Un vigneron dans un vitrail

Don't you think? To me it looks like a vigneron — a person who grows grapes and makes wine. That's pronounced [vee-nyuh-RÕ], with the French nasal O vowel in the last syllable. We see vignerons working out in the vineyard all the time, but I've never seen one barefooted. Those are bunches of huge grapes. And vitrail [vee-TRY-yuh] is the French for "stained-glass window."

This stained-glass window was designed and fabricated in the 1950s by the artists of the atelier de Pierre Gaudin.

« Une atmosphère féerique »

Sunlight filtered through stained glass inside the St. Nicholas church in Blois       

La chapelle Saint-Laumer dans l'église Saint-Nicolas de Blois

The abbey or monastery that was founded in Blois in the year 924 was dedicated to a saint named Laumer (or Lomer). The Benedictine monks who founded it were fleeing Vikings who had invaded what is now called Normandy, to the north. The existing church in Blois is sometimes called « l'église Saint-Nicolas Saint-Laumer ». It's a long story.

The photos in this post show closer-in to farther-out views of the chapelle Saint-Laumer inside the église Saint-Nicolas and its vitraux (stained-glass windows). On the French Patrimoine-Histoire web site I read:

La chapelle Saint-Laumer est la chapelle des fonts baptismaux. Les vitraux contemporains de l'atelier Pierre Gaudin, plongés dans une architecture romane, créent une atmosphère assez féerique.

("The St. Laumer chapel houses the church's baptismal fonts. Twentieth-century stained-glass windows designed and fabricated by the artist Pierre Gaudin and his collaborators, set in this Romanesque architectural environment, create a magical atmosphere.")

So the ancient name of the Saint-Nicolas church is Saint-Laumer. The Benedictine monks arriving from the north built or were granted the right to occupy an earlier church on the site, but that building was destroyed by fire in the early years of the 12th century. The existing church, as usual modified and expanded over the centuries — the soaring spires for example, date back only to the 19th century — was built later, in the 12th and 13th centuries. I read somewhere that the name of the church was changed to Saint-Nicolas in honor of another Blois church, one that did not survive the 18th-century French Revolution.

Writing the detailed history of a building like this church is a much more daunting task than writing the biography of a human being. The church has stood for nearly 10 centuries and gone through many changes and "improvements" over time. People in different epochs and eras have modified it to suit their tastes and needs. Such is the world. I took these photos last Friday, 05 July 2019.

1950s stained glass designs at St-Nicolas de Blois

The stained-glass windows of the église Saint-Nicolas de Blois, on the banks of the Loire River, were destroyed by Allied bombardments in 1944, as were the town's bridge and several of its neighborhoods. In the 1950s, it was decided to replace the older Saint-Nicolas windows with new, contemporary windows rather try to restore or imitate the old ones. (My source for this information is this web site in French about Saint-Nicolas de Blois.)

A competition was launched in 1955 to award the work of creating new windows to one or more stained-glass artists or workshops. Requirements were that the new windows be very colorful  — for 10 years after the war, plain dull-looking glass panels had replaced the older glass destroyed by the bombings. The organizers of the competition wanted the interior of the church building to be bathed in mult-colored light as it  had been before 1944.

Four artists — Max Ingrand, Pierre Gaudin, Jacques Le Chevallier, and François Bertrand — were awarded the contract. Max Ingrand, the best-known and most-experienced of the four, was chosen to lead and coordinate the project. Some of the new windows were in place by 1959, but then a good amount of the stonework of the church's larger window openings was found to need extensive restoration work before the glass could be put up. Work stopped as scaffolding was erected in the church and stone masons began the needed repairs. Years passed.

In 1964, church authorities complained that the scaffolding was an eyesore. The church was a major tourist attraction in Blois, and churches in France are owned by the government. It took four more years for the repair work to be finished and the new windows to be installed. The planned arrangement of glass panels of different colors was respected for the most part — Max Ingrand saw the work through but passed away in 1969.

The windows in these photos are ones that are more abstract in composition. Others depict historical figures and scenes. More about those tomorrow.

In this post there are ten pictures of nine of the Saint-Nicolas windows, arranged in five composite images. As always, you can enlarge them to see more detailed views. My friend Sue took four of these photos when she visited the church in June 2018. I took the others on July 5, 2019.

Inside Saint-Nicolas de Blois

In its description of Blois, the Cadogan guide to the Loire Valley says: "St Nicholas church has retained its medieval grandeur, even if it looks a bit grim in parts." I'm not sure I agree with the grim part.

When I was in Blois Saturday afternoon, it was very hot outside and the sun was shining brightly. That kind of weather takes away some of the grim feeling old stones and dark interiors can inspire.

