In the beginning...

I'm posting a big chunk of my diary to start this Blog off so it will all begin with the same date. From October 12 onwards I'll try to update as often as I can. We are definitely living a self-sufficient lifestyle at the moment, although I sometimes have reservations about what we have got ourselves into! Being an American I grew up being used to having everything working at a touch so I DO sometimes struggle with this new regime of ours.

15 months ago Mack and I gave up our decent but boring jobs, sold our home in the UK, packed up a few possessions in our car and headed south. We added a dog, two toddlers, a guitar and a laptop and bought a run down farm (as it turned out, far more so than we first thought) in France. We have a five year plan and have allocated our available capital to do the renovations and keep ourselves until we are ready to launch the little business we have in mind - a B & B plus restaurant attached.

We arrived in June 2008 to crumbling walls, a leaky roof, missing or broken windows, a battered door with a foot square hole in it but no glass, no electricity, no running water (we DO have a well though), no real drainage other than a suspiciously swampy area at the bottom of the garden, bare earth floors on the ground floor and no floors at all on the first floor, two rickety ladders, one to the upper (floorless) floor and the other to the cave (cellar) under the original "kitchen" which had two old wooden doors as a floor. Modcons are an ancient wood burning range and a tiny calor gas fridge plus an old tin bath. We spent the first winter living in a large frame tent pitched on the bare living room floor - the only way to keep ourselves and our possessions dry. Fortunately there is an enormous fireplace in that room and we kept a log fire burning throughout. We have plenty of wood in an huge, although slightly rotting, oak woodpile at the back of the house so fortunately that will not be a problem for the next couple of winters. We also have a great neighbour who lets us use their wifi connection and charge our laptop so we can watch DVDs in the evening.

We set to and repaired the roof and replaced the windows, boarded the area over the cave and
made that room secure and dry and bought some nice oak for the ground floor. Fortunately, all the beams in the house are also oak and look fit to last another couple of hundred years. Then came to crunch...


June 1st

We had a heavy night surrounded by bank statements, receipts and scraps of paper. Conclusion?
We have spent two year's of our budget in the first year. True we have a spanking new water-tight roof and beautiful double-glazed hardwood windows right through the house and two of the barns. We also have all the oak we need to floor the house.

Perhaps it was the flagon of wine we managed to consume which coloured our judgement but we
have decided to manage for a whole year on what we can grow, barter or scavenge. "An exciting challenge!" says Mack. "Bloody hard work for me!" says I, thinking off all the picking and bottling I'm about to let myself in for. We count up and find we have more or less €750 of the budget to keep our books even until June 2010. We agree to spend €200 on a basic food stock and try to manage of €10 a week for essentials.

So let the adventure begin...


June 2nd

We've bought an initial "stash" of food to act as a base. These are:

5kg cooking salt
20kg flour
20kg rice
5kg couscous
10 litres olive oil
1kg red beans
1kg dried peas
1kg chickpeas
20kg sugar
10 packs dried yeast
10 packs wine yeast
5kg soya mince
5kg dried milk
4 large jars of coffee
5kg rolled oats
2kg dried spaghetti

It looks like a lot but when I mentally divide it into 365 days perhaps we will be struggling...

Supplementing this we have what's left over in our store cupboard as of yesterday

Lots of spices
4 cans tuna
4 cans tomato puree
large tin of cocoa
Jar of honey
large bag of mixed nuts


June 5th

So far we have already grown

onions, shallots, garlic, peas, green beans, beetroot, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers,
lettuce, peppers, chillies, potatoes, gherkins, herbs, red cabbage, melons and sweetcorn

In the garden or local hedgerows we have (or will have when they are ripe)

mushrooms (which I have dried and bottled), apples, walnuts, hazels, figs, blackberries, apples,
plums, grapes. damsons and nectarines

We have been given four hens who are laying, on average, three eggs a day between them and I
am being given goat's milk by a neighbour as and when we want any. The same neighbour says he will supply us with rabbits once the season starts.

