Course Landaise and bullfighting.

Contrary to what many people think bullfighting is very popular in this area and is exactly the same as in Spain where the bull is killed. Many of the towns in the area have several bull fights during the course of their annual fete.
However les Landes is famous for the course Landaise which is a much milder version of bullfighting in its most simplistic explanation.
There are teams of men who are divided into "handlers", "dodgers" (ecarteurs)and "jumpers" (sauteurs)(my translation) During the season points are awarded and the top team along with the top dodger and top handler are awarded the championship. Cows, as opposed to bulls, are used and it seems that the more courses that they go to the more crafty they get! A cow, with a rope attached to its horns, is released into the ring and manoeuvered into position at side of the ring. Then the dodger places himself in the middle of the ring and encourages the cow to charge him. At the very last moment he turns away from the cow as she continues her charge across the ring. Similarly the jumper encourages the cow to charge him and then as she reaches him he jumps over the cow. A very simple explanation but I hope that I have given you some idea of what happens. Occasionally there are also courses without the rope which of course are much more dangerous for those participating. Several courses are on each weekend and many people follow them avidly, a real passion of les Landes.

Christine and David's visit.

One of my oldest friends, Christine, and her husband David arrived on the 31st May for 10 days. Christine and I have known each other since we were 16 so we have a lot of shared memories! They had driven down from Yorkshire to Poole to catch the ferry and then down here, having a night in the Loire on the way down. N is feeling much better now but still not 100%. Once again our visitors were to be somewhat disappointed with the weather but we still managed to get out and about quite a lot and also have some lazy time in the garden when the sun shone. I went down to Pau for the day with them they had a day at Capbreton (by the sea) when amazingly the sun shone. The dogs had more walks than usual as C and D like walking and exploring the local area. On their last day we all went out for lunch to the Hotel du Commerce in Estang which is about 15 miles away. It was recommended to me by a friend of our Dutch friend Nelleke and is indeed very good. I had taken N's parents there, when he was in hospital, and they too were very impressed with it. It's a nice drive there, through the vineyards of Armagnac, and they provide a very good 4 course lunch for 11euros 50. They left early the next morning, before we were awake, to make the long journey back to Yorkshire. If you read this Christine I am really missing you and the help you gave me, it is quite difficult having to empty the dishwasher again!!

Medical matters

Monday the 12th may was a bank holiday here (Pentecost)and N was very ill, he had been going downhill for some time and during the night he had agonising pains in his right side. I rang the duty doctor who asked us to go and see him immediately. When we got there he was very concerned and said that we should go to casualty straight away. He rang the hospital in Mont de Marsan and also wrote a letter for us to take in with us. It was very quiet in casualty and he was soon taken away to be examined. I waited for 3 hours and then it was decided that he should be admitted. The casualty department was very efficient and the waiting area was more like a hotel than a hospital. Comfy seating, lots of magazines and indoor plants. I don't understand why French hospitals don't have the disinfectant smell of English hospitals! I came back home to pack some things for him and then went back to find him in a very comfortable 2 bedded room with ensuite facilities. No other person in the other bed. He wasn't in the correct ward, pneumologie, as there was no room in there at that time. By the time I got there he had been settled in and was on a drip and feeling much more comfortable. He said that he was very happy to be there, that he felt safe there. Next afternoon he was moved to another 2 bedded room in the pneumologie ward. He shared the room with a man in his nineties who had a heart problem (don't know why he was in that ward!). A very pleasant chap who was very chatty and had loads of family visitors. Over the next few days N was seen by the doctor who prescribed the correct antibiotics for him and gave him many tests and x rays. I went in to see him every afternoon and he was soon feeling very much better. We had hoped that he may be able to come home on the Friday but there was some anomaly with the x-rays and they decided to keep him in for further tests. On the Saturday he was moved to a single bedded room which was very comfortable.
Sunday saw the arrival of N's parents, Peter and Thelma, at Bordeaux airport. I went up there to pick them up and we came back here via the hospital so that they were able to visit N. It was an easy drive up to the airport but it is much further than the trip I used to make up to Toulouse to pick up visitors. At least there was not the hell of the Toulouse ring road to cope with !!
Monday to Thursday I took Peter and Thelma out and about as well as visiting N in the late afternoon each day. A shame that the weather was not as it should be at this time of year, rain, rain and more rain with just the odd half day of sunshine when they could enjoy sitting out in the garden.
On Thursday Nigel came home. So good to have him back! He is much improved but obviously rather weak. We tried to impress upon him that he needs to take it easy for a while, not easy!!
Thelma and Peter left on the Monday after perhaps not the best of holidays for them with N being in hospital and the weather not behaving itself.
We visited Dr l'Heureux, N's consultant on the Tuesday. She is pretty sure that he has BOOP, bronchial obliterans organising pneumonia, and suggested that he may have to have a lung biopsy to confirm this. N was not happy about this and she said that she would be having a meeting with his hospital pneumologist to discuss his case and would keep us informed. She called the next day to say that they had decided that he should finish the course of steroids that he has been taking and then have a scan in a months time to see what was happening. So we now wait until the end of June and the next scan to see if we have a diagnosis. I think that we are very lucky to be here as the medical treatment is so good and efficient.

