Au Revoir, Mademoiselle?

The shell back on the chassis. Andy B on left, me seated.

Readers who have been with me for donkeys years may recall that back in the winter of 2007/8, I was one of 4 members of our 'local group' of the Citroën Club of GB who got involved in the complete nut and bolt rebuild* of an ancient, non-running 1961 2CV car. The car was found by the club on one of our camping convoy events which took in Dover Transport Museum and turned out to have been a twinning gift from the newly twinned town of La Chapelle d'Armentieres in Northern France, to their new twin, Birchington in Kent in 1989. It was all sign-written with heraldic crests from each town and the regions. Birchington gave them a red phone box, being suitably British and 'iconic' which has stood ever since, outside the town hall (Mairie).

'Rolling Chassis' in need of lots of work.

The car, in 1989, had been roughly assembled to look the part for photo shoots but below the surface the engine was dead, brakes not connected up and so on, so the car sat on a local garage forecourt for a few years but was then gifted to the museum to look after. Dover Transport Museum, though, is more interested in commercial stuff - old lorries, vans, trains etc, so as they filled up with stuff the car was relegated to a slot out on the grass in the rain, which is where we found it and took pity, so we made them an offer.

We called her Mademoiselle from Armentieres (like the WW1 song) just because the "Parlez Vous" song is the only thing most school boys know about La Chapelle d'Armentieres! We stripped that car down completely over the winter of 2007/8 and rebuilt it. I was writing this blog by then but was writing then as if from the viewpoint of Deefer (then a small pup) so some posts about the car appeared such as

http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2008/02/madamoiselle.html

I wrote up the car rebuild with the usual millions of pictures on the National 2CV Club website and was quite proud of the work, but unfortunately the club fell out with their internet service provider and various crashes of the site made them move onto a completely new site, abandoning the old forum archives and blogs and I lost the lot. I tried any number of the former 'webmeisters' but could get no joy, so that good record of our mechanicking is gone, not even on the internet anywhere, because the server was shut down and cleaned up ready for the next customer. Hey ho. This blog is on blogger.com which seems to be made of sterner stuff.

Well we completed the car and all the time had been in contact with the town of La Chapelle who were coming up to the 20th Anniversary of the twinning and were going to do a massive celebration and carnival to mark the event (a 'do' that French towns seem to love more so than either UK towns or the Irish). They insisted that we bring the car; we did and got treated like celebrities for the weekend with the car on show by the Mairie and then one of 3 2CVs leading the Big Parade. It was a real treat. The car has been back several times on the anniversaries since, once with us but since then with our good friend Andy B, who was really the 'project manager' on the build.

Soon after the 2009 trip, 2 of the gang-of-four expressed a wish to pull out and use their money on other 2CV projects, so, with the car then worth about £2400, Andy and I chopped in £600 to each of them and from then on we have owned the car between the two of us (and it is now worth about £3100, we think). Well, now having moved to Ireland, I do not get a chance to drive the car or even see it and sit in the seats, so I have been wondering whether Andy might feel like 'buying' me out too - we are both still splitting the cost of housing it in the dry lock-up, insurance, MOT and repairs (it is exempt from tax). It is only actually about £100 a year total each. We have now done a deal where I stop paying my share and just slowly fade from view over how ever long it takes a rough ton a year to burn up my half of the value. It could be the longest 'au revoir' in history. I will enjoy, meantime, knowing "that there's a corner of a foreign 2CV that is for (almost) ever (mine)" (apologies to Rupert Brooke)

Meanwhile, we bloggers, like any other internet users are host to the usual motley crew of scammers and hackers, spammers and the like. Many of these arrive as fake attempts to 'comment' on your blog posts and most of us have the comment function set to make sure we get to see the comments before they go up onto the site. Blogger.com is very good at protecting you and parks them if various conditions are met and, in particular in my case, if they come from that famous spammer, (Mr) Anonymous. I have been amused recently by a pattern forming among these as if they may have all read the same guide on how to pull the wool over the eyes of the blogger - compliment him or her on the blog but be very general and non specific about content (do not mention the subject matter of the post!) and then suggest that he/she come and look at yours which is on this link here, guv. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately two other factors they have in common are very bad English (generally looking like badly translated English) and then bizarre names on the links - sites selling medical gear, sites offering to improve your sales on Amazon.com and even sites selling labrador puppies!

