Vide Grenier in Castandet.

Most villages hold a vide grenier each year, they are a cross between a car boot sale and a jumble sale, and are held as a fund raising activity for the village. We usually go to one each week as it gives us an opportunity to see surrounding villages as well as the chance to look for bargains! They start at 8am - we are never there that early!- and continue until 5pm and quite often a cheap lunch is served which makes the whole day a social occasion as well as a commercial one.

This year we decided that we would have a table at the Castandet vide grenier and try and sell some of our valuable rubbish as well as supporting the village. In truth we had nothing of great note to sell and most of the stuff was in a box in the attic. We packed the car on Saturday evening and set off at 7.30am to get to the village hall and unpack before 8am. There were places available both in the village hall and outside in the car park but we had opted to be inside as a table was provided and of course in the case of rain we could protect our valuable wares! It didn't take us long to unpack the car and take our things in to the hall where Nigel starte to unpack the and I went to park the car.
When I got back to the hall Nigel had unpacked most of the items and the early birds who were hoping to find a valuable worm had started looking around. We made our first sale very quickly - a euros worth of books- and then we settled down for a long wait before our next sale. We were fascinated by the couple who had the next table to ours, he was a large man who was selling a plant based hangover remedy and some BBQ tongs. I remarked that we had seen him at a similar event the previous week so I suspect he sets up his stall each week. I hope that it isn't his full time job as his things weren't exactly flying off his stall! He demonstrated how good his BBQ tongs were by grabbing a sausage shaped piece of wood and  flipping it over. Quite how it would work if one wasn't so practised and was trying to manipulate a greasy sausage I am not sure. Many people must have had the same thoughts as we did as he didn't make many sales in fact, to our knowledge, he only made a couple of sales of the tongs and none of the hangover cure.

Our friend Helene had a couple of tables adjacent to ours and she was one of the last to arrive accommpanied of course by the dreaded Florian! Helene does several vide greniers over the season and has some quite nice stuff to sell so her stall looked much more impressive than ours did. Florian was quite well behaved for a start but, I suppose understandably, deteriorated as the day went on. He kept disappearing and Helene kept worrying about where he was and what he was doing. Later in the day the inevitable happened and he rushed in holding up his trouser leg to show us the cut on his leg. I felt like asking why he hadn't done it earlier, it would have saved us the suspense of waiting most of the day for it to happen! After Helene had rushed him off to bathe the leg he then went into miserable mode and curled up under the table sobbing and whining for quite some time.

The morning dragged by but we were quite happy watching the potential customers pass by with only a cursory glance at our rubbish before passing on to hear the unending spiel of the BBq tong man. He and his equally large partener had settled into conversation with another large couple at the opposite table thereby effectively blocking our way out. Each time one of the other of us wanted to move away we had to go through the routine of asking them to move and let us escape. We took turns at leaving our post and wandering around the other vendors to see if we could spot any bargains. At lunchtime Nigel went and joined the long queue for a sausage sandwich, the demand for which was high, as the sausage grillers were having a problem keeping up with the customers.

At 2pm more eager bargain hunters started arriving for the afternoon session. I was detemined to try and get rid of some of our stuff so I wrote a poster saying that everything on the stall was priced at 2euros, 1 euro or 50 cents. Despite this generous offer not a lot more was sold although we did get rid of a large table lamp, for 2 euros, which took up a lot of space in the attic. Nigel of course thought that I had sold it for far less than it's value but he had to admit that it had certainly seen better days. Nigel's attitude to selling is far different to when he is buying when he makes ridiculously low offers but he was soon to meet his nemesis! He had 3 old leather belts with attractive buckles which he had had for many years and didn't use any more. He had sold one in the morning and the other 2 were on sale for the princely sum of 2 euros each. In mid afternoon a young woman, early 30's, dark hair and flashing eyes, saw these belts and tried one on around her waist. It was obviously too big but she slid it down to fit around her hips and posed whilst gazing coquettishly at Nigel! Suddenly the hard sell attitude vanished and he was putty in her hands. They went through the "are you eenglish" routine and in a mixture of basic French and English went on to the bargaining phase. He soon reduced the price to 3 euros for the 2 belts and she then started the "looking for change" routine which went on for some time. She eventually managed to scrape together 2 euros 80 and, with a winning smile, said would that be enough and of course he said yes. Oh dear, a pretty girl, a bit of flirting and he was virtually giving them away!! Helene and I were in stitches watching the whole routine but she went away happy and Nigel was happy with the attention that she had bestowed upon him!

I believe that that was our last sale and as 5pm approached we packed up most of what we had unpacked in the morning and said our goodbyes to Helene and our neighbouring stall holders. It had been an entertaining day if not a profitable one. I think that in the end we made a profit of about 2 euros after we had paid 6euros for the privilige of being there plus the cost of the sausage sandwiches, coffee and wine.

Next week we shall be back to being prospective purchasers and Nigel will be  back in hard bargaining mode.

When Sue and Peter came to stay.

