Whatever happened to January?

One step forward two steps back! Having been away for a while I am picking up our story before we left for Christmas. On the right is our house just before we flew off for the UK., the concrete sections are the septic tanks that will go under the house; that's right, UNDER! The men will hand dig the holes and sink the sections one at a time. Everything else is done, except windows which were fitted a day or so after these pictures.




Later you will see how things have changed.
But there were more little events to come before getting home and one involved an overdue afternoon off sitting beside the lake Huay Tung Tao, where essential activities include swimming (only one person allowed at a time, I'm sure that's what the sign said......), and eating fried fish!
The picture below is a Kingfisher. I still marvel that after 50+ years of never seeing one, I am seeing them all the time!
This one was fishing off the life guards chair for ages whilst we whiled away the afternoon.

The balloon festival came around again. I was interested to note that after all the balloons had flown off in a crowd, one last one came trailing along 20 minutes after the rest:

Good old BT, drifting along behind the others!

Next came the serious business of a staff jolly! Here's Lilly doing "broken ship" another fried fish experience worth waiting for.
We had been given most of the food by the "vegetable lady" who delivers most days to the Juniper Tree. Pee Mauw (or something that sounds v.similar) is a lovely lady who is always smiling and brings us the best stuff, without fail.

A rare sighting of Somsak, Head Gardener, out from under his straw hat and very nearly smiling with his wife Nagor and Phet one of the Cooks.

This time with his straw hat and along with the other men laying the new footpath to the houses. New wellies essential.

Every project needs to me managed, and John (Simon's Father) is doing a good job. He also build some very attractive brick enclosures for the electrical boxes along the road. These house the proper junction boxes and switches, which John kindly rewired too. If you remember the electrical fire from last year, you will know why this work was so vital!

Two last reminders of the old house! This house will now become our "Mary and Joseph" rooms: rooms to be used in an emergency but also will be adapted for disabled access, once funds are available.

Here I am moving house Juniper Tree style. Our meagre chattels are ready to go, such essentials as a Christmas tree, guitar and (notice in the foil packs) tea bags!!!
2 trucks full and we were ready to drive off to the airport and head for home!

We were somewhat delayed in getting going by a deluge which made the path a big dodgy. By the time we got to London we looked back on this rain with fondness!

Can you guess who was behind this experiment? After we met Richard and Andrea on the South Bank in London, we visited one of those German Markets that have sprung up in recent years. One lady was selling hot smoked salmon and new potatoes which were really good. She had sides of salmon tied to wooden planks, suspended over a smoking fire. Richard was convinced that we should try this out over Christmas, and here is the result! two halves of salmon  beautifully sliced with a Christmas cleaver), wired to two oak boards and standing over the BBQ a previous visitor donated to the French cause. The fire was covered in hickory smoking chips and the fish gently cooked and smoked in a half hour or so. De -licious!






You can see by now, that we have flown 8,000 miles and moved from London to Normandy. Joan, Emma and I took the ferry from Portsmouth and had a good crossing, the others followed: Joanne and Jon using Euro-Star and taking in a romantic stop-over in Paris, then train to Flers, followed by Mum & Dad's taxi!
Richard and Andrea drove through the tunnel and down, but were delayed by the flooding in Surrey and a power failure necessitating a mercy dash by Auntie Carolyn to rescue "Hans" their tortoise from their freezing house. What would we do without her? The scene below is the view from the back of the house on arrival.

This fine, feline gentleman is called Romeo and he belongs to Madeleine,  our neighbor, but he thinks he owns all the houses in the hamlet (like all cats). It took me ages to workout how he kept appearing indoors when all the doors are shut, he was climbing on top of the freezer in the garage, jumping up into the hay loft, going through the gaps in the roof until he could come down the steps from the loft in the living room.

Joan was getting Emma's room ready but got distracted! I think the wall paper hypnotized her. Emma thinks the paper is great and has taken a spare roll we found in the loft back to Uni to use as an example of a genuine 70's design.
The French cat will only sit on the French chair! A bargain from the antique shop in Domfront. Jon lugged it out to the Ford Ka and Joanne came back under it - long time since she had to do that! We didn't have enough chairs as the big sofa from Higham couldn't come with us.

We managed to do a few jobs.

• These stepping stones to help get drinks and tools from the out buildings without trailing mud everywhere was a good one.
• We finished the kitchen units.
• Mended the floor tiles from where we demolished the walls.
• Dug some footings and cast them for a dividing wall in the workshop.

Not too shabby for a few days work I thought!