It also makes for very strong contrasts in photos like these. I'll just let the images speak for themselves.

It certainly wasn't dark in the church, but it was refreshingly cool compared to 35ºC temperatures outside.

L'église Saint-Nicolas also features dozens of modern, highly colorful stained-glass windows that — quoting and translating a city of Blois historical web site — "create a unique atmosphere that is bathed in blue or yellow light perfect for meditation."

The towers of Saint-Nicolas à Blois

The église Saint-Nicolas de Blois was originally a monastery that had been founded before the year 1000. Construction of the church began in the year 1138 and continued for nearly a century. It replaced an earlier church on the site that had been destroyed by fire.

The church became an important pilgrimage site because it contained the relics of several saints and a fragment of the cross on which Jusus was crucified. At the time of the Hundred Years War the church was fortified to resist attacks by English forces.

Toward the end of the 16th-century French Renaissance, the church was severely damaged during the religious wars that opposed Catholics and Protestants. It was restored over the course of the 17th century.

During the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, the cloister at Saint-Nicolas served as a hospital. The church has been classified as a Monument National in France since 1840.

Originally, there were three large statues on each side of the main doors of the church. Those disappeared long ago. The neighborhood around Saint-Nicolas de Blois was badly bombed during World War II, but the church itself suffered only minor damage.

Blois on the Loire

Yesterday afternoon I drove up to Blois. It was a detour on my way to Tours. I had time, and took advantage of it. It was also an opportunity to spend several hours in the car with the air-conditioning running full blast. The car's thermometer said it was 35ºC outdoors when I got to Blois, about 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan.

Here's a panoramic shot of the Blois riverfront and skyline. This is the biggest town in our département (county), with a population of about 50,000 in the town itself and more than twice that in the urban area. It's an old royal city. I took this photo from the left bank of the Loire River, which you see in the foreground. The water level in the river is pretty low right now.

I was in Blois with a friend from California a year ago, and we tried to go inside the Église Saint-Nicolas (above), which dates back to the 12th century. That makes it nearly a thousand years old. That day in June 2018, I couldn't find a place to park the car. My friend went inside and took some photos while I parked illegally and stayed close to the car. For a year, I've been trying to get back up there and take some photos. Yesterday I finally did.

This photo shows the cathedral of Blois, which isn't as old the the Saint-Nicolas church. It towers over the old city, though. Why was I out and about? Well, our friend Peter finally arrived yesterday, about six hours late, after his plane developed a mechanical problem and had to make an unscheduled stop in Newark (New Jersey). I drove over to Tours to pick him up at the TGV station, where his train pulled in at 8:10 p.m. It's a long story. Mieux vaut tard que jamais, as they say.

Oh, and here's a photo of the old bridge at Blois that I took from near the Saint-Nicolas church on the right bank the the Loire. It was built in the 1700s and has been dynamited and bombarded several times in its history during revolutions and wars (1793, 1870, 1944), and then rebuilt in the old style.

Earthquakes, Paris maps, and diverted flights

The news about the Southern California earthquake is disturbing to me. I feel queasy. I'm re-living our Northern California earthquake experiences — we felt a lot of them. We were living in San Francisco in 1989 — can that possibly be 30 years ago? — when the Loma Prieta earthquake, approximately 7.0 on the Richter scale, struck. I blogged about it here back in 2007 (1, 2, 3, 4).

Several people have mentioned in comments that they have poster-size maps of Paris. We have two of them also, in addition to the aerial photo of the city that I showed yesterday. The one above hangs on the wall in our downstairs WC. The one below, an old Paris metro map, hangs on the wall at the top of the stairs up in the loft. We had both of them in California and moved them to France in 2003. They're not easy to photograph.

Meanwhile, a friend (Peter H.) was supposed to be arriving in Paris this morning, coming in on a United flight from Chicago. Apparently, the plane experienced a mechanical problem over Montreal and had to be diverted to Newark. His plan was to take the TGV high-speed train from CDG airport down to Tours at noontime, change trains there, and arrive in Saint-Aignan at 2:00 p.m. Now we don't know what to expect. Maybe Peter will read this. We're hoping for a phone call later today.

Views of Paris from above

In a comment yesterday, "Diogenes" asked me if a photo I had posted included a partial view of a map of Paris. It did. Well, not a map, actually, but some kind of aerial or satellite photo. Here's a better view of it.

I took this photo in a fairly dark room using a flash. I had to take it from a side angle, and not straight in front of the map, because the flash reflected in the map when I tried to take it straight on. I "corrected" the image in Photoshop to make both the photos you see here.