I give you the following examples (but with the links, obviously, severed as I do not want you getting into inadvertent spam-hell)

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and finally

"Advanced level course, you get to study joining emergency treatment, fitting utilization of Automated External Defibrillator (AED) when heart failure strikes at the ictimized individual and considerably more.But you can’t be so sure that there will be no such incident happen in your life. The AED pads that are applied to the victim's chest, while CPR is in progress, can also assess and determine the victim's heart (cardiac) rhythm"

* Not strictly true - we swapped in a complete spare engine and gearbox rather than strip that right down. 425 cc of silky smooth oozing power!

Miniature Groomers

After yesterday's 11 2cvGB visitors, then a dash of John Deere Bob and then Carolyn and Charlotte in the evening, you'd have thought we'd have had enough of host(ess)ing. Not a bit of it. Today we entertain the Silverwoods where Em-J and J-M have been hungry to get their hands, curry-combs and horse grooming gear round Carolyn and Charlotte's miniature horses since we first posted about them a few weeks back.

Robbedy (6) was also keen to get in on the act so, as it's a Bank Holiday in Ireland this weekend, the whole family decided to make a day of it. Alarms were set. The 'smalls' were dragged out of their beds still in their PJs and loaded into the car to continue their sleep for the 2 hours of the journey and breakfast was planned for here when they arrived at 09:00.

Em-J and J-M are keen enough on the horses that they now help out at the riding school when it is not 'their week' (The Silverwoods do 2 children every other week so that the older ones could help out training the smaller ones, but now that less supervision is needed as their skills improve, the older ones slope off to groom spare horses and have now bought their own grooming brushes). It was these brushes that they brought along to  tackle some of the Miniatures' left over winter coat.

With breakfasts done we rounded up the horses and gave a head collar and lunge-rein to each of the older girls. I kept hold of Romeo. Horses were led out to today's tethering, mowing zone. You can see in the pics how long the grass is here; it wasn't that long by 5 pm! Then all 4 children  with Mum there to help and supervise, got stuck in, rubbing down flanks and rumps, combing through manes and tails and even plaiting a tail in J-M's case. I think everyone enjoyed it and then the horses were just left there to graze till their bellies were so full they needed a lie-down.

The Silverwoods were here from about 09:00 to 19:00, making a good old day of it, enjoying the space, the geese and goslings, the 5 week old chickens and the grown up chickens, plus Liz's roast pork lunch. Charlotte also arrived with baby bro' Henry at one stage and joined in the fun. Mrs S has posted an amusing picture of the children wiped out in the back of the car on the way home. All that fresh air and exercise! We loved having you, Silverwoods, as always and please come back as soon as you can. The girls are booked to help out at the 'real' riding stables tomorrow and Stef, the main lady was anxious that they'd still have some energy!

Meanwhile the pond has been sitting there with its tiny puddle in the bottom since we emptied the bulk tank (1010 litres) into it but the sun came out and all rain stopped. I had been determined to try to let it fill with rain-water being suspicious of the 'chemical soup' that is Roscommon mains water. There is, though, another hot dry week forecast and we could see the little water we had evapourating away and the poor geese and goslings looking hungrily at it but despairing of the steep banks and gosling hazards they represented. We decided to bite the bullet, buy a garden hose and fill it that way. This involves about 15-20,000 litres but, hey, we paid €1600 for the right to connect up so we reckon we can take a wee dram off the pipes. . We nipped out to Connacht Gold for a hose and turned on the flow at about 11 am. We have been watching it slowly slowly fill ever since. It has taken 7 hours or so to fill the 'deep end' and is now expanded out to the full size as the 'tide' came in on the shallow end. We will leave the tap running all night but I do not expect it to be really full till mid morning. I will update you and supply pictures tomorrow. We have also created the flat-stone 'beach' on the orchard side.

Eire Raiders

The Citroën 2CV Club of UK (2cvGB, for short) is organised into Local Groups rather than being run as one big club (although there is a Central Committee and an official National body) and it is at local group level that all the camps, rallies and events take place, with each local group advertising their events in the club mag so that people from any other local group can come and take part. When I lived in Kent I was main-man for the East Kent group, who are called the Kentish Hoppers. We ran camps in a member's Mum's farm at the village of Preston, near Canterbury and these were regularly mentioned in blog posts of old.

But it is the Bath local group, the Bath Tub Club who are the subject of this post. The group, run by John Mellor and Carol M who visited us here a while back organise driving tour holidays which in 2cvGB tend to be called 'Raids'. This one, being a tour of the west side of Ireland, got called Eire Raid or, less seriously Hair Aid. We offered to become a port of call on this Raid, as well as a port in a storm, possible free camp site, under cover car repair facility etc if it all went a bit pear shaped.

