel an urgent need to bake Chorley cakes and sit down in front of BBC i-Player catching up on 'Torchwood'.

A word about Chorley cakes. The best ones are available from Waites bakery in Hebden Bridge as I'm sure Sally, Kate and Daniel will agree. They will understand that the four-pack plastic-wrapped imitations you buy in service stations and all night supermarkets just don't measure up which is why I decided to bake my own.

Chorley cakes are like Eccles cakes but with shortcrust pastry instead of flaky pastry. It's not rocket science. The amounts I used were as follows:

200g plain flour
100g butter
1 teaspoon baking powder

Usual MO for pastry: rub the butter into the flour to the consistency of breadcrumbs, add water to bind and chill. The pastry that is, not you. You're busy making the filling:

75g currants (I used sultanas, works fine)
30g melted butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon mixed spice
Orange/lemon zest (optional)

I used white flour & white granulated sugar. This is not supposed to be a healthy snack. You can use wholemeal flour and brown sugar if you like, but it won't be the same.

Mix all the filling ingredients together. Roll out your pastry, cut into rounds. On each round put a spoonful of filling. Fold in the edges, turn and roll gently with a rolling pin until it spreads so that the currants show through.

Bake in a moderate oven (I used 175 centigrade) for about half an hour. Do not overcook. If the pastry starts to go golden, it's too long.

Serve with a glass of cold milk and a double helping of Captain Jack (Harkness, not Daniels).

Tiles And The Consequences Thereof

Paul has finished the tiling in the bathroom. Doesn't it look great? All that needs to happen now is to tile the side panel of the bath and fix the shower in place.

It's going to be a tall shower. One of the saddest sights I have ever seen is a 6'5" Dutchman folded into a UK shower cubicle with his head bent against the ceiling. It was supposed to be a steam/sauna/massage facility and he couldn't even get hot water. There will be no such cruelty to our taller European cousins in my little house. Simple shower controls, sliding shower bar set high.

It has occurred to me that these tiles may in some way be responsible for the baby. Faced with a gleaming array of ceramic joyousness, I find it impossible to make a decision, so I took my tall friend along. Partly for company, partly for his capacious boot and partly to stop me spending the entire day going "Um..." in the tile section of Castorama. I think there's a very real possibility that this gave off mixed messages and my body mistook my solo renovation project for a nest-building exercise and reacted accordingly.

I never planned to exchange shabby chic for babby chic, but having had a little time to get used to the idea, I am of course delighted. And terrified. Come September, I shall be properly resident in France, and negotiating the French maternity system. I've managed it with the Mairie and permission for the échafaudage, I'm sure I can work out how to give birth in French.

One thing gives me cause for concern: M. le Maire is also M. le Docteur. I hope he's good at changing hats.

One of the things I really like about working for the Stephen Joseph Theatre is that we are playing in repertoire, which means that sometimes, quite randomly, we get time off. Actors normally do 8 shows a week and work six days out of seven (panto season is the exception, over Christmas it's not unusual to do 20 shows and work eight days per week. I'm exaggerating less than you think) so a three day weekend is a rarity and a delight.

How delighted was I to discover I had one of these coming up on August 5th! Ladies and Gentlemen, I have taken a double dose of carbon footprint denial and booked my flight home early Friday morning.

I am going to catch up with the excellent work Paul has been doing in my absence. I'm not expecting that much will have moved on as I know that Paul took Nikki and family to the UK for their holidays (lucky them!) but I know that he has stripped back the crappy wood round the windows and re-pointed:

He's also stripped back the rotten flooring in the attic. The good pieces to be recycled as oak shelving, rotten pieces to be stored in my sentry box and burnt on my woodburner. When I get it. The floor joists appear to be in excellent condition but he's given them 3 coats of xylophene just in case any future nasties get any bright ideas about coming to stay.

My bathroom will hopefully be finished, I may have a new floor in the attic and best of all, I get to see the father of my baby and decide what colour to paint the nursery.

Baby??? Nursery???

Sorry, rather sprung that one on you from nowhere, didn't I? More later, I've got a show to open...

BLAME IT ON BIZET

Rehearsing a full-scale opera in 4 weeks, with 12 actors is no mean feat.

We’re singing. We’re acting. We’re fighting. We’re dancing. When we’re not on stage, we’re with the musical genius that is Richard Atkinson, augmenting his piano gymnastics with French horn, flute, soprano sax and clarinet. We’re jumping in and out of costumes as we change character literally at the drop of a hat. The costume changes have a plot of their own that scares me with its complexity.

All I can say is that it’s lucky for the Netherlands that the man responsible for this military operation is too busy trying to run Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre to cast his eyes eastward over the sea. If his ambition were world domination rather than bums on seats, the Dutch would have reason to be very afraid.

Unfortunately, we are a cast member down. One of our number has been hospitalised with a debilitating infection that is going to take her out of action for a few weeks yet. A temporary replacement has been drafted in. As we approach the end of our final week of rehearsals, our focus will be split between teaching her what has taken us four weeks to put together; and still trying to get it bloody right ourselves!

Luckily most people are pretty on it. One of our number, who shall remain nameless, is struggling. We go back over their musical lines with alarming regularity whilst they plaintively profess bafflement at why it’s “not going in”.

As this person's a mate, I take them aside and gently suggest that the reason that it’s “not going in” is that they don’t do any private study and spend too much time in the pub. Probably a bit too much truth for a Tuesday afternoon. Better blame it on Bizet! What was he thinking, changing key like that??

So despite naughty naughty Bizet (darn him!) and his confoundedly complicated music, we are opening the show a week today. Our sub doesn't arrive until tomorrow, so the probability of us being able to run the show in its entirety before the dress rehearsal is hovering somewhere around zero. Luckily, my personal circumstances preclude any serious drinking so I have been able to prioritise my work; and as my responsibility in this show is comparatively light, I am preparing to sit back and watch the fun.

Bring on the Bizet!