Towards the sunshine of southern France

On my early retirement, besides the preoccupation with house and garden in London and my sporadic work on the drawing board for my friend Pamela, I was preparing the scheme of rebuilding some ruins in the south of France. This was the final pull towards the SUNSHINE.

To illustrate a rather long way to it, I have to go back again to Andrew's childhood. We were told by his teacher that it was essential to accustom him with the water, as till now we tolerated him to emerge from the children's pool with his trunks dry. This had to change the next year when the boys would be taken to Crystal Palace. So Staszek decided to go to the Mediterranean Sea. He bought a tent and camping equipment and set up camp at Port Grimaud. Few days leer I received a telegram: "Come and change me, I am dying." I was of course very worried, hesitating about what to do, when the following day another telegram arrived with instructions to take a train to les Arcs in Provence. I arranged an emergency leave from the office and with trembling heart set off to my unknown destination.

At les Arcs my husband was waiting with a broad smile, looking well. He explained the cause of alarm. Camping by the sea, he felt like dying from an heart attack with great pain, so he decided to take Andrew to people in Callian whose address he had from Isabelle, my companion to the Ile du Levant: "Photo Wenona, Place de la Mairie". Just before arriving there in mid day, Andrew fell sick. At Wenona he was put on a bed with dogs and cats of the hosts and Staszek was ordered to go and bring to them his camping stuff. He did so in agony and in the evening he put up the tent on the grounds of a tiny cottage of Jolanda and Wlad on the outskirts of the village. To his great relief the next morning his heart was beating normally and he did feel no more pain. A miracle, he thought, and was enlightened that the area was known for its cardiac advantage. It was too late to cancel the telegrams and we were pleased to have one week together. The area was fabulous, with the pre-alps rising to the north and the massif de l'Esterel to the south. The air was saturated with the scent of various herbs of Provence, of thyme, rosemary, sarriette, marjolaine etc. and the azure of the sky was slightly powdered by the intense glare of the sun.

For the pure azure one has to be here in the winter" we were told by Wlad. Next door to Wenona was a farm with its peach orchard touching our fence. Naturally, Staszek made friends with the farmer and we were having a mountain of peaches for breakfast.

The great attraction of the area was lac St. Cassien, an artificial lake created some twenty years earlier, after the tragic dam burst of Fréjus in 1959 when 430 people lost their lives. There Andrew learned swimming and to me it was a paradise, equal to Lake Victoria without bilharzia and crocodiles. For the next few years our summer holidays were spent by that lake with my husband driving there at the beginning of school holidays and me replacing him two weeks later arriving by the morning train in Cannes. After a day on the beach, Staszek was taking the train with my return ticket to London and I was driving with Andrew in his car to Wenona. Staszek had a gift in making friends and during his days by the lake he made acquaintances with charming mothers and their children, from whom Andrew started to learn French.

Following the steps of Staszek I received invitations to different local houses. The first one will remain memorable. On arriving for lunch at a retired colonel's domain, I was surprised by his unusually elaborate etiquette; "why" I asked?. "I am paying the debt of Napoleon" was his answer, explaining the unofficial legacy the Emperor left to high ranking officers of his army. He assured me that I should feel at home in France, which pleased me enormously as it reminded me of a book I read in my childhood under the title "The two Patrimonies", referring to France and Poland. Dear Colonel, he was our guide in the beginning of putting our roots into the rocky ground of Callian, but unfortunately he died few years later.

Our hosts Jolanda and Wlad were extremely colorful figures in the village. She was painting naive pictures with cats and ladders in the foreground, also a writer and teacher of French to newcomers from Africa, as well as general advisor in any problem of today, with commanding posture and authoritarian looks. He was contrastingly different, small, skinny and almost bald, he was running a photographic studio next to his wife's atelier, all within the Callian castle fore court. In the evening they returned to their Wenona, where we shared often our dinners and listened to Jolanda's tales about life before and after the First World War. She was a sort of French suffragette and very active in the film world of the twenties. Staszek was a bit skeptical with regard to the truthfulness of her stories, but I was taken by her vision.

