A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  After passing the first test with flying colours, the dining room was next on Steve’s list. Only two walls required his attention in there and we booked him in immediately. Thereafter, we employed Steve whenever we could afford him and over time he has become a bit of a fixture at the château.

  My mind was so full of château renovations that I had to pull my focus away and get my head around who was going to host our wedding. Never have I, or will I, be in a position where I’m not watching over the details at an event, but Dick and lots of our friends and family had already spoken to me and asked that I please step down from being ‘me’ and just be the bride for the day. It’s actually harder said than done and I knew the only chance I had was if I called in my A-team: my beautiful and very talented hosts from the Vintage Patisserie days. With years of experience of being charming and making and pouring cocktails in teapots, I knew I could trust them to be my eyes and ears on the day and then maybe I’d have a chance to relax. Sharon, Fleur, Sophia, Bethany, Lucy and my first-ever hostess Leah came to the rescue and front of house was covered.

  Next we had to organise the kitchen and I knew Dick was not going to let anyone leave without being fed delicious food from the château kitchen. For that we booked our chef friend Alan. We knew we would have lots of family on hand to help but we also called in the support of a couple of other working chefs. With just over three months to go, our wedding was starting to feel real.

  With activity in the château reaching fever pitch, it was time for a quick break and a family outing to Mayenne. This beautiful historic town, ten minutes to the north of the château, had been the centre of the administration of the area before the prefecture moved to Laval, the much larger city to our south. With the move of all the administrative posts a lot of employment has gone, so now it is a fairly quiet town on the banks of the river that shares its name. If we need to pop to a supermarket we go to Mayenne, but we’d never really explored the town itself. We decided that lunchtime was the right time to see what was on offer and, rather than going straight to the centre, we decided to look along the riverbanks. There is an old saying, ‘I’d rather be lucky than smart’, and we hit pay dirt on our first outing. The Beau Rivage is a lovely little hotel on the banks of the river on our side of town. By 12.15pm it was busy, which was a good sign, and the four of us managed to get the last table there.

  The décor could only be described as in need of a bit of updating but the huge windows overlooking the river made up for it in a spectacular fashion. We looked outwards and the children looked inwards as they weren’t interested in the slow-moving water and the occasional person walking along the towpath. (There are locks on the river as it’s navigable so we assumed that’s what the pathway was.) Looking the other way, Arthur was fascinated by the grill that occupied a large part of one wall. It was a vertical grill and various meats and fish were slowly rotating under their own momentum and cooking.

  A quick check showed a selection of different menus and specials of the day. It was obvious that an evening meal at this particular hotel would have ended up being quite expensive but even the most decadent of lunches was less than £20 per person. Arthur and Dorothy’s healthy appetites were soon satisfied as their dishes arrived quickly and, as we had come to expect, were mini versions of grown-up food. We cut up the moist chicken breast for Arthur. This was served with a creamy tarragon and wine sauce and rice with vegetables. Lovely! After a quick check that there were no bones in Dorothy’s fish, and a little squish of her boiled potatoes, they were off. Angela and I didn’t need to mention to each other that we both looked forward to ‘helping’ them finish their plates, just to ensure the plates were returned to the kitchen empty to show our appreciation, of course.

  We have it on very good authority that the foie gras our region is well known for is no longer produced through force-feeding, so we went for that for one of the starters. It was the most memorable part of the meal. We half expected a chilled solid block of the liver; however what came was three slices of warm, seared foie gras along with a fresh, warm fig chutney and some spiced bread. We have learnt from experience that cooking foie gras is not for the faint-hearted. As it is expensive, the slices tend to be thinner, so if your pan is not very hot, instead of a seared and slightly caramelised piece, you end up with a pan of fat and no foie gras. It just melts to nothing. What we were served that day was delicious and completely melt-in-your-mouth (rather than the pan) yumminess. The chutney and bread were perfect with it, as there was a slight acidity to the chutney to cut through the fattiness of the liver and the almost Christmassy warm spices in the bread paired wonderfully with the other flavours. As is our normal practice, we shared every dish and as it was so rich a little went a long way. It may be cheesy, and a little soppy, but when we share food it is almost a competition to give each other the prize morsel.

  The trout that had been grilled vertically was lovely too, particularly the crisp buttery skin. Though getting the flesh from the bones took some effort, it was so worth it, as it allowed you to savour every little bit that you salvage from the ever-growing pile of debris.

  Whenever we have a lunchtime menu in France the dishes always appear to be quite small but somehow by the end of the meal we are satiated. Maybe it’s the fact that we eat slowly over a longer period of time or maybe the plates are huge and it just makes the portions look smaller. Whatever it is; we don’t usually end up hungry by the end of it, though on this occasion it could have been because we practically licked Arthur and Dorothy’s plates clean for them …

  That very first job I ever did at the château of making the entrance safe had only ever been intended as a quick fix. There was still a need to do it properly once and for all, and it was pressing to have this sorted before the guests arrived for our wedding. Nearly every one of the tiles needed to be taken up, the mortar removed from the bottom and sides and then replaced. Not a trivial job as the mortar was a hard mix that needed to be laboriously removed with a grinder. There is an old military saying that a volunteer is worth ten pressed men. To the rescue came Angela’s dad, Steve. He is the first to acknowledge that he has not got a lot of DIY experience but he is a willing volunteer! So started dozens of man hours grinding tiles. The tiles were worryingly easy to get up but the sides and underneath needed to be ground smooth so they could be relaid flat and neat.