It all looks good on paper but I'm still panicking about being able to eke out the supplies AND
preserve enough of what we are growing to last through to the end of next May. We do have the
option of going to the local shops if things go wrong but now we've set ourselves this challenge I
would love to see it through. I must admit we've demolished the tuna, honey and mixed nuts so they are now off the list!

I plan on making jam and chutney, bottling beans and storing the root veg and apples in the cellar. I will also salt the nuts. We have 5 gallons of wine on the way and I intend making lots more, also cider when the apples are riper. I'm thinking of drying some of the fruits too and wonder about making some sort of sultanas from the grapes once they are coming to an end? We have a small calor fridge but no separate freezer so all the preserving has to be in bottles, jars or pots. Cooking is on the wood-burning range so I have various ovens good for drying etc.


August 20

We have been given some very old and apparently hand made terracotta floor tiles. They are about 5 inches square and a little over an inch thick. On one side they are chipped, worn and stained (I estimate they are a couple of hundred years old judging from where they came from) but they have never been turned so the "underside" is as good as new, smooth and even coloured once they have been scrubbed.

At the moment our kitchen area is bare except for a wood burning range which already sits on a
stone plinth. The floor is flat compacted earth for 75% of it's area and oak boarding which we have laid ourselves for the other 25%. These cover and form the roof of the cave (sort of half
underground cellar) below. The entire room is around eighteen feet square and we estimate we
have ample tiles to cover the earthen bit.

However when we put down the boards we allowed for much thinner modern tiles laid on a bed of cement, now the tiles will need to sit directly on the earth to be in line and we are wondering if this is feasible. It seems to be how they were laid originally as there is no sign of mortar etc on them. We are wondering if we just make sure the area is flat and lay them and then presumably use some sort of mortar in the joins to seal them. Or whether we should rake out the earth to a lower level and lay cement anyway. I'm going to ask advise!


August 23

I will have pounds and pounds of tomatoes and I have lots of donated bottles and jars so can probably try all options for preservation, bottling, coulis, chutney, etc.

I also have a potentially enormous pile of chillies, shallots, garlic (I put in 5 heads broken into cloves) and onions so hopefully if I can preserve them properly I will have enough for the whole winter and into spring.

We've been picking sloes today and have a gallon of wine started. They are fiddly to pick put I imagine they will make some delicious wine. I have some ripe grapes and will be making grape jelly tomorrow. I'm about to research making some form of sultanas right now. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of hours of surfing, I spend about 30 minutes when I come to charge the laptop and a similar time when I pick it up later. Sally and Andrew say we can use the wifi whenever we like (it reaches to the barn where we plug in so we don't actually have to intrude upon them) but I don't want to be seen to take advantage. Also, I might need to beg some space in their spare freezer before the summer is out so I'm saving any favours for later!


August 26

I have been getting really into the swing of bartering over the last few days. Once I've got over the hurdle of persuading people that a) yes, their junk is actually going to be my treasure and b) I really want "things" rather than money in exchange for the jobs I do then we seem to get along very well.

So far I've negotiated to do lawn mowing (they have a sit on lawnmower and provide the fuel but it IS nearly half an acre) until mid November and then again from mid March in exchange for the use of a large old chest freezer in their barn plus electricity to run it. This will be an absolute godsend to me and they think they have a wonderful deal too!

Cat sitting and house plant care for two months (in their home) with another Scottish neighbour. The exchange is, as they put it, a pile of old wood plus rusty tools and nails etc. It is in fact a mountain of finished pine, chestnut and oak which has not been used before, some good quality hand tools and enough nails and screws to turn the whole lot into something useful. Also a wooden barrel (soon to be a waterbutt) an old but serviceable sack truck, a big box of glasses and crockery and an enormous and beautiful deep blue woollen Oriental rug which is totally undamaged and just needs airing and a bit of cleaning to the fringes. Amazingly both of us think we have a very good deal!

