Beginnings (Part 1)

St Benjamin

True to his word, Jean-Jacques arrived at 9am this morning - ten minutes after the arrival of 6 tonnes of sand. The delivery man informed us that it was his brother who would be digging out the hole for the pool!

We mapped out the pool plan and J-J decorated the ground with florescent orange paint. It began to rain, harder and harder. Jon and I retreated indoors.

The digger arrived at 9.45, the rain stopped for a while .......

...... and by midday we had a big hole in the garden.

By 4pm when it was raining heavily with scattered hailstones, it was a much bigger hole and there was also a trench for the electricity and water which will be installed for both the pool and the chalet.

The spoil from the hole has been neatly placed under the walnut tree to make a gentle slope into the field - more friendly than the steep drop that was there before.

The cats have kept a very low profile all day and are relieved now that all the noisy stuff - and that strange man who keeps wandering around - have left.

All this activity is encouraging. J-J informed us that on Friday he will fill the pool with water!!! I believe the heater and filtration system will be coming along next week.

To add to all the garden activity, Jon is now ready to make a hole in the ceiling of the sitting room to start work on the loft conversion.

Now that is REALLY scary!

Silent Sunday

St Amédée

The clocks are forward, evenings will be light until 8.30, summer may be on it's way (and there goes yet another flying pig), but the sun is out, the sky is blue, la, la, la.

Cow on the ridge

Copyright Sue Smith 2007

Men wear bras

No, not really.

It was Susie made me do it. Honest!

Apparently it will make my stats go through the roof, so I thought I'd try it and see what happens!

(And no, Anne, if she asked me to put my head in the gas oven I wouldn't!)

Feeling quizzical

Ste Gwladys

We were invited last night to attend a quiz in our village bar. Yes, it's in English and is mostly attended by British people apart from a few French husbands and wives.

We went with a little trepidation, large crowds of English in French bars never have been our thing but we had a wonderful time. Having thought we would be in a team with the lady who invited us, things didn't quite work out that way and we were partnered with a young English lady and her French husband who we had met a few weeks ago.

We were rather concerned also having learned that the team that we had been asked to join and which had now had to split into two groups, were often winners of the champions cup. We did our best and came in either 4th or 5th (there was a bit of confusion at the end) but our partners seemed happy at having beaten the other half of the original team.

Pub quizzes are funny things. Your team plays a joker on whatever subject(s) you think you are best at and Sod's Law dictates that on this occasion you will fail abysmally but do really well on all the other subjects. So it was last night. We did really well on mythology for example, a subject on which we had expected to maybe get three out of eight - we got seven correct answers, as we did with history, entertainment and people. But art and literature, oh dear, and geography the same. Put it down to a bad night. Next time perhaps we should consider the subjects we are least likely to succeed in and play our jokers on them.

Of course in that case Sod's Law will dictate that the easiest questions are the other subjects again!

Reading stuff

Ste Larissa

During our enforced exile from the virtual world, we've been reading several books and tonight I'll be going to our local bookshop group to comment on just one of them. 'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac (kindly lent to me by my sister). It's a semi-autobiographical account of a couple of young men travelling across the USA in the mid 1940s. I thought it sounded an interesting read, the book inspired many young men in the 1960s, Bob Dylan and the Beatles included but I personally didn't find it the 'classic' it has been labelled.

I thought that the characters in the book were some that I would dread running into in real life and was extremely irritated with their thoughtless, drunken antics.

And then I read the article on Wikipedia and looked for further links. Now I feel that I understand why the book was written and how and it has revised my opinion. Not totally, but enough for me to appreciate it more. So I hope I can speak intelligently about it tonight!

For our other book group we read 'The Leopard' by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampadusa written around the same time as the Kerouac book. I found this one a challenging read too but could at least sympathise with some of the characters and, although I felt the book moves very slowly, at times I wondered why Lampadusa had bothered himself writing it, it has a certain charm to it.

We've dipped into other books too for groups or not; John Le Carre's 'The Mission Song' which I found a little disappointing after 'The Constant Gardener', but it has inspired me to go backwards and read more Le Carre (or re-read), Alan Titchmarsh's autobiography 'Trowel and Error' which is a very charming read (rather like the man himself), you can hear his voice in his writing, Diane Setterfield's 'The Thirteenth Tale' which I loved and a little book by Alan Bennett 'The Uncommon Reader' (Thanks to Mum for that one) which I won't spoil by explaining but do recommend for a fun, undemanding read.

I hope that little lot has given you something to think about reading.

Who ate all the cookies?

Ste Annonciation

Our ISP very kindly offered us a three month free trial of their anti-virus and firewall software. I thought that the programs we had were working well but, well, you never know, and it was free for three months.

Unfortunately it has eaten all my cookies and set my internet security access so high that I have to remember all the passwords I ever had (impossible, especially if I've had to change them for any reason) and sometimes, but not always, blocks me out of my blog page.

So please forgive me if I am not around from time to time.

And blame it on the cookie monster.