This next picture was a lovely morning from the front of the house:

This is where I start to get things all out of order, it's hard to remember sometimes what happened when! Below I am enjoying the new balcony, so this is definitely January at last! You will notice a couple of essential features: Brew close to hand and a Guardian quick crossword (thanks to the internet). Somsak's garden is so well tended and bananas ripening is something we've never yet seen in our previous gardens

This is the new living room. New furniture is due and curtains but it is essentially complete. The two pictures are worthy of note: one is a scene of Chiang Mai in the rainy season, with some orange, sarong clad Monks creating a wonderful atmosphere which embodies the City. This was a Christmas present we gave to each other which we bought at the Meeting Room, one of our favorite haunts. The other was another Christmas present. Simon did this picture of a Tribal girl on his art course. It is done in powdered graphite and is exquisite in it's detail and liveliness.

Alongside is a picture of a "Batchelorette" party Joan coordinated for one of our guests. The ladies are having their nails done and massage in our Reception lounge.

The story of the wedding is unusual to say the least. The Bride to be was at the Juniper Tree waiting for her future Husband to come to collect her, but she, at least, didn't know when that was to be. In their tradition, the groom would come at an unknown hour (v. biblical) to collect his bride and take her away!
Whatever the in and outs of that, it meant that the "hen party" (to revert to British) needed to be fitted in quickly!

Our furniture finally arrives!

I'm having flash backs! How could I blog about going back to London and not mention a re-visit to the "Crusting Pipe" in Covent Garden?

Back in Normandy now, and I'm putting tiles in the space where there was once a dividing wall. Fortunately for us the floors in the two rooms were the same level!

The pot Father Christmas isn't a whimsical decoration in this case, he's stopping anyone treading on the tiles while the glue sets!

This fine collection of breakfast things come courtesy of our local patisserie, whenever Joan calls in the lady gives her a new French phrase to learn! They are the most welcoming people! The table and chairs were a bargain, not from ebay, this time but from Le Bon Coin and it involved a French speaking guest from the Juniper Tree to negotiate for us, a English lady who looks after our place whilst we're away and her friend with a van, to collect it from Caen! Nothing like getting folks involved! (Notice the 4th year school woodwork project still going strong? Harry Knock would be proud!)

This striped delight turned out this way due to the fact that the only ready made marzipan we could buy was intended to be used to make petit fours, not for an iced Christmas cake! Joanne wasn't phased by it!
The cake was lovely!

The next few pictures speak for themselves, presi's!

As you can see we are back in Chiang Mai. 
The views are from one of our haunts on the Night Bazaar Road. It's an open air bar outside a hotel and is on a busy junction where Tuc-Tucs, taxi's, coaches cycles, and pedestrians do battle for right of way. Nothing moves fast and the people watching is fascinating, all of life drifts past this place of an evening. The vintage car passing the mobile ATM is an every day sight; look at the spelling on the sign for the Thai Kick Boxing event! On this corner you can see, without moving, the lit up signs for Burger King, Mc.Donald's and Starbucks; but equally you can also buy, within 10 paces, Northern Thai sausage, roti, khao soi, green curry and all kinds of fried meat and insects! There are many musicians in Chiang Mai from the single buskers like this young man playing Bach, to the Boy Blues Cub, above the Night Market.
One classical guitarist at the "House Restaurant" is brilliant, he is Burmese and plays with such skill and dedication to a mostly unappreciative audience.

This picture is in just in because I just love our staff's ingenuity! The Aerial broke off so the first thing to hand was a meat fork! It works-don't knock it!

This metal contraption is the welcoming host at the "Meeting Room" A Bistro/Art gallery/Reading Room. We bought a lovely ring for Joan there a while back but this time we went back for a beautiful painting of Chiang Mai in the rain.
It has some orange sarong clad monks scurrying along in the steely grey half light which is so evocative of the City for us.
Here you can get a decent bottle of white and a healthy salad or sandwich, even a toasted one! But the atmosphere is upbeat and the art interesting if not always to our taste- welded metal that looks like it never left the scrap yard is fairly low on my list.......
The bonus is that the owner is interesting to talk to without being intrusive when you're there for a quiet evening away from the crowd!
Talking  of crowds, this is why I haven't got near my computer for my own purposes- we have been mown out with guests-some sleeping on the floor I reckon! this collection of foot-wear is at only one of the two entrances to the dining room. There are 40 pairs here alone, but, strangely, none that are Joan's! We can never remember which door of the dining room we went in!