Her way of life was unorthodox and their house was far from normal. The walls and all furniture were covered with colorful images of abstract floral forms. The floor was occasionally swept with a broom held by her toes, because due to numerous cancer operations to her stomach she was unable to bend easily. Her culinary skills were extraordinary and very original, like her poetry. I still have one of her recipes "poulet à la provencale, Yolande". One of her friends was Christian Dior, who lived in neighboring Montauroux. According to her, the famous "new look" created by him in the fifties was for her, to cover the varicose veins which disturbed her. She claimed even to have known Georges Clémenceau, prime minister of France during world war I.

After fabulous years in Paris she came to Provence with her husband to live simply in a modest "bergerie", a gift from her lesbian friend in the early thirties. The couple existed on an absolute minimum of income, since Wlad did not settle properly his demobilization papers from the R.A.F., after the Second World War. The photo studio was not very profitable and what was left after paying the rent was spent on their beloved pets. Jolanda had discovered her passion for painting earlier in Paris, where she earned a living from grooming the cats and dogs of the district in their formerly luxurious apartment. Now, in Provence, she participated in various art exhibitions held during the summer along the Mediterranean coast and I enjoyed to be her driver.

In Wenona a pleasant harmony prevailed between our hosts and my boys and Jolanda marked the outline of foundations for a future house for us in a corner of her "prairie". She was adoring Staszek's courteous attention, paraded gladly on his arm throughout the "Fête du Village" of the patron saint and made him invite her to dance.

Then in summer of 1972 my husband telephoned, asking me to come two days earlier. He could not bear any longer the hospitality of Wenona and Jolanda's capricious temper. He decided to have something of our own in this healthy locality. It was not a surprise to me, as there had been frequent cases in our house in London, when Staszek after weeks of most charming hospitality on his part, brought tears to the eyes of various lady guests, by changing into an impolite macho. The builder working on the roof of Wenona took us on a day trip to look at various sites, but nothing was appealing to us until we came at sunset to the ruins of a Bergerie a sheep barn in the woods of the rising slopes above the village of Callian. It was so picturesque that I was dancing among the trees, drunk with the beauty of the surroundings. The next day my husband returned to London and over the telephone bought the ruins, arranging the payment through friends on the Continent.

Well, it was charming, but so overgrown with ivy that it was not possible to put up our tent there and we continued to camp at Wenona, spending early mornings before breakfast, clearing the site to have a patch ready for the tent. In the meantime we were sharing the life with Jolanda and Wlad, swimming in the lake almost daily and making excursions into the surroundings.

Jolanda's pictures started selling like hot cakes, especially in the gallery of Juliette in Flayosc, where she was feeding the local clientele in a tastefully arranged restaurant on the ground floor, before directing them to the exhibition rooms on upper levels. She was very successful in selling her collection, but she did not pay Jolanda, which I did not understand, not being aware of their lesbian tendencies. Juliette was regularly delivering painting materials to the studio of Jolanda, leaving it with an armful of "primitives".

It came to a dramatic end when cancer took the final hold on Jolande and on one arrival at Wenona we found her in Grasse hospital. She was still a fighter and very much alert. On my frequent visits, bringing her the mail, she asked me to read Polish letters, waiting impatiently for one from the Wavel Castle Museum in Krakow. She had sent for verification the photograph of an old armour, presumably of fourteenth century King Louis the Great of Hungary, later also King of Poland, now in the museum of Draguignan. When the answer arrived she was very disappointed to hear that it was an ornamental one from the end of the eighteenth century. I heard her whisper: "Oh, Poles, they are only experts in sausages and vodka". Not very tactful, I thought, but she had been desperate to solve the myth of Louis in Provence, who to revenge the death of his brother Andrew in Naples, was in pursuit of Andrew's wife, beautiful Joanne, Queen of Jerusalem, Naples and Grand Duchesse of Provence, who was hurrying to Avignon for the Pope's forgiveness. When Louis was ravaging near Draguignan and heard of the plague in the area, he supposedly dropped off his armour and galloped away in his underwear. Jolanda was convinced of the authenticity of the story and had sent Wlad, the photographer, to take the picture in the museum.

