Yes - but is it Art?

I love my woodburning stove. In winter it provides a dry heat that permeates the whole house and it gives a cheery glow that raises the spirits when the sky turns a leaden grey – but in summer? Well it just sits there. I could hide it away with a firescreen as the Bretons of old did but – well that doesn’t seem right somehow. So, here is an idea that friends and neighbours have found quite charming (although it does seem to confirm their view that there is a bit of madness in all Englishmen).

Looking at it one day I came to the conclusion that the frame around the glass door is pretty much similar to a picture frame. Only problem was that it contained no picture. Now I can’t paint or draw, Susan does that, so how do I embellish my stove with a work of art. The answer lies in places like the Tate Modern in London. A visit there recently introduced me to the idea of ‘art installations’ – not drawings or paintings but objects placed in a certain way in order to send some kind of message to the viewer. Now the box of the woodburning stove with its glass window is an ideal location for an installation. I suppose a bouquet of dried flowers could have been a possibility but for me as a musician, I wanted to say something about the sublime frustration of music – ‘sublime’ on the rare occasions that you play a piece to your own satisfaction, ‘frustrating’ because a musician is always painfully aware of his shortcomings – there is always something you struggle to get right.

So, here is my woodburning stove art installation. A book of music and a broken violin laid out ready for a match to be put to them! Who knows maybe the idea will catch on.

If you have a woodburner art installation please let me know!

David

I Never Set Out to be Frugal

I never set out to be frugal. That is, I can’t recall a ‘road to Damascus’ moment when I suddenly thought YES frugality is the way for me! Rather, it was an attitude of mind developed out of necessity, which grew into a sort of self-gratification, and became imbued with philosophical and political overtones.

The starting point, I suppose, was when I became interested in sailing. There were two issues here firstly a boat has to be looked at as an expensive luxury and secondly, given the vagaries of tides and weather, it’s a pastime that demands plenty of free time. Would it be possible therefore to get a boat and get out of the rat race early so I had time to go sailing? Is there a relationship between time and money and if so, how does the equation work? Can more of one lead to a dearth of the other? Where is the ‘happy’ balance?

The answer seemed to be that a life adjustment would be possible and probably beneficial but there was a simple matter of a mortgage to be cleared. I was lucky in that my mortgage was tied to UK base rates and it was paid in two instalments each month. One for the capital repayment, the other was the interest. I quickly realised that if I increased the capital payments by even a small amount, the interest charges reduced – and that by transferring the ‘amount' saved on interest, I could further increase my capital pay-offs, thereby further reducing the interest charges, enabling me to increase capital payments ----- ad infinitum. In effect I created a benevolent circle which gave me the leeway to add this small French second home without too much pain.

In the end, both homes were mortgage free before my 60^th birthday. So a tiny bit of frugal thinking made a huge difference. I also took great delight in ‘beating the man’, turning the bankers’ and financiers’ strategies on their heads and making sure that nothing I did feathered their nests.

During the process I began to notice other things. Thrift shops provided me with very good ‘designer label’suits for work. I could dress as good as colleagues for less than a tenth of the retail price. The garden, the shoreline and the sea became a source of food, more fun than visiting a supermarket and our love of antiques and ‘old things’ enabled us to decorate our two homes in a ‘shabby chic’ way that many would describe as fashionable. Having drastically reduced expenditure I never once felt poor or miserly – providing I was clever, so long as I avoided the high street and the shopping mall, I could have anything I wanted. If anything, I felt in control and empowered.

Now, here in rural France, my neighbours take a collective approach to frugality. Take the recent New Year Celebrations as an example. One friend had a house with a reasonably large room for entertainment, another provided trestle tables and benches and a third contributed a pretty good sound system. The rest of us (39 in total) were asked to arrive with plates of food and a bottle of Champaign or wine. The first letter of your surname determined whether you had to provide nibbles, a starter, a main course element or a desert. No couple would be expected to spend more than 20 Euros.