This second attempt at editing the photo I took is truer to its actual color. It's too bad the image has turned so blue over the years. Walt bought the poster in Paris, probably back in the 1990s, and carried it home to San Francisco. He had it mounted on a board. Then we moved it back to France in 2003. It's almost as wide as a double bed, by the way. I just went and measured it: it's 132 x 80 centimeters — 52 x 31½ inches.

Now it's our turn

The
plumber
finished
his work
yesterday
before
noon.

The two building contractors more or less finished their work by about five o'clock. They'll need to come back, maybe tomorrow, to do some touch-up work. We've already started experimenting with furniture placement. We have a nice mirror to put on the wall over this chest of drawers.

Now our work starts. The first task is cleaning out the guest room and getting it ready for a visitor on Friday. A lot of stuff needs to be moved back into the downstairs WC and the bathroom. A lot more furniture needs to be moved around upstairs too. So I'd better get busy.

I ordered a new rug for the upstairs WC. It was delivered yesterday. I put it in the room this morning to see if and how it fits. The perspective of the photo makes the room look bigger than it is in reality...

Down to the wire

First the weather news. It's actually chilly here this morning. Yesterday was very pleasant. It's been a treat to have a break from the sizzling weather. Meteorologically, at least, things are back to normal.

Progress on the bathroom front is touch and go. The good news is that the plumber came over yesterday and installed the new wall-mounted cabinet-with-a-sink-on-top. That's it on the right. It's quite an improvement. (The photos I posted yesterday were ones I grabbed off the Ikea web site.) We're waiting for the other contractors to come in today to install baseboards all around the new room upstairs.

When Walt told the plumber that I wanted to return the smaller cabinet and sink to amazon.fr for a refund, he said he doubted that they'd be in good enough shape to be returned. However, the little cabinet cleaned up easily. I don't know about the sink yet. I may be stuck with it. The big faucet looks good on the bigger sink.

The plumber also did a little fix up on the sink in the downstairs loo. It looks better, and I cleaned it well with bleach. I think the decision to keep it was the right one. Luckily, we had some of the old blue paint left in a plastic bucket downstairs, so rather than repaint the downstairs petit coin, for the moment we'll just touch up the old paint.

The plumber (a French guy whose done a lot of work and repairs for us over the past three or four years) also said that if we would go ahead and paint the new wall board that hides the frame and tank for the new downstairs toilet, he'd come and install the toilet today. We have enought blue paint for that. Yay. We might have two working half-bathrooms by the time our friend arrives from California on Friday afternoon. Plus, of course, the main bathroom with shower etc., which is already in good shape and open for business.

A keeper, and a goner

I've learned a new term during all this bathroom work: une vasque. That means "a basin" — as a sink or tub. A bathroom sink in France is called un lavabo if it's large, or un lave-mains if it's small. A kitchen sink is called un évier.

Here's the sink in our downstairs WC. After first thinking of replacing it, we finally decided it was a keeper. It's good to keep some original features in the house.

Once our decision was made, we talked to the plumber about putting in a new drain pipe, trap, and plug in the sink. He suggested what he calls un clic-clac. It's a kind of spring-loaded "push-button" plug. You push down on it and it closes; you press down on it again and it pops open. The only disadvantage with it, I think, is that is you have filled the sink with very hot water, putting your hand in there to pop the plug open might be uncomfortable. Previously, the drain in this lave-mains was just a wide open hole. There was a rubber plug hanging on a chain. The danger was that things could fall into the drain. And it was ugly. This looks better, even though the sink and backsplash need a good cleaning and a new bead of silicone.

The "goner" is the new sink I ordered for the upstairs WC. It's just too small. Maybe it feels that way because I wanted such a big faucet on it. I'd like to be able to fill watering cans or other containers because I'd like to keep a few potted plants up in the loft. Hauling water upstairs all the time is a pain.

Problem is, every time I turn on the water in the new "little corner" and stick my hands under it to wash them, water splashes all over the room. We talked to the plumber, who says he can take it down and put up a bigger sink and cabinet. I can return the sink to Amazon for a refund. If the cabinet, after being glued and screwed to the wall, ends up not being returnable because it would be considered damaged, that's okay. We can use it elsewhere. Notice that we still haven't even peeled off the plastic film that was applied to protect the finish from dings and scratches.

So here's the new wall-mounted cabinet and sink. It's the same width as the one above, but it's twice as "deep" — no, I don't mean the depth of the basin. I mean how far it sticks out from the wall. It's 43 x 49 centimeters; that's 17 inches by 19¼ inches. The smaller one pictured above is about the same width but only 22 centimeters (about 9 inches) in the other dimension. I don't know why I thought the new WC was going to be so tiny that it needed a tiny sink. Instead of the tiny lave-mains, now we'll have a full-size lavabo up there. I hope.

