As you’ll see in the following storyline, Esme Gat-Tooth, the witch, treats the Abbot with active disdain. Her back story is that she once stole the Abbey’s precious relics, the finger bones of St Cyril the Fingerless, and held the Abbot to ransom over their return.
What was her price? Money? Gold? Nothing so materialistic. All she wanted - and this being the 14th century, this was a big deal - was to be able to practice her ways without interference and in peace, without being forced to renounce her witchcraft.
Grudgingly, the had Abbot accepted, on the grounds that the legend of the relics told that if these miraculous artefacts left the Abbey for seven days, then the brotherhood would wither and die. Being thus forced to accept her demands, however, does not make him feel generously towards her and their relationship is characterised by constant needling and intentional irritation. In both directions, as you’ll see as the story develops…
As is my practice, the first three strips set the scene for the fourth, which is the latest.
And so to today’s damp tale..
A couple of weeks ago, a flyer was put through our letterbox here in South-West France. It said, in effect, that if our house had a history of problems with “l’humidité”, or damp, this firm had the answer with its proven method of damp correction.
I should point out that in rural France, any house that you buy is likely to have been built without a damp-proof course. Which means that unless you are very fortunate, there will be long-standing issues with rising damp in your walls. It’s an absolute scourge but the French don’t seem all that bothered by it and when they are, they simply cover up the damp areas with tongue-and-groove pine. It looks great but behind these pretty coverings will be a surprising variety of fungi, mildew and moss.
When we bought our house, the front room, which gives onto the main street in the town, was entirely lined with tongue-and-groove pine strips, like a traditional Norwegian sauna house. At the time, I thought this an attractive design element, especially as my father had been very proud of installing exactly the same kind of thing in our bathroom in north London. Indeed, his handiwork had been excellent, with sunken bulkhead lighting and tasteful staining of the pine.
However, soon after we took ownership, and of course, responsibility for the house, an old friend from the Dordogne came to visit. Sitting in the wood-covered room, he cast a baleful eye over the decor and declared that it was a “cache-misère”. I asked what that meant and he said that it was highly unlikely that the wood had been applied for the purpose of decoration. He was quite sure that it was there to cover something quite serious. A “cache-misère”, in English, is something that is designed to “hide some sort of misery”.
Soon after his visit, we appointed local contractors to start on the full renovation of the house. They have since become our firm friends here and indeed, did a fabulous job of bringing the house pretty much up to date.
We were living in England back then, and coming to visit every six to eight weeks for a few days at a time. This was back in the days when I had an income, so it was costly but enjoyable.
Alan and Anita Evison, who were the contractors, would send me emails or call me up at every stage of the work. If they needed a decision over any issues that cropped up, Alan would call me, tell me of the problem and offer me at least two solutions. Wouldn’t the world be a less stressful place if all contractors did that? Anyway…
Came the day of stripping the wood off. We had discussed keeping it but it was full of knot-holes, being cheap pine, so we thought it would be best to strip back to the original walls and start again from there. The front wall proved to be especially interesting. It’s made of limestone, as far as my untutored eye can tell, but once revealed, it showed itself to be little more than a big sponge full of water. And that big sponge had a thriving mushroom farm on it.
It would have been hellishly expensive to have attempted to retrofit a damp course there, so it was decided simply to clean the wall down and coat it with something waterproof (I forget what it was), leaving the inside dry but the front still wet. The house was a holiday home at the time, so we didn’t have to think about it as our actual abode, meaning that expensive remedies were thought to be impractical for our needs.
The work was done and the walls were covered in insulated plasterboard, which is around four inches thick with polystyrene backing. Great against the cold.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, which is an extension at the back of the house, the same pine tongue and groove had been aplied to the wall that joins us to the property next door. It had looked rather nice in a 1970s kind of way when we originally viewed the house but now, we could tell that there was going to be more to it. Can you guess what that problem might be?
Anyway, resisting the urge to walk you through the same set of discoveries as documented above, we have signed a contract to have these walls treated with resin, injected at four inch intervalls and to a depth of up to three feet, depending on the thickness of the walls. These injections will be angled downwards in such a way as to creat a permanent barrier, keeping the damp at ground level.
The preparation team arrives this afternoon. I have to pay them handsomely. Then, in about ten days, the heavy mob will arrive with the resin. And I will have to give them twice as much again.
We expect to make that money back by being able to show any future buyer that there is a thirty-year guarantee on this new dampcourse. But that is in the future.
Today, I have to pay…
As always, here’s a link to my cartoon drawing channel, where you can learn some great techniques and become the cartoonist you’ve always wanted to be!