She died shortly after and Wlad brought the sad news, followed by Juliette, consoling him. Soon after came the mayor of the village with his wife to pay their condolences to an old friend. They took me aside and asked for a way to liberate Wlad from the strange power of Juliette over him. Andrew, then 12 years old, was listening and spontaneously said: "She is like somebody who takes the last penny from a blind man's box." This proved to be prophetic, because few years later she took possession of whole Wenona, proving in court that for years she was supporting the couple. She had also to dispose of her rival Dorothy, a gifted painter who had occupied for years a little annex and, after the death of Jolanda, considered herself the successor.

It was a very sad time for Wlad who developed strong Parkinson symptoms. Upon one of our arrivals, we had the shock of finding him in an empty room, moaning on a narrow dirty bed in the middle of a vermin covered floor. With tears he begged me to bring back his big matrimonial bed from Jolanda's studio, if Dorothy did not take it together with all their possessions to London. He was having a local nurse visiting him twice a week, but he needed constant supervision, as with his trembling hands he could not fill even a glass of water not talking about cooked meals. Andrew was a great help in getting the bed through the window and recovering some broken pieces of furniture. Few months later, Dorothy managed to place Wlad in a hospital and cleared the place, then disappeared. The house was intended to become an Art Gallery and museum of Jolanda, but after Wlad's death in the late seventies, Juliette sold it and only a little board bears the name of its previous owner.

Some ten years later Staszek and myself made a trip to Flayosc, determined to find Juliette. She was almost unrecognizable, looking poor and ill, without her previous glamor. But part of her modest house was devoted to Jolanda, a shrine almost. She admired her and wanted to write a book about Jolanda.

When our site was more accessible we started camping there, improvising the cooking area in the ruins. Our bathroom was the lake, some 7km away and going there we were equipped with bowls and buckets, not to pollute the lake with soap. It was great fun, but did not last long. One day upon return from the lake, we found on our site a few policemen who refused us the permission of camping. Apparently our site was on the edge of the area designated to be a protective belt against fires, which every summer engulfed many wooded parts of Provence. It meant: no camping, no cooking, no smoking and no wandering around during the night. It was a real blow to us and we had to take our tent back to friends in the village for the next few nights before returning to London. So, there was no other solution than to rebuild the ruins of "la Bergerie" if we wanted to keep the site, or to sell it.

The following summer we risked to camp on our site, but we put up the little tent between ruined walls, absolutely invisible from outside. I was clearing the wilderness around the stone walls to take the measurements of the building. It was a laborious job of eliminating the entanglement of spiky undergrowth between the rocks, including cutting some trees and avoiding deep crevices.

With my survey not too precise to the last centimeter I started to recreate on paper the original sheep barn in order to obtain a building permit from Toulon. A few years later, after overthrowing all "buts" of the building department, like too small site (minimum required were 5000 square meters and the signature of a French architect, because AR.B.A. was not recognized in France, the permit arrived in the spring of 1984. So, in the summer, still camping in hiding, we were looking for builders, comparing their estimates and counting our resources. My redundancy money was the base of the enterprise and construction was to commence in October. I spent a lot of time with the chosen builder, of Italian origin like most of them in the area, discussing the selection of materials and settling matters with the Mairie. Mr. Albino was a person of strong character, giving the impression that nothing could be an obstacle on his way. Looking at a protruding rock in a corner of the ruins he would shrug his shoulders saying "don't worry, I shall deal with it". After settling the matters of the Bergerie single handed, because my husband became inactive under the extreme heat of the summer months, I returned to the lake, where in our favorite corner in a little bay among rocks and heather, I was meeting Andrew and his companions.

One lady which we had been meeting for years was intrigued by the story of our future habitat. When I said I would come at the end of October to supervise the construction, she asked: "Where are you going to live?" "Under the tent" I answered. After a pause she said: "No, you are going to stay with me". Was I hearing correctly? "Madame, you do not know me, even my name, and I do not know yours". "I am called Charlotte and observing you and your son's behavior at the lake for the last few years is the best reference for my offer". She added that in late autumn there would be much colder weather, and that sleeping under a the tent was out of question, very difficult to imagine in the summer heat. So, after All Saints' Day I arrived at Charlotte's villa a few kilometers away from the Bergerie and spent there two wonderful months.

