I just looked out the window as I heard the rain pelting down on the lantern lights of the extension and it feels like better weather can’t come soon enough. The chickens are in their shelter, clucking and moaning and hoping I bring them a treat to make up for the miserable weather; the cats are all in the house having snoozes; the dogs are hiding out in their little house in the garden trying not to get wet.
I know it’s good for the garden but when it rains here in the Seven Valleys in Pas-de-Calais, it really rains and it can be for days on end.
When we first moved here the drive way was grass and, after we’d driven the van on it a few times, it was mud. We came out one weekend and it rained non–stop, when it was time to go home we got completely and utterly stuck in the mud in the front garden. We didn’t have a tractor at that time, it was 8.00 pm at night, way too nasty and late to knock on the neighbours’ door and ask for a tow so we had to change our Eurotunnel booking to the early hours of the morning and hope that we could drive out then.
Around 10.00 pm I had a brain wave, we should pour some cement powder in front of the wheels and behind – by the morning it would harden and we could drive the van out. It was a really strange idea and I thought the other half would ignore it and call me an idiot, but we were so worried that we wouldn’t be able to make the early morning train and not get to work – he went for it.
Out we went, cold, wet and fed up, clutching torches and with a couple of bags of cement at the ready, we poured carefully and left it to fate.
Morning came – still raining.
Off the other half went to try his luck, I could hear the wheels turning like crazy, him swearing and then suddenly it went quiet and the van appeared outside the front gate – we were out!
The thing with living in the country when you’re used to living in a city is – you have to adapt and be open to trying new things – of course if the rain had washed the cement the wrong way and the wheels had been left in concrete boots I’d never have heard the end of it!
