Page 326 - Demo

322liked the winter even though it was cold but it was usually dry. We bought and fitted a wood burning stove which kept the main room warm. I bought a whole load of metre long logs from Mamie Welter who lived across the road, and they kept us going for several years. Of course, I needed a chainsaw to cut them into suitable lengths. All the houses in the area had large, neat wood piles in their gardens. The wood slowly dried during the summer, and we then moved part of it into the barn. Mamie spoke no English although her daughter, Patricia, who was in the personnel protection branch of the gendarmery did although she was only there from time to time. And very reluctant to attempt English when she was. On one of the first occasions I visited, Mamie%u2019s husband came across, walked straight into the front room and told me about Grandma which is what he called the previous owner although she was no relative. Conversations were slow as my French was awful at that time, but we struggled on, and I would have liked to get to know him better. I knew he was ill as he had some form of dialyses each day. One year when we arrived, Pierre came and told us that he had died recently. We went over to pay our respects expecting Mamie to say something of the order %u201cHe was old and had been ill for some time%u201d. Instead,she burst into tears and gave us a hug. She was clearly very distraught. We sat her down but could not do the English thing of making a cup of tea. I tried hard to say the right things, but this was not a conversation I had ever had in my French lesson roll play. We stayed with her for some time before making our escape exhausted. Mamie became a good friend in the years ahead, always bringing round a lettuce always with a sprig of tarragon, or other vegetable from her garden. I have to say that lettuce from her garden always tasted good and I eventually came to see that if when you wash a lettuce you do not find a slug in it, then it probably is not worth eating. She once gave me some redcurrants and a steamer to make them into jelly and once a large basket full of various types of mushrooms. In the autumn lots of people gathered fungi in the