My "year in Provence" started and I still do not know when it will finish. It was the beginning of a great adventure, taking me to a new way of living and a world of unknown dimensions. After a simple early French breakfast I was arriving on the site almost to the minute with Albino and his team, working parallel but much slower with them on clearing the site, as this was not included in the overall cost estimate. The area designated to contain the septic tank was wildly overgrown and there was a lot of digging, chopping and burning. I joked of being a colonizer, working in the jungle. At midday the workers had two hours break and went home for lunch, while I stayed on the site till the evening.

Our terrain was in the shape of a triangle with the ruin against one side, its rear wall the boundary with the neighboring terrace of olive trees, about 2 meters higher. What remained of the original Bergerie were two thirds of the building, consisting of about one meter high remnants of the walls. We decided to rebuild a single stored portion of about eight by seven meters and to delay the future two stored part up to the window sills for future development. The site was sloping down southward, there were only 1400 square meters of land and I could not determine the limits, as it was impenetrable in places.

Albino had set up the site two weeks before my arrival and it gave the impression of an imposing project, with its enormous crane in front. I noticed certain discrepancies between the approved drawings and his work. The floor slab was definitely higher than on the drawings and to my question he explained that this was due to the hard rock in the corner. It was not possible to flatten it without the use of dynamite which in turn would have reduced the rest of the ruins to rubble. The only solution was to raise the floor, with which the Council would agree, judging from his experience. Another dispute was over a concrete block wall that he agreed with my husband to erect in front of the original retaining wall in stone, with a void between for ventilation and drainage. My wish was to have at least part of that beautiful wall exposed, but at the time of my arrival, the block wall was already built. When I asked shyly for a few openings, like windows to be cut in this structure, Albino looked at me, then at the wall, scratched his head and declared that he was ready to pull it down, use it in the cesspit at no extra cost, assuring that with the existing stone wall we should not have any trouble with humidity (it turned out to be a mistake). The demolition was carried out immediately, leaving only about half a meter of a plinth like wall with a gutter behind. Both of us were standing in front of the eight meters of magnificent ancient masonry and contemplating the different shades of pink, cream, white and grey.

At times we exchanged bitter arguments with regard to various details and I had difficulty to accept his ignorance of British building standards. For him a damp proof course was not necessary for stone wall rising from rock foundations, neither a ventilated lobby in front of a bathroom. I had to give in many cases. But he was very strong, quick and his team was efficient, quickly placing a mono pitch roof over the extended stone walls. It was fascinating to watch the resurrection of a distant past, as I tried to keep as much as possible to the original character.

The major innovation was the terrace along the building, caused by the risen floor inside. It was not included in the drawings nor in the estimate. So I decided to build it myself, saving only the money for final paving to be done by Albino. The over ten meters long and almost meter and a half high wall to the terrace required a lot of stones and I cleared our site, the neighboring woods and leftovers of the builder's supply, by carting stones on wheelbarrows to my project. For heavy boulders I used the ancient Egyptian lever method, rolling the blocks with wooden poles on appropriate fulcrums. Placing the stones on an ever higher level, as the wall grew, was even a greater problem, requiring a lot of acrobatics and perseverance. Antoine, one of my neighbors, came with a plum line, joking about my hazardous construction, but he did not discourage me, and when I uncovered an adjoining ancient wall which beautifully matched the one I had built, it gave me the feeling of complete acceptance.