My friend Sue, who I have known since we started grammar school in 1954, and her husband Peter visited us for a week at the beginning of September. They live in a beautiful part of the UK in the Cheshire Peak District and I stayed with them for a couple of days last year. Although we don't see a lot of each other we have always kept in touch by phone, letter and now e mail. Whenever we meet up it is as if it has only been a few days since we last saw each other and there is always lots of chat and laughter.
They had visited us several years ago when we were at Carol and I was now keen to show them around this part of France.
 Theu flew out from Manchester to Bordeaux and caught the train down to Mont de Marsan where I met them on the Thursday evening. On Friday, after a lazy morning and lunch I took them up to the pretty little town of La Bastide d'Armagnac. It is a very old, picturesque little place and one of the highlights is a drink at one of the oldest bistros in France which is hidden away in one of the narrow little alleyways.
http://www.saint-justin.eu/saint-justin_b07.php
The bistro Tortore is run by Colette Tortore who is now 78 years old and has been there all her life. It was started by her grandfmother in 1885 and has been in the family ever since. Sadly there is no-one else in the family to continue the tradition as Colette has never married. Colette was very pleased to chat to us and to show us her albums of photos and newspaper cuttings.

Sue and I on the train to Marqueze.

On Saturday we all went (Nigel as well) to the museum of Landaise life.http://www.landes-tourisme.info/marqueze-ecomusee-de-la-grande-lande-1157-a.html  This park in the middle of the forest displays the life and traditions of the area. Access is by an old train from the village of Sabres a rather rickety ride of 10 minutes. There are a number of different old landaise houses which have been carefully dismantled and reassembled in the park and are furnished as they would have been over a century ago. It was easy to spend a lot of time wandering around and taking in all the history before we caught the train back to the station at Sabres where we then went into the pavilion where there is an extremely interesting permanent exhibition of life in les landes over the past couple of centuries.
On Sunday morning we all went to the vide grenier at the nearby village of le Vignau. There were a lot of stallholders both inside and outside and we all had a good time hunting for bargains. Back home for lunch and the Sue, Peter and I went to visit the chateau de Ravignan which is about 10 kms away
http://www.armagnac-ravignan.com/eng/presentation.html  There was only the 3 of us and one couple with a small child and our guide was very friendly and chatty. After the tour the others left and we were treated to a visit to the cellars, where hundreds of thousands of euros worth of Armagnac is stored, and then to a taste of the wonderful stuff!

After lunch in Eugenie.

On Monday we went into Grenade, I picked up my paper and we sat and had a coffee and watched the world go by before going on to Eugenie les Bains for lunch.
http://www.ville-eugenie-les-bains.fr/

In the gardens at Eugenie.

After lunch we walked around the gardens and gazed at the expensive and well known hotel, Les Pres d'Eugenie which is run by the celebrated chef Michel Guerard. We would have to win the lottery to stay or dine there! On the way back home we called in to have a look at the Rugby chapel in Larriviere, always a stop on my guided tours of the area!
The weather had been a bit too warm over the last few days but on Monday night we had some welcome rain which continued until lunchtime on Tuesday.  After a relaxing morning at home we went to have a look around Mont de Marsan and once again sit outside at the table of a cafe and have a drink and watch the world go by.
Wednesday dawned damp and cloudy but it wasn't a problem as we had planned to go over to Marciac, meet up with Kate and Peter and have lunch on La Peniche, the boat that is moored on the lake there. However, before we were able to leave we had a bit of a drama. We had noticed over a period of several days that we had one or two hornets, each day, crawling on the sitting room floor. Luckily they were quite dazed and easy to kill. We couldn't understand where they were getting in as the windows are double glazed and the ceiling is insulated. Peter happened to notice, on the Wednesday morning, that there were a lot of hornets flying around and going into the chimney. The chimney has a liner and it seemed that they were nesting between the liner and the chimney. The fire was set so Nigel lit it in an attempt to smoke them out. It wasn't wholly successful as several fell down on to the hearth and Nigel and Peter were kept busy swatting them. As the fire died down we left to go to Marciac in the hopes that the house wasn't full of hornets when we returned!
We arrived in Marciac in time for a quick look around the market before joining Kate and Peter at La Peniche where we had a good lunch with lots of chatting.When we arrived back home the hornets were still buzzing around the chimney and Nigel wanted to light the fire again but I thought that more serious measures were called for. I popped across the road to ask Alain what we should do. Apparently now the fire brigade doesn't generally deal with this sort of thing but he said that I should call them and stress that the hornets were in the house and that I am allergic to their stings. I came back home and called them and convinced them that it was a dire emergency so the controller said that she would send someone round. Two volunteer firemen, a male and a female, arrived in half an hour and took stock of the situation. The male half of the duo donned his protective suit and his partner zipped him into it. He then climbed up his ladder and spent quite some time squirting some noxious substance into the chimney as well as spraying any hornets that were trying to get back to their nest. Before he left he said that there was a possibility that they may return as he hadn't been able to get in the chimney to destroy the nest and that if they did return to call them again and they would come back. Thankfully we have seen no sign of them since.
Not quite the entertainment one wants to provide for one's guests!
Next day we were up and about early as Sue and Peter had to catch the 8am train to Bordeaux at the start of their journey back home.