After school care of a French child when school starts again. This involves picking her up from the bus stop and keeping her for an hour each evening for a two month period. In exchange I get a perfectly good chicken run and two beautiful oil lamps. Also my Pia and Luke get an hour a day of free French lessons thrown in.

I'm now in the midst of negotiating for a big box of fabric, wool and sewing items plus two more of English books. The lady concerned is determined to just give them to me so I think she might be getting some jam in exchange. I suppose it helps that we are surrounded by people living in old houses with lots of accumulated junk but it's a great way of recycling!


August 27

We've been advised to lay sand onto the soil and then put the tiles on this. The floor is amazingly
flat and a thinnish layer of sand will bring the tiles up to be level with the boards so it would all work well. From counting and measuring we have discovered we have more than enough for the kitchen and also there are some thinner tiles (about a quarter inch thick) which will make a great "skirting" all the way round. We seem to be lucky that the tiles will fit with only a miniscule gap at the wall edges which we can fill in and cover with the thinner tiles. Also the room doesn't have any nooks and crannies - I'm not sure how we could go about cutting these tiles if we had needed to.


August 29

A long long day but we now have a lovely kitchen floor, all laid by ourselves. I'm so proud!

I'm about to start wine making with a vengeance but am concerned about our lack of demi-johns. We only have six and little hope of finding any more here in France. I DO have lots of corks and airlocks though and have searched without success for something I could use as a substitute, unless I want to spend cash we don't have.

When I took some broken glass up to our bottle bank yesterday I discovered a pile of nasty looking old flagons which obviously would not fit through the hole of the bottle bank. They were dirty green and were covered in mouldy wicker. Anyway I turfed Pia out of her pushchair, piled Luke up with four and put the rest in the pushchair for the walk home. Once the wicker was prised off and the bottles were scrubbed and cleaned inside with a handful of gravel I find I have fourteen large and four small elegant pale green bottles. They are very slim at the neck and broaden out at the base. They have the word Ayelense embossed around the neck.

I've discovered that a demijohn cork and airlock fits straight into the top of the bigger ones (they hold around 6 pints each). I'm wondering if there any reason why I shouldn't just go ahead and use these for our winemaking? I don't think there is! It would certainly broaden our scope for all the fruit I'm coming across at the moment. The small ones (about 3 pints) should make great bottles for the wine once it's ready, they take a normal sized cork. So I'm off to see what I can find in the hedgerows now...


August 30

At the moment we live in total chaos in a three storey house with no upper floors and no mains
water or electricity.

As of yesterday we now have a beautifully tiled kitchen floor but no facilities in the kitchen other than a wood burning range, a marble slab on a barrel, a big home-made table made from sanded and oiled scaffolding planks plus two similar benches, a pair of buckets (one for washing up when it's filled with hot water from the range and the other for rinsing) and a couple of shelves which hold all our other kitchen goods, crockery, pans etc. The buckets double as our personal washing space too, we have a tin bath for use in the winter and right now we have an outdoor shower with lovely warmed water from a big plastic tank on one of the barn roofs.

Our living area currently has a bare earth floor, a huge open fireplace which we will use in the winter and houses two camp beds for our children which we use to sit on during the day time. The ceiling is open right up to the (newly tiled) roof with nothing but beams showing for the upper floor and attic and this can only be accessed by ladder from the hallway. Last year we laid a huge tarpaulin over the beams to keep the living area cosy - this was in fact lovely.
The dining room is currently having a new oak floor fitted but doubles as our bedroom with the only "new" piece of furniture we possess, our bed. Other than various makeshift little tables and stools plus hanging rails and hooks this constitutes our current living arrangement. Oh, and we have an outside "privy" which is little more than a hole in the ground which drains, when it's in the right mood, to what may or may not be an antiquated fosse at the end of the garden - we haven't dared investigate yet.

