In the first weeks of January we noticed that the mailbox at the mairie (town hall), a small thing on a post, had been replaced by a large, ugly box. Shortly after that, we noticed that the mailbox in our hamlet had disappeared. (Rats, never did take a picture of it!) This is a money-saving measure, we suppose, but doesn't really impact us, since the facteur or facteuse (mail deliverer) picks up any mail when they deliver. (You can also leave them money for stamps, something we rarely do.) There was a story that we might lose our closest post office in Montemboeuf. Guess we'd better check that out next time we're there.
January is moving along and the time has come for Mazerolles' annual walnut-shelling evening. It was scheduled to start at 19.30, but they called us a 16.30 and said it was happening NOW because the weather forecast for the night called for bad driving conditions. Only about half the usual number of people showed up, which turned out to be OK, because there were only half the amount of walnuts than there has been in previous years. We were not the only ones with a bad walnut harvest.
We spent the first couple of hours putting nutmeats in bowls while sipping mulled wine. The shells go on the floor ... and in your shoes, pockets, purses, cuffs, ...
When all the nuts are empty, the floor is quickly swept (nutshells are slippery to walk on!), and a simple, homemade dinner is served. Much the same as last year, we started with onion soup (with cheese and dry bread to crumble in the bottom of the bowl). Using the same bowl (the wash-up crew appreciates this), there's a dish of beans with a bit of meat and lots of fatty bits (reminding me of James Herriot's story of being served a bowl of fatty bits after an all-night calving). This is topped with lots of freshly gathered dandelion greens and a drizzle of last year's walnut oil. Then a bit of camembert, with more dandelion greens if you want. We finished off with crèpes (someone had made stacks of them beforehand) topped with crème anglaise and chocolate sauce. Not too bad for a free dinner. We helped a bit with the cleanup, getting home well before 23.00. We hope next year they'll keep the early start, and maybe even move it to midday.
We had a little spell where lots of hardware in the house went on the blitz. One cold morning, the pellet-burner didn't want to start. It took five tries to get it going. Since then, no problems. A bit puzzling this, and worrying. The netbook also took a dive (literal, not physical) and had to have its operating system reinstalled. Which always makes us wonder why Apple can manage to do this without destroying your files, but Windows can't. Sigh. And our printer, which has been touchy of late, is really getting cranky (ink system failure), so we finally broke down and ordered a replacement. That was one day. The next day, the washing machine died. Ed ordered parts from a .fr site, but it turned out to be a .co.uk site at heart, so the parts are still on their way from the UK over a week later. No doubt we would have done better to go to Angoulême to visit the parts shop there, but the internet is so easy and you don't have to leave the house in questionable weather. Meanwhile, laundry continues to pile up. The third day, we held our breaths, wondering what would go wrong, but nothing did!
Ed's choir has moved its practice venue at the church presbytery, and a group of the guys had to move a piano into the new space. Ed is now the official piano tuner for the choir.
The weather has continued to be wintery with light freezes overnight and some bits of snow. Things are warming up now (we may get to the double-digits C in the next days), but it continues to rain. The ground is so soggy that you can't run any heavy equipment on it, like pulling a load of wood up from the South Forty.
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