Bridge

On Saturday the 4rd May we had a bridge tournament for beginners at the club. In fact it is simultaneous and all bridge beginners in France compete at the same time. I have to admit that I find it quite scary! There were only 2 tables, 8 of us, at our club. I felt that I played better than I did at the first tournament but still didn't manage to be in the top 4. Never mind, once I had settled down I did enjoy it. Afterwards we had all taken food and after the obligatory aperitif we had a meal. Our other halves were invited for the evening but sadly Nigel wasn't well enough to come. It was good to meet the other students partners and to be together in a social situation as when we go to classes there is no time for chit chat. I got on very well with the wife of A, a local dentist, who is in my class. He is a very nice chap but not very chatty or outgoing, the complete opposite of his wife who was very chatty and with whom I got on very well. A long afternoon and evening as we played from 3pm to 6pm and I finally was one of the first to leave at 9.30pm.

April, early May.

The wet weather continued throughout the month but I managed to escape it and went back to Devon for 10 days. Less rain there but very cold and frosty, even had a blizzard!!
When I returned it was nice to walk round the garden and see what had happened whilst I was away. There are lots of Iris in the garden and now that they are coming into flower I am pleased to see that there are several different varieties and colours. We went to an open day at a nursery garden in Mont de Marsan, run by the handicapped. It was very impressive and they had a very good selection of shrubs and annuals. I bought some herbs for the garden as I was very short of them here only having fennel and a very old rosemary. By the end of the month the weather had changed and we were into hot, sunny days for a while. Suddenly the whole agricultural community seemed to wake up and within a few days vast areas of ground had been spread with manure, ploughed and seeded with maize. Lily and I went on an orchid walk arranged by the county. They have bought 8 hectares of land, on a steep, south facing escarpment, which has ideal conditions for the orchids. After many years of agricultural exploitation the area is now unfertilised and grazed by sheep at certain times of the year which is giving the orchids a chance to re-establish themselves. There are 40 types of orchid in les Landes and 30 of those are in the Tursan area where the site is situated. We saw about 5 different species one of which, serapia lingua, is growing in an abundant patch on our lawn!!
As I write, Monday 5th May, the rain is teeming down again after a very hot and sunny weekend. I am not complaining though as it will give ideal planting conditions for all the summer vegetable plants that I want to get planted out later this week.

March

It has been an extremely bad month, weatherwise. A few springlike days but an awful lot of rain. On speaking to local people it seems that this is not normal and we also hear that it has been very wet in Ariege as well. Some days we have had persistent rain and other days torrential downpours. Easter was early this year, the weekend of the 22nd, and it was cold,wet and miserable. On Easter Saturday we went to a vide grenier (car boot sale) in Geaune, not many stall holders there and they all looked fed up! We had a nice meal, though, in the Auberge there which cheered us up somewhat. Today, the 29th, the sun is shining and the sky is blue, what a change from the past few weeks. The garden is looking very green and no doubt will now spring into life after all the rain.

Hunters Lunch

Saturday the 1st of March we went to the "repas des chasseurs", the hunters lunch, in the village hall. The starting time was 12 noon but of course there were aperitifs to be had before we finally sat down to eat at 1.30pm. We counted the tables and chairs and there were almost 150 people there. It was of course a gargantuan meal. Soup for starters, then hunters platter with salad and pate. This was followed by "civet de sanglier" a stew made from wild boar, then roast sanglier and haricot beans. After a pause we had cheese and salad, then apple tart soaked in Armagnac. The whole meal took about 4 hours. We sat with Michel, our elderly neighbour from down the lane and a couple of his friends. This couple were very chatty, or at least she was!! It turned out that she renovated our house back in the 1960's before going on to renovate another house up the road. After that she renovated several houses in the Dordogne before moving to Biarritz and then back to Mont de Marsan. How can I put this delicately??!! From a distance she looked to be in her sixties but close up I would say she is nearer eighty, very well preserved, made up and dressed elegantly. I am not sure when her husband came into her life but in all the conversation we had about the house renovations he was not mentioned. No doubt I shall find out more in the fullness of time as she asked if she could call in at some time and have a look at the house as it is now.