Newsletter – No 16

December 2007

I had hoped to keep up the momentum and produce a newsletter every three months, but I guess the sheer volume of guests in 2007 has put paid to that. I find myself, four days from the end of 2007, trying to remember what has gone before in the past six months!

It’s been a strange year weatherwise, with very few of the warm evenings we usually enjoy and with a few notable exceptions, jumpers, cardigans and fleeces were much in evidence if we wished to continue our evenings in the garden. For the first time in 7 years, I needed a fleece to keep me warm whilst I watched the Bastille Day celebrations in Carcassonne. However, despite a pretty cold spell towards the end of November and in early December, we now seem to be back to normal, with sunny days, bright skies and wonderful mild wintry days. The vines are in the process of being pruned back hard as is usual in winter - they look to me as though they are fields of walking sticks. The winter wheat is offering bursts of bright green fields to break up the beiges and browns of the dormant vineyards, and the winter jasmine is already producing its lovely little yellow flowers. The choisya is not sure what time of year it is and has lots of buds in preparation for the highly fragrant mock orange blossom it would normally produce in Spring….

I am delighted to tell you that Philippe, of the wonderful Belgian cyclists, called in to say hello with his wife and children, whilst he was on holiday in the area, and it is now agreed that he has been here five times and will be celebrating his sixth anniversary with the others in May!

Sid is currently back in Perth for the Christmas period - he claims he had to leave China to get his visa renewed, but I think it was just a ruse to swap the minus 10 degrees he was suffering up the mountain in Yantai, for the plus 40 degrees of Australia at Christmas. He heads back out to China in a couple of weeks and plans to be there until the end of September or thereabouts.

July presented interested parties with the opportunity, once again, to get a few photos of some high speed lycra bottoms as the Tour de France once again sped past the village on the D118. Thankfully this year it did not coincide with Bastille Day – a lotistical nightmare in its own right……. This year we had the van and four cars all in convoy trying to find parking spaces in Carcassonne for Bastille Day fireworks. Having been diverted down to the riverbank and discovered a wonderful parking area around the back of the sports centre, I was mortified to discover that the van was too tall to get into the parking…. Much reversing, to-ing and fro-ing ensued as I endeavoured to get out the way of the cars all blindly following me so that they could park and I could find another space more suited to the van’s size. Those of you who have been in the van for an exercise in parking are aware it has no power steering and is incredibly heavy, so some million manoevres later I finally managed to park up against an electrical sub-station inspection area. Fortunately they did not need access that evening, or if they did, they gave up trying to open the door against the tow bar of the van…. The fireworks were, yet again, amazing and the live band in the Place Carnot afterwards was really good as well.

This has been a year of wonderful volunteers – as always. Morgan a former guest of three years earlier, Hannah – a guest from 2006, and Mandy who has been a guest so many times over so many years, was finally persuaded to try the volunteering thing!! Marie – one of my earliest ever guest/volunteers came back for a couple of weeks holiday with her Mum and little Malachy and then came back again in September bringing with her little Malachy, Leon, Issy and Bron to look after everything whilst I snatched a welcome quick week’s break. These wonderful people were all former guests who wanted to give the volunteering a go, but there were all the others who gave their time, their skills and their input to make Sidsmums such a special place to be.

Jo-Anne (from Belfast) and Ian (from Saskatchewan) little thought, when they arrived just before Bastille Day for about two weeks, that they would still be here at the beginning of December. A series of incidents – their car, lack of finances, my need for someone to care for Georges and Jim when I did the “birthday run” for grandson Tom’s 4^th birthday on 5^th December meant that they just stayed and stayed and stayed. They undertook an amazing amount of work in their time here – most notably when the hostel quietened down and they redecorated all the twin rooms, the bathrooms AND the new dorm for which I am eternally grateful. My friend Julie gratefully borrowed them to dog-sit so that she could rush off to the UK……. There is, quite obviously, a huge need for dog-sitters – perhaps we should get something up and running!

I am really pleased to say that in addition to loads of little jobs this year, we managed to get the woodburning stove installed in the hostel to encourage those cosy evenings indoors when the weather is less than perfect. There’s nothing quite like it for warming the nether regions as well as the hostel!! Also, after quite a few years of wondering what to do with the area which has become known as the “volunteer quarters” (formerly destined to have been Sid’s apartment), I had a minor brainwave, got the amazing Ken back in for yet more work and now have a superb combined dorm and volunteer area, complete with it’s own sitting room. One of the main advantages will be during the colder months when I cannot really utilize the cabins and am normally restricted to the three twin rooms. Now we have six dorm beds available doubling the number of guests we can take during the winter months. Hopefully the photos will be up on the website very soon for you to check them out. You will also see a photo of our new bistro-style kitchen of which we are extremely proud!

Despite my doubts to the contrary, after much persuasion from the amazing Hilary (wife of Chris aka Chez Dog) I took the TEFL course online and to my utter joy passed with a very creditable mark. Conversations had turned frequently to the benefit of using the hostel for homestay students wishing to improve their English without having to put up with the English rain, and the TEFL course was a natural progression. Fired up with enthusiasm, I followed this with a FLE course at Limoux – only this time I was the student – FLE is Francais Langue Etranger – in other words French as a foreign language, which I absolutely adored. Hopefully the few French speaking guests we have will appreciate my new fluency! Hopefully any homestay guests who give us a try will enjoy our multi-national environment and dramatically improve their English whilst having fun in our relaxed and friendly environment.

2007 has been a year of hellos and goodbyes. Some goodbyes have been quite definitive, others only temporary. Loads of lovely new guests, lots of returning guests and hopefully many new friends who will be back again, maybe not in 2008, but 2009 or 2010. Sadly O’Sheridans – the Irish pub in Carcassonne – closed its doors earlier this year – never quite the same without Sid, Maddy and Tim behind the bar, it finally conceded defeat. Hopefully some enterprising person will buy it and turn it back into the place to be in Carcassonne. Happily, after a three year wait, I am delighted to tell you that we now have a shop in Preixan. It is called a superette and although fairly small, seems to stock anything and everything you might need to feed yourselves as well as some pretty amazing local wines which have to be sampled… It is very conveniently placed at the end of our lane.

Georges is in the garden watching out for new (victims) guests willing to play with him, Jim is fast asleep on the sofa and, in his absence, the robins are busily picking the insects off the banksia rosa and I am about to head off to make myself a coffee. However as I take my leave of you, I would like to wish each and every one of you a happy, healthy and exciting 2008. Take care, have lots of fun and don’t forget to put Sidsmums on your wish list of places to stay – at the top of course!

Jan, Georges & Jim

and the, almost always, absent Sid