The other nice thing about the new cabinet is that it has two big drawers in it for storing whatever we want to store in the new WC. You can probably tell that this is an Ikea product. It has that look. We hope the plumber will come today and do the work of taking down the smaller cabinet and sink and install this model in its place. We're also waiting to have the new toilet installed in the downstairs WC. A friend of ours will be arriving on Friday to spend the weekend, and it sure would be nice to have all the plumbing functional by then.

Weather obsessed. And duck!

Accuweather says the temperature hit 39ºC here yesterday. Our outdoor thermometer, located on the north side of the house, read about 36º. It was about 32º in the house. We closed shutters and shades on the west-facing back of the house (two windows in the loft and 4 on the main level), but we kept the windows on the north and east sides open. I'm not really a fan of living in darkness. We toughed it out, and I was able to sleep when bedtime came.

We had duck legs cooked on the barbecue grill for lunch. I read about cooking them that way on the internet, where a French chef posted his method: put the legs on the grill at very low temperature and cook them for an hour or more. Actually, I cooked them in our countertop oven in a baking dish for about 90 minutes at about 140ºC (285ºF). That way I could "capture" the duck fat they released as they cooked.

Walt then grilled the duck legs to brown them while I opened a jar of the French white beans called mogettes, which are grown and packed in the Vendée region. In other words, we kept indoor cooking to a minimum because it was a hot day. When the duck legs came out of their baking dish and went on the grill, I poured the beans into the dish and stirred them around in the duck fat. I set the dish in the countertop oven until the beans started to bubble slightly. Lunch was then served, with salads (carottes râpées, céleri rémoulade, etc.) following the main course.

* * * * * * * * * *

Back to the weird weather: Accuweather and MétéoFrance both predict a high temperature of about 32ºC for Saint-Aignan today. Their forecasts have been on the high side compared to the temperatures our thermometer has been registering. It's breezy and cool this morning, so maybe it will be significantly cooler all day. Actually, MétéoCiel says we should expect a high of 28ºC this afternoon. That would be nice. It's supposed to turn even cooler tomorrow. We have survived.

France or Las Vegas?

Yesterday France recorded the highest temperature that has ever been recorded in the country. It was about 115ºF (just shy of 46ºC — off the chart) in the town of Gallargues-le-Montueux, in the South of France about halfway between the cities of Nîmes and Montpellier. Here in Saint-Aignan, our thermometer read about 36ºC in the afternoon, and the temperature in the house was in the high 80s in ºF.

I just took this photo of some of our heat-loving potted plants out on the deck. They seem happy with the current weather conditions — as long as we keep them watered. You'll recognize the basil on the right, and that's a Donkey's Tail plant (Sedum morganianum) on the left. It's a Mexican succulent. In the planter box hanging off the deck rail is a clump of Sempervivum tectorum, called Joubarbes in French and Houseleeks or Hens and Chicks in English.

Finally, here are a Jade plant that I've had going for years, and a big pot of Aucuba that seems happy with its growing conditions. Thanks to CHM for the Aucuba cuttings.

Today is supposed to be even hotter here. MétéoFrance, the national weather service, says we should expect a high temperature of 39ºC. Accuweather says to expect a high of 37ºC — that's the normal human body temperature, or 98.6ºF. We'll see who's right.

Today is supposed to be the last really hot day, at least for a while.

Un grand « petit coin »

I'm realizing something this morning. I think we could have made the new WC a lot smaller than we did. I suppose an argument could be made for having made it so spacious. Later, after we're gone, somebody might decide to put a small shower stall in there.

Here's the WC in the gîte rural we stayed in last October in the Vendée, out on the Atlantic coast. It really was a petit coin — and rustic-looking. It was downstairs in the rental property, off the kitchen. There was a full bathroom, with a toilet, sink, and shower, upstairs.

And here's the petit coin in the gîte rural we stayed in last March in Le Puy-en-Velay (Auvergne). It was more finished, felt cleaner, and was located off the living room. There was the same kind of bathroom upstairs as in the Vendée gîte — shower, sink, and toilet.

I thought our new WC was going to be a cramped space. I was wrong. It's a big room, considering its function. We'll be able to put a storage cabinet inside, to the right of the door. We might also decide to put a shelving unit or cabinet of some kind on the opposite side of the room. I'm thinking we might have chosen a larger sink too. Things can always be changed.

Here's the WC door. You can't really see through it, but the frosted glass panels let in daylight from the window on the right. That's nice, even though the light fixture we found and have had installed over the door lights the room more than adequately. In this photo, the light inside is switched on.