How did it go? There were nuts, olives, slices of cooked hams and meats, pate de fois gras for starters, oysters, baked and stuffed potatoes, salads and quiches, followed by a huge selection of cheeses and then choice of several deserts. The wine and Champaign flowed all night and the party ended at 4 am in the morning.

Now how much would I have had to pay for that in a UK restaurant – and would I have enjoyed it any better? Well, in a previous life I have paid huge amounts for a Restaurant New Years Eve special evening – some were fine, others – pretty indifferent – with regard to price, atmosphere, variety and volume of drink however, none compared with this recent French experience.

So, frugality doesn’t mean you need to wear sackcloth and ashes and it isn’t about poverty. With two houses and a boat I really couldn’t claim to be in that position. For me the frugal approach provides a higher standard of living, a better quality of life and it leaves more money in my pocket for things I really need.

David

Good Reasons for Optimism

It’s the shortest day of the year; Christmas and New Year are just around the corner and, from here on, we get a little more daylight each day. A new year, new veg growing in the potager and a boat to launch in spring (if I get the renovation done in time), and as a bonus, I have been asked to undertake a twenty day project for my old employer, so there will be a little extra in the budget – reasons to be optimistic? You bet – especially when I look back in my diary to this time last year.

The plan had been a three phase development of this little cottage and barn. The first phase was a new-build extension on the ground floor to the north with a new kitchen installed.  Phase two should have been a refurbishment of the existing ground floor, removal of old kitchen, installation of a new log-burner, a new tiled floor with under-floor heating, new dry-lining and an insulated ceiling between the beams. The third phase would have been a conversion of the barn into a workshop and utility room on the ground floor and a play-room above. When I say play-room I mean a place were we can make our music, do our art, and hang out with friends – maybe put a pinball machine and an old juke-box in there just for fun.

Well plans don’t always work out quite as expected. Halfway through the building of the Kitchen, the builder advised that it would be a bad idea to complete phase one until all the dirty work of phase two was completed. The problem was that the only viable access to the living room would be via the new extension – better to rip out the floor and dry-lining and get the liquid concrete into the living room now, before the extension is finished otherwise we would have been dragging concrete and rubble through the new kitchen. ‘Oh and by the way’ he added, ‘if you want power, water and drains into the barn, we need to dig those channels before we lay these new floors’.

 

So phases one two and three became one single effort to sort the ground floor of the entire property. It also

meant that stuff had to be ripped out before new stuff could be installed. By this time last year we had a home with no floors, no kitchen, bare stone walls, no doors, no running water, except for a standpipe outside, no sink and only one working electric socket. Everything was covered in plaster dust and we were surviving in one upstairs room.

At such times you realise how important friends can be – and, given that we had only lived here six months at that time, it serves as a strong reminder that people are naturally friendly and helpful. We were offered free accommodation in several homes and camping cars – and we had a different invitation for every meal and celebration through the holiday period. We even managed to throw a party ourselves using space heaters and a cooker that we took off the boat. I have no idea how we stayed so cheerful that winter but I’m pretty sure it had much to do with the warmth and friendliness of people who live in this neck of the woods – Is it like this anywhere or is there something special about this place and its people?

Well you might know better than me – I haven’t travelled outside of Europe but I suspect there is something quite special about people here. It’s a village that has traditionally made its living from the sea. The men signed up for long and dangerous voyages to Newfoundland – fishing for cod. The women were left to grub what living they could on the parcels of land they managed to buy or inherit. They would naturally support each other during the long months of the cod fishing season. The men, as seafarers, were cosmopolitan and broad in their outlook and they were used to getting on with people in the close confines of their vessels – in effect they were all in the same boat – and that culture of mutual support and openness still seems to characterise people here.

It extends even to people like us – newcomers.  People make places, and collectively they make the

‘culture’. We were lucky to land among a group of friends who could tolerate and even enjoy the differences between us. Some people I know parachute into an unfamiliar community simply because real estate prices are particularly good or the scenery captures them. I wonder how they are received and how they make out. Ah well, Happy New Year everyone

David