Now suddenly Eve (my mother) seems to want to plan a Christmas visit. She would be flying in from San Francisco to London, then presumably to somewhere like La Rochelle (which would involve us in a longish round trip to pick her up). Much as I love her and haven't seen her for a few years I'm horrified at the prospect! Although we all seem to be muddling through quite happily here I just don't see her, 1960s/70s hippy or not, finding one single aspect of this lifestyle acceptable. No telephone, no electrics, no drains, no TV, no giant size refridgerator, no instant heating, no hot power showers, no spare room... the list goes on and on. The thought of traditional Christmas cooking is scary and we are on a self-imposed strict budget this year which will probably not stretch further than a box of chocolates and small presents for the children.

Basically I think I have to say a big NO without offending her forever. I feel mean as she hasn't even see Pia in the flesh and last saw Luke when he was a baby. However I just dread the thought of making excuses for how we are living for a fortnight. If she lived "locally" (ie the UK) a few days might be acceptable but it's unreasonable to expect her to stay for such a time when she would be flying for travelling for around 14 hours. Am I becoming paranoid? I need some input on this one!


August 31

I've had some suggestions and one of them is renting a gite. I love the gite idea! I'll check them out. It means SHE could do the Christmas day entertaining too. I'll take some pictures of the house to show her why it might be a good idea to think about staying with us...


September 6

So in the end I didn't say no. The deed is now done, flights booked, etc. I DID manage to talk her
into hiring a car...

"...but surely it isn't that far from Paris to where you are?" ... only 800 k approx round trip so no way!!)

and she will be installed in the only gite in the village. I've already seen it, it's enormous and lots of room for a Christmas party.

In order to pull this off I sent some photos of the house and the extent of our "modcons".. The
deciding factor was the lack of power to work her hairdryer! I know she will come totally laden with gifts so we are now busily inventing Xmas presents which cost next to nothing and which will fit in her bag for the return flight. Homemade jams etc will be out of the question but we have LOTS of lavender, aloe and rosemary so that has lots of potential for lotions etc.


September 9

We've just had an old Uni friend of Mack's plus girlfirend (Ben & Rosie) to visit on their was to
Spain. They parked their camper on the garden and were self-contained so I found it quite stress free from a visitor point of view, especially as they left us with a pile of paperbacks and a pack of six cans of baked beans they were finding a nuisance in the van!

However, in discussion with the girlfriend one evening I began to wonder whether we are being
mean to our two kids, aged nearly three and four and a bit. At the moment they run around the
garden all day virtually naked (I only see them in the house at lunchtime although I can generally see exactly what they are up to from the windows) amusing themselves with an old wheelbarrow, a big paddling pool made from hay rolls and a tarpaulin, some old cord (skipping, or trying to, neither of them have succeeded yet!) and a mammouth mini racetrack they have smoothed out in a sand pile for some little cars. Oh, and the dog of course, who is as crazy as a loon and spends all day joining in. They look happy and healthy, both are articulate & polite and they come in and sleep like tops at night. The suggestion was, however, that we are depriving them of a "normal" childhood without playgroups, TV, "proper" toys, sweets and comics. However they can both write their names (admittedly they each have very short names but I still think it's not a bad achievement), count as high as most people would feel necessary in life and the older one can read little books aimed at 5 year olds and is trying to teach his sister what the words mean. They don't have many "same age" friends but there is a French child I collect from the school bus each day and they seem to relate to her pretty well in their way too. I know they can speak bits of French from this and I think they will pick it up quite easily this way.

So are we depriving them? I thought not but she has made me wonder. Sure they will grow up
somewhat different to the "norm" but is that a big deal? We grew up in a hippy household.
Fortunately there were plenty more in California at the time but even so I remember being a bit different and enjoying it. Oh, and another thing. She can't quite see how they are getting all the "nutrients" they need from our self-imposed spartan food regime. They didn't actually eat with us so I'm not sure how she worked this out, other than seeing the very basic dry food supplies I have stored around our kitchen area.