A strong dispute arose at the time of reaching the roof level. Albino made caves consisting of three tile courses, while I had read the rural buildings feature only two. "Why are you making a castello out of the Bergerie, Albino?" He laughed, then nodded with conviction "with the terrace in front the Bergerie upgraded itself", he said, and that was it. Then arose the problem of security. Neither of us wanted a balustrade and I accepted his suggestion of a row of big pots from the local pottery which I planted with geraniums. The real quarrel came on the matter of roof gutter when he categorically refused to fix one. "Never in a Bergerie" he shouted. "The rain is falling directly from the roof to the ground, this is the tradition!" "But now we have the terrace" I said, to which he retorted "we will protect it". After lunch break he brought a big drum of silicone and sprayed the terrace paving and the lower stone wall generously. It was spectacular to watch a curtain of water cascading onto the terrace, splashing the wall, while I was trying to catch as much as possible in various vessels and bowls. Years later my cousin from Poland, while holidaying with us, installed a plastic gutter blending in color with the stones. At both ends we put big barrels supplied by the builder and since then I have always a supply of water, much needed in the dry summer.

Albino finished working before Christmas and we made an "arrosage" of the Bergerie with Pastis and bottles of wine in the company of our neighbors, Albino with his team and a few new friends. On final inspection, I pointed out many unfinished parts of the interior, to which his answer was "it is up to the plasterer". I had the uneasy feeling that this would be my predicament, because all our resources were exhausted. Encouragement came from Pamela the painter, who pointed at Albino and said: "Look at this gorilla, if he can do it, so can you"! We all laughed and celebrated the festive opening of the empty shell of a "Bergerie reborn".

During the two months of site works I had also a very interesting time at Charlotte's. She was living alone, in a not very attractive, but tastefully furnished, modern concrete villa. After a day on site, mainly clearing an area for the cesspit and levelling the embankment for the kitchen access, all jobs not covered by the builder's estimate, I was returning to her house. The quick shower was followed by a simple snack in the kitchen and then I joined Charlotte in her living room, usually bent over a jigsaw puzzle. Or we watched the news on TV and for an hour after I listened with my limited knowledge of French to her interesting monologue, learning by my unobtrusive audience. In her early childhood she remembered a visit with her father, an official on the local water board, to the bishop of Toulouse, where during lunch he lamented over the drying out of the holy spring in Lourdes, hoping for a miracle.

During the war she was driving all over on secret missions, then fell in love, married and established her home in a monastic chapter house not far from Paris. Due to ill health of her husband she sold this residence and moved to Provence. Out of four children only one son Patrick was in the neighboring town, visiting her with a young son. Reflecting on my recent time I felt a growing bond to her. She was a fascinating person, a walking encyclopaedia and great connoisseur of the region. She had many hobbies and was surrounded by books on different subjects.

Being a member of a few clubs I was taking part in some of their activities, like basket weaving or the popular randonnées, long cross country walks. After arriving by car at a designated point, we used to walk for several hours through beautiful scenery, hilly countryside with trees in blazing autumn colors., or under ever green oaks and a brilliant blue sky, with glimpses of snowy high Alps in the distance - sublime! The group consisted of over a dozen participants, some newcomers like me, interested in assimilating themselves with the locality, the others for the sake of walking. We covered many kilometers of mountain paths, crossed many streams and visited many old road side chapels or crumbling country chateaux, which in the past were simple rectangular two-stored blocks with rounded towers.

Charlotte liked driving fast and she took me on a number of fantastic excursions. We covered most of the mountains above Nice, driving through magnificent gorges along gushing rivers, with spectacular villages perched high above on the rocks. There were still polite policemen with white gloves directing traffic at typical village bottle necks, such as in St Martin-Vesubie. We followed the river Var upstream, passing through the fortified town of Entreveaux, its castle on the cliff being reached via 17 gates, continued through the gorges of Daluis with its incredible Permian red rock formation, further up climbed to over 2000m at the Col de Champ, to descend to the fortress of Colmar les Alpes built by Vauban in the Verdon valley. On the way, Charlotte gave the names of snow covered peaks in the distance and related the history of various places.

More than in history, she was most interested in esoteric beliefs and religious myths. We went to secretive places fallen into ruins through the centuries, like abandoned Cistercian Abbeys, Templers' chapels between Fréjus and Castellane, or our favorite ruins of Valnaque on a hill opposite of Callian.

