Breezin' through

flooded Aigronne river

Well "tempete Joachim" came storming in in the early hours of Thursday to Friday morning. In preparation we'd shut the shutters and anchored down things outside. We're on a ridge, and although to some extent sheltered by the neighbour's house from S/SW winds, it was very very blowy! That wasn't the worst of it, however. 

It was the accompanying rain. It came out of the black sky in huge bucketloads. The result this morning was over flowing ditches along the chemin, unexpected rivulets and extremely waterlogged ground everywhere; so saturated in fact that in places we have ponds!  The ground is clay on top of the calcaire and the water takes its time working through this claggy clay top layer. Ultimately it will all drain away of course, but in the meantime it makes for a very squelchy messy situation. If we're lucky we'll get a few days in which the ground can recover and all that water will drain away to fill the acquifers. The Aigronne river, normally a shallow little trout stream, has swollen out of all recognition and we have an impromtu lake in the valley below Charnizay.

collapsed gable

We had some large branches down, but the tarpaulins weren't blown off the woodpiles and no tiles came off the roof. The only casualty we found was the gable end of one of the ruined houses, which had collapsed. Happily it sits far enough back from the chemin that all the stone and rubble have strewn across the ground and it's nowhere near the roadway. The building sits on the parcel of land which belongs to a whole horde of heirs who can't decide what to do with it so it will continue to crumble into the woods.

A small hurrah! We are back on track with Christmas preparations. The last of the cards were sent off on Wednesday and parcels with small gifts for family and friends were handed in to Madame La Poste for dispatch on Monday.

Wednesdays and Saturdays are market days in Loches so the day before yesterday we went up to do some foodie shopping and get a Christmas tree. There's a good free range poulty farm at St Senoch [a village not far from us]. The farmer who runs it has a stand on the market selling all manner of fowl. We wanted to order a bird for Christmas and have been deliberating for some time as to what to go for: goose, duck or pintade [guinea fowl]. 

detail of rubble

We both are intruigued by goose but as the smallest one we could order was for 6 to 8 people we gave it a miss. We'd be eating it until kingdom come! Sadly monsieur was all out of duck, be it tame or semi-wild, so a pintade it will be. We had a detailed discussion as to how we planned to cook it and whether or not we wished for a ' pintade caponée' or 'normale'. A 'pintade caponée', at twice the price [€18.50 per kg] is a male bird which has been castrated and then milk fed to make its flesh even more delicate and soft. We went for a regular bird, not a milksop and will be picking it up at next Wednesday's market. 
Christmas Eve we'll have a seafood platter and be treating ourselves to oysters. Purists maintain one should eat them raw, and indeed we have done so; but, at the risk of being philistines we prefer having them cooked on the 1/2 shell.