I'm busily compiling a record of what we eat each day for a week so I can get an overview. I'm not a nutritionalist but I don't think we are missing anything essential. Knowing this Uni friend I don't see this latest self-opinionated Dudley Doright of a girlfriend lasting that long once their holiday is over but I do wonder if there might be some grain of truth in her observations? I'm going to make a list of our "menus" for a week and see how they look in retrospect.

She was in fact a lovely person, just highly opinionated. I discover after a further chat with Mack that she has just finished her mature degree in some sort of social work and has never had her own children - now she's on a year out so has not used those qualifications anyway. Before that she was briefly an infant teacher. She was lovely with the kids, making up stories for them and drawing all sorts of funny things and even helping them make a tepee in the garden. It was just the rush to fit them into pigeonholes which began to annoy me. It's not as though they are totally cut off from modern life - we sometimes watch Disney DVDs in the evening with them and they do some educational packages on the computer too, assuming we have battery power (no mains electricity here at the moment anyway). Worrying as it may seem I do see the day sometime in the future where kids will be taken from their parents if they "subject" them to a lifestyle which is not considered to be the norm.

People I've consulted love the way we are raising them, even ask if they can come to play in the garden too. My goodness, our very conservative neighbours are only just getting used to seeing these bare little heathen kids whooping and hollering in our garden. To see a bunch of naked adults running around would finish them off!

Someone asked me if they are home-schooled and they are not, or not formally anyway. I'm hoping they will go to the local school (a bus ride away) eventually but it won't be until next fall for Luke and probably two more years for Pia. I'm hoping they will both be reading and writing well by then, and speak decent French to help them integrate. I really don't think I'm wholly in agreement with home schooling but I would have to sit and think about where my prejudices lie on that one...


September 11

Just before I headed off to charge the laptop batteries in Sally'ss barn I was straining the fruit out off four gallons of peach wine and had the remains standing in a bucket. Just at that point Didier arrived with yet another rabbit (this one is going in the freezer later, just in case we run short of food options later in the year as I can't bring myself to pick all the bones out of another one so soon after the last one).

We struggle a little to communicate as he speaks the local dialect which is incomprehensible to me and my French is nowhere near perfect anyway. But he indicated he really wanted the fruit for his pigs! I tried to explain it had been fermenting and might not be good for them. I don't think the French make country wines as he brushed this aside and ambled off complete with the fruit. There was 24 lbs of fruit in there to begin with and I now have visions of drunken pigs tearing up the village a little later tonight...


September 24

We are now four months into our self-imposed year of frugality, living in our still rather dilapidated farm with no power or running water.

We have a a great woodburning range plus a basic store cupboard of flour, pulses, rice and dried
pasta plus a few other "essentials". I have also managed to negotiate various barters and swaps
and now have access to eggs, milk, an occasional rabbit, freezer space and power to charge my
laptop battery. Other than that we are completely dependant upon what we can grow or forage.
A few weeks ago I decided to keep a copy of a week´s normal meals as a visitor expressed doubt
that our kids were eating "properly". This is what I've come up with. Nothing is "shop bought" other than the basic supplies plus the baked beans which were a gift. I've done a rough check and think we are covering all the bases as far as nutrients go. I forgot to add that we drink wine, ginger beer, boiled well water, fruit and herb teas and we will soon have cider too. For the kids "treats" I have been making frozen fruit popsicles, mainly raspberry and blackberry. They see very happy with these! Hopefully the supplies will last right through to next June. I get more and more determined to see this through. We haven't used a quarter of our supplies yet, although I can see us really ploughing into them once the winter starts.

Monday
Home made bread with goats milk butter (I can make about half a pound a week from the excess goats’ milk I’m given) and quince jelly (from some hedgerow trees). Apples.

Hummus (I make it myself from our chick pea store) on rolls with tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs.

Home made veggie burger with jacket potato and salad. Rice pudding (really nice even though I
made it with ordinary rather than pudding rice) with blackberry jam.