  After a discussion, we established a tile-grinding area to one side out the front of the château and we also made up a jig for holding the tiles. It was then down to the very noisy, dusty task of grinding off the mortar. Thank goodness for the one-year guarantee on power tools.

  My initial fix had involved slates and angle brackets but now it was time to replace the joists. There was a hole in the basement ceiling from my initial investigations, so now it was a case of attacking from above and below. The beams in the house are so seasoned and solid that they feel like they are made of concrete rather than wood, so replacing the joists was a matter of removing the old ones and putting in and levelling new ones. After a couple of weeks, there was a pile of ‘as new’ tiles, the plywood that had protected everyone from falling in the hole that went down to the basement floor was taken away and the threshold was brought back to life with the beautiful 150-year-old tiles.

  It always sounds easier than it was when I write it down, but admittedly this task was reasonably straightforward and very satisfying because I knew that, once the joists were in and level, the insulation packed around them and the tiles laid, the floor of the entrance would outlive me. So that was a task well and truly crossed off.

  From the very start of our renovations, there have been a couple of huge jobs hanging over us. The roof needs to be replaced quite soon, the render on the outside of the château needs to be redone and then there were the windows …

  Our first objective was to stop the elements entering the château, so many of the rotten/rotting windows were screwed shut. In a couple of cases, the shutters had been screwed shut so we couldn’t see
the windows – out of sight was out of mind – but that wouldn’t be acceptable for our wedding celebrations. Things needed to be sorted. The glass had been replaced where necessary but the panes were not just rectangles of glass, the corners were curved and of course they were all different sizes. The windows were not mass produced and bought off the shelf – each had been handmade by a skilled craftsman to fit the opening left by the skilled masons who had made the walls. We did have some new windows in the château – about eight out of sixty had been replaced by double-glazed UPVC or aluminium windows. From a distance they were not terrible to look at, and most importantly they worked, but there was something very special about the original windows. The panes are not completely flat and most have a sort of ripple on them, so when you look through them the world outside almost moves and shimmers as you turn your head. They must have been the best that could be made 150 years ago.

  The windows were another an ongoing discussion between Angela and I: she wanted the double-glazed ones replaced first but when lots of our windows didn’t work at all, it made no sense to me that we would start by taking out the best ones. Therein lies the difference between us. My definition of ‘best ones’ and Angela’s are poles apart. It’s the difference between functionality and form. I have to concede that the wooden windows with their lovely metal catches are much nicer to look at. Indeed, even the way they were built with one side being convex and the other concave so they come together and provide a draft-resistant join is very clever, but the fact they are so ornate with curved corners makes each window a significant task. In today’s world, I’d expect to just take a measurement and send it off to get a high-performance, admittedly UPVC, double-or triple-glazed window to be installed in the opening and in the process reduce our ongoing heating bills. Not only could they be bought and installed in batches but performance is important to maximise the efficiency of our home.

  Then, at the end of July, we spotted another double-glazed window, to the right of the front door, complete with ornate metalwork. It looks exactly like all the original windows but someone had made it thick enough to take double-glazed panels. In that moment, my argument was completely undermined. I had nowhere to go other than to say yes to wooden windows, as long as they performed. Having produced a spreadsheet of what was required to sort the ground-floor windows in our reception rooms, I headed off to buy the seasoned oak for the frames so we could at least start this mammoth task.

  France treats its oak trees as a natural resource and there are sawmills all around us, so I set off full of confidence, only to be wrong-footed almost immediately. A very helpful chap showed me the stack upon stack of seasoned planks of every size, really happy that he could do exactly what was required to give me the wood I needed. The downside was that delivery would be mid-September at the earliest. We appeared to have a slight problem and it didn’t take long to discover that this was not an isolated issue. We didn’t know that most of the firms we would be dealing with for our renovations shut for August, plus or minus a little depending on what day the month starts on, and obviously the lead-up to August is busy, so a bow wave of work forms that takes most of September to catch up on. It was back to the drawing board and we needed to make some decisions about what we actually thought we could complete in the next three months.

  Summer saw us enjoying the type of heat that encourages you to relax. Every day was a pleasure, though many of them we did not enjoy as fully as possible as we were deeply entrenched in preparing rooms for electricians or plasterers. The light in the evening was very special and we learnt the meaning of the golden hour, when the sun starts to set, bathing the front of the château in beautiful light. We took to sitting on the stairs and having a drink together. It couldn’t have been classed as an aperitif as we had eaten with or soon after the children, but neither was it a nightcap, as when we retired upstairs to our suite, we continued working, making lists and sourcing materials and fittings. We thought of them more as our moments of sanity and intimacy and we came to treasure them.

