Saturday 15 December 2018. Day 199. Day 3.

Friday 14 December 2018. Day 198. Day 2. (contd)

A good day. Didn’t do a lot, but I didn’t waste time, and I didn’t stress myself. It was fun just fiddling in the caravan. And a good discussion with CREN in the afternoon. I didn’t say much as they were all talking French all the time. AC joined us from Grenoble by phone, but I couldn’t get much of what he was saying. Julien Bancatrotti and Matt spoke very clearly. TL does speak very fast and he has an accent, not always easy to follow. CREN work with private property owners to help them navigate the French bureau-scary, and defend themselves against its worst excesses. Also to apply for grants and subsidies – quite a lot available over the next few years under an EU programme to improve water quality (so whatever we do to the lake needs to conform to that and exploit it).

AC cooked cauliflower cheese under DC’s supervision. i.e. DC cooked cauliflower cheese but let AC pretend he’d had something to do with it. DC complained how tasteless French lardons are (they’d bought a packet for the cauliflower cheese) – I said she should have bought proper smoked ham from the butcher’s counter and had him chop it up – or even ask him for panchetta. He’d probably pretend not to know what that was.

The keys to the flat in Barcelona arrived yesterday, in the middle of 12:00 meditation. I heard the loud knocking – the poor post woman has no idea which door to use (and the last one she used has been filled in) and no one was around. DC was struggling out of the EdSpace when I came down and outside. 2 packages – meds for DC and keys for me, with a very clever coded message from SB which I haven’t yet managed to decipher.

TL really quite disagreeable all day. Worried about his party perhaps. Seems pissed off with me for some reason, but then he’s been like that since he got his maraichage. I finally ticked him off about unplugging things without asking, and in this case, entirely unnecessarily. He wanted to play the piano, so he just unplugged my laptop which was completely exhausted, hence plugged in. I just went up and unplugged the keyboard and told him off in very clear terms, and then plugged everything in using the extension blog and lead, which if he’d bothered was there to use all the time. He’s a bit Laura Clarke like – just focuses on what he wants, and basically pushes everything / everyone else aside. Just as he’s monomaniacal about the maraichage (not sharing it with SB), organic principles – you either are or you aren’t and the slightest infraction of the rules and you’re not – you can’t be a bit organic – and very angry, always, about farmers pretending to be organic. Who are his friends? Does no one talk sense to him? And unplugging things and switching lights off. They should be unplugged and switched off, so I will go round unplugging and switching them off regardless. But I also leave the front door open every time I come in or go out. Maybe he’s just dropped his guard. Also a spoilt mummy’s boy. Also fatherless (which may be his problem with me). I saw a photo of his father (who he idolises, I guess – died when he was about 12) – looked exactly like TL.

And JB from CREN looked wonderfully ugly – great hooked beak of a nose, very stringy and thin, strange auburn wispy hair, could have stepped out of one of those Victorian fairy tale woodcut illustrations – Rumpelstiltskin by Dore or Arthur Rackham.

AC bought down his and D’s Christmas decorations. Nice tasteful wooden ones in greens and reds, and lots of lights, so he and TL dressed the tree and decorated the salon. The whole effect is rather sad and naff looking. TL should go and cut down greenery and get brightly coloured cloths (e.g. my lovely seat covers) and go a bit mad – the salon’s much too grand and French for a bit of Christmas tat. I’m going to hang curtains up for him this morning. Then off to Convergence 86 and the great meditators' get together at Blue and Green, wherever that is. Meeting up with J-CM. Jacqueline (JM) was great yesterday. Arrived at 2 pm with J-CM for his meeting with J-CC to discuss the schedule of all J-CC’s jobs that Jean-Claude has been working on – really impressive spreadsheet with exact measurements of everything – so Jacqueline looks around and notes state of the salon (basically covered in 3 or 4 weeks of builders’ plaster and cement dust, floors / walls / furniture). I and TL go upstairs to meet JB and Matt from CREN, AC does something useless (unkind, but I doubt he contributed much) with J-CM and J-CC, and Jacqueline spring cleans the salon. It looks wonderful. And she has disappeared before we get down stairs again. KC retired to her room with the vapours (a silent migraine i.e. there is no headache but there are “other symptoms”). I think DC has as much time for her as I have.

A nice supper. I do the washing up and update my blog in the kitchen. TL plays beautiful things on the piano, and then starts work on his laptop. He has done a minute of our meeting with CREN, which I’ll add to.

And I suppose I should do something about the “food agreement” that KC has produced. Except a) there wasn’t a problem b) all the issues raised we have been discussing (bio / non-bio, veggie / meat, local sourcing, bulk buying, weekly food ordering / budgeting) c) her language and approach – dualistic, patronising, lecturing us. Had she sourced local suppliers or bulk suppliers, that would have been helpful. As it is she has just created work, to produce an unpleasant document that I suspect will be ignored, and pissed off at least 2 of us. I think TL likes it because he can tell us to be organic and bio. The exact reverse of Jacqueline, who arrived, saw a real problem, and did something to sort it out. KC arrived, desperate to use her ‘skills’ to ‘sort us out’, concocts a non-problem (she ignores all the existing systems of shopping lists, labelled shelving, doesn’t even know we have a food budget – never asked me or AC – the opposite of an analyst) and then produces a non-solution. Yet from her talk on Thursday night, I got the impression she had achieved something. Only it turned out they hadn’t, really. Went into a community run by nuns where 25 people came to mass, changed everything, came back in 5 years, same 25 people coming to mass. Was it here, all over again?

Saturday 15 December 2018. Day 199. Day 3.

Woke up at 4am and turned the heating on, and then dozed until 6. The nice thing about not smoking is I don’t have to wake up to make myself a cigarette.

Helped Thomas sort out the Salon for his party (secured the back door, hung up curtains, re-swept the floor, re-arranged the furniture, re-dressed the tree – clearly not something either Thomas or Andrew had ever done or had any idea how to do). Then grabbed a late bowl of pasta and retired to the caravan for an hour, leaving Kathleen beavering away in the kitchen at more cakes, buns, lemon butter. I think Thomas mulled some wine and produced some laminated signs, and had quite a long chat with someone on the phone in the office.

I left with Jean-Claude and Jacqueline at 4:30 for the Convergence86 do in Poitiers. All the meditators assembled from everywhere (I think the Tibetan nuns from St Sauvin came the furthest) - I did a quick head count and reckon there were about 120 there. Our Zen abbot who visited us in the summer about holding a retreat here came up to say hello after and I told him we must come and visit him in his dojo. I still have his card in The Naked Now as my bookmark. All very jolly. And J-C managed our contribution very well. We were last of the 13 to read our little piece. J-C talked briefly about the Poitiers group, Bonnevaux and the WCCM and then we alternated French and English reading the closing prayer, which was rather appropriate for the whole thing, and could have been planned. Then we all meditated for 20 minutes and went home about 7:40. Brigitte V. arrived late, she’d been caught by the gilets jaunes, which J-C had cleverly guided us around in the dark through St Benoit. I chatted all day in a sort of French, which people pretended to understand.

La B had had a nice afternoon with her mum, said she’d told her about me, so this must be serious, and then she went to bed at 9:30. I ended up going to sleep pretty early too, after watching a couple of YouTube videos. SB took a brilliant sky scape, like a Fuseli or a Turner, on the way to Schwyz.