Tuesday
Toast (I have problems making this as we have to hold the bread on a prong in front of the open
“furnace” bit of the woodburning range) with more butter, scrambled eggs and baked beans (free gift and very much appreciated). Nectarines.

More hummus. Salad with pickled onions, chutney and beetroot on homemade bread rolls and
goats butter.

Rest of the veggie burgers with creamed potatoes and green beans.
.
Wednesday
Scrambled eggs with onion and herbs on bread and butter. Sliced tomatoes.

Mushroom and herb omelette (we had a lot of eggs that day and probably were in egg overload)

Chick pea and potato curry with pilau rice and some not very successful home made naan breads (I’ve since perfected them – I now add home made yoghurt and onion seeds to the mix). Home
made yoghurt & fruit.

Thursday
Home made tomato soup (don’t ask why!) with bread (we ran out of butter), hazelnuts and raisins (I made them from our own grapes – they taste fine but look a bit odd).

Fried egg sandwiches. Nectarines and plums

Three bean & soya chilli and rice

Friday
Oatmeal porridge. Stewed tomatoes on toast . Plums

Baked potatoes with chilli (I made too much the day before) with salad.

Tomato, onion and cottage cheese Quiche with salad and bread rolls.

Saturday
Homemade hazelnut butter sandwiches (we like peanuts but that’s all we have and they taste great on bread). More plums

Scotch eggs (made with a TVP and onion mixed) and salad

Spaghetti Bolognese with green salad. Coffee fudge squares ( I was experimenting with these for
Xmas presents. Mmmm!)

Sunday
Boiled eggs with bread and butter.

Chip butties. Home made yoghurt with fresh fruit sliced in it.

Rabbit stew (our neighbour came up with the promised rabbit, although I didn’t enjoy preparing it one little bit) with potatoes and green beans.Nectarine pie with cream skimmed from the top of the goats milk (I save it for butter making but couldn’t resist it on the pie).

I'm still trying to bottle and pickle as much as I possibly can and the freezer I have been given
access to is bulging so I'm hopeful we will manage to pull off this experiment. If so we will be back on budget to get on with the renovations next June. Fortunately we have plenty of jobs to be getting on with in the meantime which don't involve using our funds. Since the begining of June we have now spent €67 on essentials (including lamp oil, seeds, petrol & chicken feed) so I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself!

Two beautiful white ducks appear to have moved in with us. After asking round I've discovered that they apparently have not escaped from anywhere in the village or from any of the properties nearby. They have been with us for nearly a week now, seem to have taken to living in an old wooden crate in of of our doorless outhouses and have dutifully laid quite a few eggs since arriving. They seem happy enough eating whatever the hens are having and otherwise seem to happily go about their own duck business - even taking a dip in the kids' paddling pond.

I'm fascinated to know how they got here. They don't appear to have shown any intentions of flying since they came. Can domestic ducks normally fly I wonder? And if so do they normally travel far? Otherwise I suppose I'll just have to wait and see if anyone comes looking for them or if they decide to go back wherever they came from!


September 27

We've just had a morning out at a local village "vide grenier" - arriving just as they were all packing up. This is a sort of once a year yard sale when everyone drags out their old junk (some of it looks as though it has been dragged out on an annual basis for centuries), asks ridiculous prices and then settles for pennies. We went with €10 (plus 1c we found in the grass as we walked there) and came back with:

3 lovely blue cast iron pans (Le Creuset style)
3 jigsaw puzzles (the guy threw in a bag of partially used felt pens too, I suspect the kids were doing their poor child act as they managed to get the puzzles AND a box of books for 50c, although I was impressed as they did their negotiations in French)
A big box of children´s books (French)
A smallish bottle of home-pressed walnut oil (we have a lovely laden walnut tree so if we like it he has said he will press ours too and give us back 50% of the product for doing it).
2 sturdy cane gardening baskets (I can now pick stuff from the garden without having it folded into my tshirt)
4 red cabbages (guess what I will be making later today!)
A big bag of new wine corks (probably 50)
A new-looking cane dog basket (I'm not sure the dog is impressed but it looks lovely)
4 brass candle holders and a new oil lamp chimney
An antique looking wrought iron central light fitting (we have no electricity yet but it can be situated when we start on the upstairs floors).Another big box of rags (perfect for oiling the new floorboards we are laying)
AND, what we originally went for, an large oval tin wash bucket for the wandering ducks to play in (no one has claimed them so I guess they are now ours).