Well, they have all had a whale of a time and some lovely weather. They have toured all the scenic bits, had some lovely meals and sampled some excellent Guinness and John has kept us all up to date with his blog and reports on Facebook under the heading Hair Aid News. They decided to call in here this afternoon, so we went a bit mad yesterday mowing, tidying the garden and blitzing the house and Liz went into full-on Domestic Goddess mode baking scones, three kinds of cake, lemon biscuits, bacon cheese and chilli biscuits and those chocolate covered Rice Krispies things. We had an army of mugs lined up for teas and coffees, jam, butter and whipped cream for the scones, dogs were walked and banished to upstairs (briefly!) and we were ready.

There were 11 of them in the end - we knew John and Carol and we knew Sue Chalcraft from club AGMs (she was 'Keeper of the Archive') and Jan the Membership Sec but I am rubbish at names so the rest of you, if you read this, I'm sorry but names pass through my brain without really touching down, so I will have to learn them and get to know you better through Face Book. They were all lovely people and it was fantastic to have them here. They loved the place and the geese and goslings, chooks, mini-horses, rabbits, dogs (yes, we quickly let them out of their room once we'd explained about not letting them dash out of a door and get at the goslings) and cats. They descended upon the food like a plague of locusts and we chatted and talked, showed them the place and all the work we have done to renovate it.

All in all it was an excellent 'event'. I think this is their last night of 'Raid'ing so as we said our good byes, some of them were also saying their own good byes to each other as they went their separate ways back to ferries to the UK over tonight and tomorrow. That sad 'end of holidays' feeling we all know so well. Well guys, if you are ever by this way again, do look us up. We love doing this and Liz, particularly loves all the baking and Domestic Goddess-ery. There is something Irish about being hospitable and feeding guests, and Liz has definitely got this gene.

Brilliant.

One More Box Ticked

The screening of the new "Red Sails" barge film at the cinema in Faversham is a huge success attracting a full house (450) with an overflow of 200 more 'bums' for a second screening at 3pm. Faversham people definitely appreciate all things barge. Dad gets into a group of Volunteers who all arrive by coincidence in the lower seats at the left hand side. The group is later joined by a 'celeb' from the Society of Sailing Barge Research called Tricia Gurnett. The film is brilliant (again!) and Mike Maloney (Producer) receives a rousing round of applause. Dad and his group plus Tricia adjourn to the Cambria for a cup of tea below decks.

He then gets a phone call from 2CV Llew who is struggling to source mudguards for the trailer he is building for Dad, and asks Dad to drop in to Trident Trailers right round near our old house. They have one of the desired type and size but can get another brought over from their other shop in Maidstone.

Back at Diamond's, Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce, is recommending "Kir Normande" as a cold cure. It's a 50/50 mix of Creme de Cassis and Calvados which Haggis would argue is a waste of Calva but Dad thinks is not too bad as a medicine, so Diamond and Dad partake of a few in the afternoon while putting the world to rights. 2CV Llew is doing the driving tonight to the 2CV club do, so he can get away with it.

The national 2CV club (2CVGB) is organised as a collection of local groups all meeting in pubs roughly monthly and covering the 2CV demand in their county or part county. Dad's local group. the Kentish Hoppers, meet in a pub called the Haywain in the village of Bramling just east of Canterbury. As the supply of road worthy 2CVs fades (the Government websites have the number down to about 2500 in UK now) these groups are also fading and merging; the Hoppers now are the result of a coalescence of several Kent groups and can still only put up about ten souls on a good day.

Last night they were meeting to eat the Haywain's pub-grub and to bid farewell to Dad, who's been the 'main contact' for the group for ten years or so. They don't do 'chairman' and 'committee' posts; it's not that kind of a meeting. It's usually just a gang of like-minded souls coming together for a beer and chat which is only sometimes about olde cars and 2CVs. Dad was worried that tonight the food would be the Haywain's Christmas menu, so was looking enviously at Mum and Diamond starting to prepare a genuine pasta carbonara. He needn't have worried. The group had swerved the Christmas menu in favour of ordering off the normal menus, so Dad had their delicious game suet-pudding with peas and mash followed by a choc sponge pudding with black cherry sauce and ice cream. Also a pint of Gadd's and a pint of Bombardier. Excellent. Another box ticked in the 'farewell to social groups' agenda. The last one for Dad. There remains only the Mum's work set and landlady Diamond herself.

Deefs