  The seasonal fruit and vegetables encouraged us to eat healthily and we made lots of salads or chargrilled vegetables (aubergines, fennel and courgettes – though we begrudged buying courgettes as they are so easy to grow and each plant is so prolific, but that would have to wait until next year …) soaked in olive oil with lots of salt and usually served as bruschetta on chargrilled bread (not toasted!) that had been rubbed with a raw clove of garlic.

  The children’s playroom had been plastered. We had tackled our majestic staircase, it was plastered and painted, and even the ceiling looked like new. And with the entrance floor once more as strong as it had ever been, it felt like we had finally made some progress. The decision whether or not to try to tackle the windows had been taken out of our hands and we had sent in rafts of paperwork to ensure we could actually get married. We even had enough crockery, despite the growing numbers anticipated at the wedding. All we were missing was our suntans.

  * * *

  * The civil legal framework of France, established in 1804 by Napoleon Bonaparte.

  * If you own a property in France, you have to pay waste collection tax, water tax, ownership tax and residence tax.

  * A commune is a local administrative unit. There are 242 communes in our département of Mayenne.

  * A Livret de Famille is a family record book that is issued when you get married in France.

  * A French buying and selling site similar to Gumtree.

  * Scaffolding.

  chapter eight

  AUGUST

  August is the height of summer and in Mayenne the temperatures are high. The colours are starting to lose their vitality and the grasses have yellowed. Driving around, we were surprised by how many fields of sweetcorn there were and the cobs visibly fattened through the month. When we asked Jacques about it, he explained that it wasn’t ‘sweet’ corn as we may think about it. It was maize for the dairy industry, which is apparently higher in protein, to help feed the milk-producing herds over winter. We made a note to ourselves that it obviously grew well in the département, so when our garden was up and running, we would have to plant a bed of sweet sweetcorn. It may appear negative, but the days start to draw in throughout August and you have to enjoy every chance to spend an evening in the sun. The long, sunny days continued to heat up the steps of the château and we were often drawn to sitting on them in the evenings so we didn’t felt like we had missed out on the beauty of the day.

  I cannot bear the idea of the children waking up and one of us not being there, so I tended to work at an ear-range distance. We had invested in the best possible baby monitor and apps that worked on the WiFi or 3G, but none managed to battle through the three-foot supporting walls of the château. I mean, what if there was an earthquake, or lightning struck our suite, or a bat flew into the room and into one of the kids … Dick tells me the probabilities are nearly non-existent, but mums don’t take risks. Our suite was comfortable, so I spent most of my evening hours working in what is now known as our ‘horizontal office’.

  I love putting mood boards together. The colours, textures and order of it all makes me smile. Since a young age, I’d put together boards of ideas, even if it was just a school project. It’s like a creative plan that helps bring your thoughts together and lets you see what elements do not sit well on a page. I find it helps my very busy mind stay focused and not be wooed by tempting distractions (such as another colour of paint that is also nice!). But, like every plan, it’s there to be deviated from.

  I was still working on the décor for the ground-floor rooms and with this particular project my enemy was a dark horse. I had been struggling with the costs of everything in France, from the second-hand items to DIY products. Paint especially was criminally expensive. Or at least it appears to be after you have spent thirty-five years living in England. For a 2.5-litre pot of a well-known brand of paint you will pay around €40 in France. To make it worse, the quality also appears to be different. It’s ver
y runny and always ends up looking patchy. We did not have many people we could ask simple questions of, but we had our ex-pat handyman Julian, who was happy to tackle any odd jobs, and then there was plasterer Steve. When we quizzed them we realised that this was a just a thing you had to accept; consequently, they normally brought ten-litre tubs of white paint back from the UK. This sparked an idea.

  I had a plan for the entrance hall based on something I had done in my Vintage Patisserie in London. It involved using 3D details to add a burst of colour to an otherwise light and relatively simple space. In the Vintage Patisserie, I had butterflies all over the walls attached with little pieces of polystyrene to give them their 3D effect. It worked very well and I always loved it. I wanted to recreate this magic in the entrance hall.

  For the moment, I had to keep my focus and find foundations to get the right feel: I wanted the walls to feel smooth and velvety. If the colour and texture were right (light and matt), I knew the 3D details would look amazing, so I decided to mix my own paint. With this design, less was more – so it would also save us lots of money.

  Normally Dick loves a money-saving idea but in this instance he was more than grumpy because he (rightly) said I would never be able to rematch the paint – it’s an art that even the most complex machines struggle with. So to make sure that didn’t become a problem I ended up making lots of extra, which, of course, then needed to be stored and, by the time the wedding came, it took over a third of Dick’s workshop. I feel a tinge of guilt writing this, but then a girl has to do what a girl has to do.