I feel as if we have won the lottery! We had a fun morning out, actually had money in our pockets for a change (we spent every penny - the last guy accepted our last 41c for the rags) and came back with treasure.


September 29

Over the last few months we have made friends with a Dutch couple who run a campsite in the next village. As it is Macks' birthday today, they invited us for lunch. I knew they run some sort of restaurant attached to the campsite but I've now come back totally inspired. I now know this is the sort of restaurant I want to incorporate into our B & B business when we eventually get it going. I suppose I do have to point out that the two barns we have earmarked for this business have a good solid roof and newly installed windows. What they DON'T have are floors, internal walls, plumbing, electrics, etc, etc. Never mind - after all it IS a five year plan and we are only just into year two...

Their restaurant works like this. Customers phone the day before to book a table so there are no "on spec" customers. All the meals are served at 8pm so there is just one sitting. They are given a choice over the phone of two starters, two main courses and two desserts and order in advance. She says she will cater for special requests too. She then shops next day so all the ingredients are fresh, many of them she grows herself. She does all the cooking so the maximum number she will cater for is 20 and the restaurant is open from May to October. She says she is invariably full and turning people away so will be very pleased if I start something similar as she will refer her extra callers my way. I'm so excited about this - I thought one of the main problems we might have would be attracting customers as we are well off a main road. I also love the idea of cooking to order so there is no wastage.

So she tried tonight's menu on us. We had a wonderful home made mushroom and herb paté on very thin toast with tomato marmalade. Then we had pork loin with juniper and garlic dressing, tiny buttered new potatoes and green beans in a chili and mustard dressing. For desert we had fresh black figs and sliced oranges with honey and yogurt. Then lovely coffee. No wine as

a) one of us had to drive and we had work to do this afternoon and
b) she had cranberry juice, which is something I absolutely crave.

I will definitely be stealing her recipes as well as her customers!

The visit made me start thinking about why English speakers are so awful at languages. This Dutch couple have three children aged 8, 7 and 5. Not only do this couple speak their own language, they also speak absolutely fluent English, apparently "passable" German, perfectly good French and, from the chat I had with her in that language, better Spanish than me. I know I'm a bit rusty but I did part of my college degree in Spanish! She assures me that they just grow up learning languages in Holland - more or less everyone can speak two and sometimes three. The three children can pass for English with no problem, are in French school so apparently fluent there too and, according to their mother, have no problem with playing with whatever nationality of children arrive at their campsite over the summer. She says she suspects they can speak bits of some languages that they couldn't even put a name to themselves and which she is not familiar with herself. She imagines these are probably Polish and Italian but could be some of the south eastern European languages too.

I know that the whole world wants to learn English these days but I'm surprised about how little emphasis is now put upon learning a second language in both the US and the UK. I learned
Spanish because California is next to Mexico, there are many, many Mexicans in that State and it was in fact a part of Mexico until a reasonably short time ago. It isn't the same in many of the other States. I started learning French when we decided to come here as I thought it would help us fit in (and it certainly has). Mack learned some French in school and speaks some Italian courtesy of an Italian mother. The kids are soaking up French like two little sponges and are quite fearless when trying to shuffle their smallish vocabulary to fit whatever they want to say. But most English speakers I meet really struggle to express themselves in anything but their own language. So why are many English speakers like this? Are we lazy? Do we think all foreigners should learn our language? Are we shy? Or is it because both the the UK and the US are essentially island races (don't forget that only 10% of US citizens have ever owned a passport)?