This-Roman fortress later became an important centre of the order of the Templars till its abolition by Pope Clement V (1312) under pressure of the French King Philippe le Bel. There was a strange feeling of being watched in the abandoned streets, the church without a roof but a fine apse, the town walls and the impressive Roman tower, all now entangled with wild vegetation, with oak trees growing out of the debris. I found a book entitled "Zig-zags à travers la Provence " of 1937 with a whole page devoted to Valnaque. At the end, the hope was expressed that one day somebody would resurrect the town with all its historic treasures., I tried to make a survey of the site, but it was impossible because of the wilderness.

Then one day, I thought the right person appeared in the area. It was agent 007, Sean Connery, who bought the neighboring Chateau Bush, intending to create there a golf course. He should recognize the greater cause of Valnasque, but I could not interest him in the project before he sold the property, having met too much opposition to his project. As I write these lines in 2003 a German internet millionaire is building a double golf course with 36 holes, five-star hotel and luxury villas in the same area. But Valnasque keeps waiting.

Charlotte also was a great connoisseur of the fruits of the forest, such as mushrooms, wild raspberries, strawberries and the like. With her knowledge of the area we had our baskets full in no time and because she kept a strict slimming diet most of these delicious things were mine. On weekends Charlotte showed great skill in French cooking, but with my little interest in food I remember only little quails with a plum inside, or a very tasty fowl cooked in the middle of cabbage with olives and herbs. My departure to London was marked by a wonderful meal of oysters and champagne.

I left at 6 am the next morning with a huge bunch of mimosa in buds and very pleasant memories of the last two months. Driving on the 23rd of December was not relaxing, the whole of France was on the roads. With some delay, I reached Paris and was stuck in traffic along the Champs Elysées, giving me a chance to admire the Christmas illuminations. The trees along the street were glaring with countless white lights, around the Arc de Triomphe hundreds of cars looked like stranded, inching their way, the drivers exchanging polite remarks and seasonal greetings. It took quite a long time before I turned into boulevard Wagram, found a parking place and rang the bell at my cousin's door. The following day I was home in time to prepare traditional Wigilia in the evening, going later to Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral.

During the winter I joined evening classes to improve my French, needed in dealings while rebuilding the Bergerie. My husband gave me a free hand in the Provencal affair, himself being satisfied with looking after Doozes. Andrew was leading an independent life as a student.

Just before Whit-Sunday I returned south and on arriving at Charlotte's place found her packing the car for a few days trip to the Midi. I joined her on the spot, leaving my car unpacked in the garage and we drove west. As I did not know this part of France it was an excellent opportunity, and many places remain vivid in my memory. Because of the weekend holiday it was difficult to find a hotel, eventually we found a vacancy in an old fashioned hotel in Carpentras. It was a good center for excursions in all directions and we stopped whenever some building or landscape attracted us. One of the most impressive was the village of Bories near Gordes. In Neolithic times this area of about eight square kilometers was covered by miles of stone walls, enclosing fields and hundreds of small habitations built in dry stone construction in the shape of bee hives. Borie, the word comes from the Latin boria, meaning a shed for bullocks. In recent years over twenty buildings were rebuilt with great care of showing the construction details, water proofing, lighting and adaptation of interiors to human requirements. The austere character of the place intrigued me, as it is known to have been inhabited till the second half of the 19th century. Similar structures could be found all over the Mediterranean basin and as far away as Ireland or Scotland.

More progressive was Vaison la Romaine, not fart from magnificent Orange. Here the Romans lived with the Celtic people on opposite banks of the river Ouvèze, embellishing the town with splendid buildings. Wandering through it two thousand years later I had a rather sad feeling of faded marble glory, crumbling and neglected.

I had a very different emotion upon arriving at the Fontaine de Vaucluse where out of a grotto below a cliff, a forceful spring emerges, creating the river Sorgue. Because of its greatly varying flow rate (from 5 to 150 m3 per second) mystic stories exist, supposing the water to start in the Arctic, passing underground through Europe. Few years ago the French explorer Jacques Cousteau dived with his team and swam upward, but he had to abandon after a few hundred meters.

