Shards and slivers

A journal of château life - 10th-16th May 2026

Shards and slivers – audio version

Sunday 10th May

Flour runs through my hands as I rub the cold chunks of butter through my fingertips, gently breaking each lump into smaller and smaller pieces. With a knife I briskly stir through some milk, bringing together a raggedy dough. I tip the lumpy mess and unincorporated flour onto the cold granite worktop, quickly and gently kneading it into a neater ball, gathering up the rest of the flour as I work.

I’ve been thinking of scones ever since I made the strawberry jam and after a day in the garden, deadheading roses, raking gravel and tidying borders I can think of nothing better to eat. I press the dough into a rough round and stamp out six scones with a fluted cutter. I gather the scraps together and stamp out another five.

They take 12 minutes to bake, their tops just golden, some grown so tall that they’ve toppled sideward. No matter, they all taste perfect still warm from the oven, topped with strawberry jam and a dollop of mascarpone in lieu of clotted cream. I can’t resist a second one, this time with butter and jam, sweet and salty all at once. A well earned treat after hours of gardening with no time for lunch.

(I’ll be sharing my scone recipe in our next château newsletter - sign up to that mailing list via our website. There’ll also be new of next year’s retreats in that one too.)

Monday 11th May

I’m emptying the water from my flower buckets into the pots on the terrace when I hear a crash and smashing glass, Tim bellows for help but I have no idea where he is. I drop my bucket and start to run, shouting as I do to find out which way to go. I’d swapped my wet wellies for slippers when I came in from the cutting garden and they flap unhelpfully around my feet, slowing me down. I kick them off, running in my socks, the gravel of the terrace biting into my feet.

Inside my socks slip on the salon tiles, sending me skidding around the corners. I take the stairs two at a time, running as fast as I can to reach Tim in the Garden Room. There’s glass all over the floor, the huge old mirror that we inherited with the house has tipped forward and is balanced on the top of Tim’s head, one of his arms is holding it and stopping it from toppling onto the floor, his other arm is holding a tray that teeters on the edge of the marble fireplace.

Together we push the mirror back into place, leaning it back against the wall as Tim jostles the tray to stop the rest of the cups and glasses from tumbling onto the floor. The glass around my feet sparkles and glints in the sunshine that’s just breaking through the grey clouds and streaming in through the open window. We both let out a long breath.

The mirror amazingly isn’t broken, just a jar of homemade brownies which are now sprinkled with shards and slivers of glass. Tim had balanced the tray full of cups and glasses on the fireplace, had caught it when it slipped and pushed it backwards to stop it falling, sliding it into the base of the mirror and causing it to overbalance. His head had saved it, but he didn’t have arms enough to push it back up without losing the rest of the tray.

I retrieve my slippers from the terrace and the dustpan and brush from the cupboard. I sweep up every piece of glass while Tim cleans our handprints from the mirror, both of us grateful that it’s still intact. The brownies are done for, but thankfully we have plenty more, there are always more brownies, but old mirrors are harder to find.

Tuesday 12th May

When I open the door of the salon to set the breakfast tables the sweet, sugary scent of peonies fills my nose. I picked some yesterday from one of the back borders because the rain has made their huge heads too heavy for their stems and they were lying helplessly on the gravel, pink petals crushed into the stones. Now they are standing tall, twisted into a vase with ranunculus, foxgloves and some mock orange and it all smells delicious.

We have a quiet day today, the guests all staying for a few days and no one new arriving, giving us a free afternoon. We spend it in the sitting room, filling screw holes and caulking gaps, securely fixing the mouldings into the panelling and getting everything prepped for the final round of painting.

Tim is high up a ladder filling and caulking the new ceiling mouldings, making them perfect so you wouldn’t know that they hadn’t been there forever. If you lie on the rug in front of the log burner and stare at the ceiling you can hardly tell the difference between with old moulding and the new. It’s hard to imagine now how this room looked at the start of last winter, it’s changed so much. Slowly but surely we’re putting it back together, almost getting to the finishing touches that will make it feel like it’s always been this way.

Wednesday 13th May

Buttercups are shivering and swaying in a northerly breeze, the sun peeping in and out of the clouds. François cows are back in the meadow by the drive, a herd of white Charolais’ and their babies, watching us, unblinking as we pass by. Swallows are dipping and swooping over the field, skimming the tall yellow petals of the buttercups, scooping up bugs as they fly.

There’s something peaceful about cows, I feel my heartbeat slow and my shoulders drop as I watch them quietly chewing their cud. They stare back and I wonder what they make of me and my big black dog who sits beside me, staring too? Monty sniffs, pointing his nose in the air, catching their warm, hay-sweet scent, a smell that reminds me of England and being small. The cows are lying down now, grouped together in the grass, a few standing sentinels on guard, the others hinting at rain later perhaps?