Another marvel of the area is Mont Ventoux, rising to 1909m over a rather flat surrounding. It had been climbed by Petrarca and when we reached the summit it was covered with nearly one meter of snow, with a strong wind blowing. See view to the North towards massif des Ecrins first climbed by ????. It was extremely cold and after a brief stroll we descended slowly through the wooded slopes south, towards the Luberon and visited the Cistercian Abbey of Senanque founded in 1148, before heading home.

I was anxious to see the Bergerie and facing it again, I had a mixed feeling of pleasure and disappointment. It looked nice from the outside with its traditional stone masonry and red tile roof, but inside it was very sad. A barrel was standing in the middle of a puddle of water and from the rear wall meter long weeds climbed forward. Last December everything looked better in candle light, while now with the sun pouring in through all openings one could easily see a number of faults and I realized what enormous amount of work was to be done before the house would receive the approval of Staszek.

To start, I engaged professional plasterers to cover the ceiling and watching their swift work I calculated the amount of time required for the walls and asked them to give me a trial run over a small wall in the bathroom. After the workers left, I started to continue on my own. Now I can laugh about it, but a the time it was frightening. The mixture of dry powder and water prescribed by Albino did not want to stick to the walls. Then I threw the plaster with greater force onto the wetted walls with greater success. The heaps of fallen plaster I gathered back on the trowel and I filled holes and gaps at window sills and unfinished portions of the wall with it. It turned into a game like playing with plasticine and when my rubber gloves disintegrated I was working with bare hands. I wanted to have a textured surface, to be more rustic, so I was using all sorts of kitchen utensils and broken glass to achieve it.

Soon after starting the plastering my nearest neighbor, Leslie, came for a visit and looking at the miserable state of the walls and myself he said mockingly: "Irene, you will be the laughing stock of the area plastering the house by yourself". I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and answered abruptly: "I cannot stop you laughing, but laugh, , Leslie, laugh!" and carried on with my work. It was very hot that June, or I was not yet used to it. So I was working behind closed shutters, opening them after the sun set only. When half of the space was done I scraped the floor, removed the barrel and installed an old settee, which Liz had kept for me and moved to the Bergerie after a few weeks with Charlotte and one with Liz and Leslie. He came again, this time to say "good bye" before going to a hospital for observation. The astonishment in his face was most rewarding. "Is it all done by you?" To my nodding he added "but it looks perfect and quite professional!" I could not expect any more and kissed him on both cheeks.

I slept with all windows and doors open for ventilation and for the pleasure of being close to the surrounding woods, stars and space. In early morning I was woken up by an old Spaniel licking my face, which became a sort of ritual for some time. The dog belonged to the guardian of a newly constructed water reservoir known as chateau d'eau, from which we were first to benefit thanks to the altitude.

The next priority was to patch up the existing stone walls, which according to Albino would -disintegrate if left unrepaired. He explained the gradual application of cement mortar, replacing the old chalk, removing debris, roots and moss. Albino was finishing the septic tank with all the chambers required by local by-laws. The lowest corner of the site was raised by filling it with six lorries full of material, then polythene sheets were spread over to contain the water below a final layer of top soil. However, Albino stated that this was not provided for in the cost estimate and that it was up to me to engage a gardener, adding that the site should receive at least 15cm of soil. After checking my budget I ordered a lorry load of soil from a local firm, but when it was unloaded it looked more like builder`s debris than earth. There were lumps of blue clay, broken bricks and china, but also a few roots of irises. Most of the summer passed with wheeling in precious earth collected from any place on our site and in the neighboring woods. The participation of our guests was very appreciated.

The final touch was my construction of a life size sheep, modelled over a skeleton of scrap metal with surplus plaster. This was to please Staszek who wanted a symbol of Bergerie to be displayed on an oak tree. Also I had to provide a mailbox for our postman, who had reluctantly accepted our address "under the tent" and a plastic bucket suspended from a tree to receive our mail. He urged me to buy one of the various letter boxes shown in his prospects, but I said: "Wait, next year I will build you a special one". This is how my letter box "à la provençale" came into being.

Created on ... September 27, 2003 by Pierre Ratcliffe