We have errands to run today once our chores are done, supplies and equipment to gather for our cookery retreat at the end of the month. We come home laden with bags of whisks and mixing bowls, baking sheets and measuring spoons, but not one rolling pin, decent rolling pins are hard to find locally it seems. Fortunately there’s still a few week to track some down.

I also have four big trays of strawberries for jam and I sit at the kitchen island hulling and chopping them, dousing them in sugar to sit overnight before they get boiled up tomorrow. Laurie is cooking dinner as I work, he wants to be a chef and has been cooking for us every Wednesday for a few weeks now, planning his menus and creating a meal with just a modicum of help from me; keeping me close for reassurance but not letting me interfere. I sit and watch him work, gaining confidence with each new dish.

Thursday 14th May

Hail rattles on the windows, scattering like salt over the garden, making me wrap my arms around myself as I stand inside and watch it fall. The sun has been in and out all day, peeping out between showers, rain clouds and storms carried along by the wind. It feels like the weather we missed in April is all coming now, the cool nights and scattered showers that were misplaced by the early heatwave.

The Saints de Glace, the Blackthorn winter, were meant to end yesterday, but this run of chilly days seems to be lasting a little longer this year. There’s no sign of a late frost, but the nights are definitely far colder than they have been of late. The temperature dipping to single figures, sending us searching out extra jumpers and socks.

I’ve been moving my trays of seedlings and pots of dahlias in and out all week; letting them harden themselves to the weather all day but tucking them back up at night. Next week I should be able to start planting out, finally filling the cutting garden beds as we coast down hill to the summer.

Friday 15th May

Each year we try to make tiny tweaks to help the business run more efficiently. Little adjustments to make it easier to get everything done with just the two of us here most of the time. This year has been all about backs and joints.

We have rearranged cupboards and shelves to make sure that the things we use most often don’t have to be bent for. The heaviest dishes have been moved up to a higher shelf so that, at the end of a night like last night when I’ve cooked dinner for nine, I don’t have to squat down after hours on my feet to put them away, my knees screaming as I try to stand back up.

Candles, napkins, placemats and table linens are now arranged neatly in the sitting room cupboards, at eye height rather than in the depths of a dark dresser. There’s a side table beside the new sofa that we can rest heavy trays on if the door to the hall has blown shut, and the cheese boards are hung on a hook in the laundry room to save space on the shelves.

The biggest change though is the wall we took down. The mean, narrow doorway between the old galley kitchen and the sitting room is gone. The mean narrow doorway that I used to clip my knuckles on at least once as day as I eased through its just-wide-enough-gap with my heavily laden trays. The mean narrow doorway that I would sometimes misjudge and clip with the corner of my tray, sending its opposite corner ricocheting into my ribs to knock the wind out of me. The mean narrow doorway is gone and I don’t miss it one bit.

It took me a while to notice the absence of the doorway, the ease of walking through the new space quickly taken for granted, but my knuckles and ribs are certainly happier. Our knees and backs too are grateful for the changes. Such small things make such a difference to morale. Hopefully come the end of September will feel a tiny bit less broken.

For now it’s only May, we’re just a few weeks in and we have plenty of energy for rushing back and forth to the gîte, getting it ready for its next guests, prepping the house for the weekend and sneaking in an hour to rest our feet before we start hosting again.

Saturday 16th May

It’s me up ladders today, a ball of string in my pocket, a pair of scissors in my teeth. Part of the Generous Gardener rose that grows up the front of the house and under our bedroom window has come loose from its fixings, pulled down by the weight of its own buds, but no doubt given a helping hand by the wind and rain of the last week.

Untangling the stems is difficult, the leaves snag on the thorns and the new growth is delicate and easily snapped. Tim keeps shifting his weight at the base of the ladder, sending vibrations up the rungs and making me clutch at the rails in fright. I pepper him with broken stems in protest.

My hands are scratched and punctured with thorns, but eventually the heavy stems are tied back to their wires, the swollen buds secured in place ready to flower when the sun reigns again. Gingerly I climb down the ladder, trying hard not to trample geraniums and salvias in the process. Tim is free from footing the ladder and quickly disappears while I get distracted with string and bamboo canes trying to support the heavy stems of other roses about to flower.

Time in the garden seems to run at a different speed, minutes slipping away into hours and before I know it the afternoon is well on its way and the next guests will soon be here. Tomorrow I’ll have more time, almost a whole day in the garden to get things done.

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