Silent Monday (because I missed Saturday)

Gerbera, Hong Kong Park February 2008
Copyright Sue Smith 2008

All sorts of weather

Ste Léa

It's a cold and miserable Easter all over by the sounds of it. Whilst chatting with youngest daughter this morning I was able to report beautiful sunshine, rain, hail and then sleet before the weather settled down to beautiful sunshine again. We can see on the road in the distance the odd caravan and camper van heading south for the holiday - I just hope they find a bit of warmth!

We have finally heard that work on the pool should begin in the first few days of April. The delay is due to another previously started pool that is filling up with water every time it rains. Since the forecast for the next week is changeable with a fair amount of rain I suspect they will have that problem for some time to come.

The next week will, with any luck, allow us the change to get some tree clearing done. As we've neither of us used a chain saw before we have been waiting for a more experienced friend to turn up with his and give us a few pointers. We're looking forward to getting some more light in the garden but it will no doubt leave us with another pile of trimmings to shred or burn. The logs will be saved for next year's fires once the log burner is installed.

The car is going to the doctor's on Tuesday as, when I had to have four new tyres the other week, they noticed that the brake pads and one disc need replacing. Oh joy. More expense. Still it will be done and safe for a good while to come, hopefully.

We had a very nice meal with friends last night at the local hotel school, but the meal was quite late (even though they insist that you arrive before 7.30 not a dish was served before 8.30), so we arrived home at midnight feeling very full and I spent a rather uncomfortable night. Surprisingly I then slept through the Little Bar Steward's insistent scrabbling at the kitchen door this morning and we didn't actually get up until 10 o'clock! Disgraceful behaviour!

Since we returned

Ste Clémence
Yesterday's weather: gorgeous but cold - today someone has decided to throw buckets of water all over the house

I don't want anyone to think we have been idle and sitting around waiting for the phone and internet to come back. We've been busy planning the loft conversion, looking at stair options, costing insulation, walls and floors. And being very worried about it all. So much so that we have had to indulge in some planning fluid to help it all along (see earlier post).




We've cleared multiple square metres of land outside, Jon especially has put in hours of work and what a difference it has made. It was almost worth getting tangled in those 20 ft long brambles!

I was going to take more photos but it's chucking it down outside and I don't want to get wet! Bad enough when a cat comes through the back door dripping rain and jumps straight on your lap!

It has been difficult for us to contact people (obviously) whilst the phone was out of action and so I'm now on a mission to find the pool people and get them to start work. They promised March but it is looking increasingly unlikely at this point, especially as the forecast is for rain for the next 10 days. I have sent a very polite e-mail this morning explaining my disappointment and how we are looking forward to seeing them very soon. I won't hold my breath though, especially with a holiday weekend coming up.

We're looking forward to a nice meal again tonight as we return to the hotel school with friends. This time we are going to have a Soirée Breton with lots of seafood and a filet mignon of pork. It sounds delicious. We may just drown on the way though!

It's good to talk

St Herbert
Yesterday's weather: fantastic sun - but a bit nippy!

Well, I expect you were all wondering where we had got to? We were too.

Picture the scene:

4 February 2008. White van appears on the lane. Man gets out, gets into a mini crane on the back, goes up in the air, plays around with phone line, descends, gets back in white van and disappears. We then notice that our phone connection has vanished.

Later, that same day, three attempts later I manage to get through to our phone supplier.

'Have you checked that the modem box is plugged into the wall?'

'Yes'

'Have you changed the filter?'

'Yes'

'Have you recently had a power cut or electrical storm?'

'No'

'You're sure that the box is connected to the electric supply?'

'Yes'

'And it's plugged into the phone socket via the filter?'

'Yes'

'OK, well, I can't think of anything else for now. We'll test your line and send you an SMS to your mobile phone'

Two days later on the mobile again.

'You haven't been in contact, what's going on with my phone?'

'Is the modem box plugged in to the electrical supply?'

And so we went through the whole process again and they promised to contact us.

Three days later.....

'Do you have any news about my phone?'

'Is the modem box plugged into the electrical supply?'

'Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh'

'We'll arrange for our contractor to come out and see you'

'I'm going away for two and a half weeks on Monday, it's now Saturday'

'Well in that case they will call you when you get back. I've tested the line and there's nothing wrong with it.'

Monday 11th February. We took the evening flight to London arriving late evening and making the connection via youngest daughter for the Hong Kong flight on Tuesday.

More on that in the days to come. We had a very nice time thank you.

Thursday 28 February. Back home, rested and relaxed (well, apart from jet lag and all the stress that goes with travelling for 24 hours).

Friday 29 February. Tried calling the home phone line from the mobile to see if I could reach our messages. Found a message from someone on the home phone line saying that they heard that our land line was broken and they were phoning (the broken line) to make an appointment to come out and mend it. I didn't catch his phone number but decided to wait until the next day when I had been promised a phone call to make the appointment.

Saturday 1 March. Waited for a phone call. Nothing happened so I phoned the phone supplier again.

'Oh, your phone line has been broken since 4 February'

'Yes'

'And it still doesn't work?'

'No'

'Has someone been in contact about coming to see you'

I lied, after all, if the phone was broken and they hadn't phoned the mobile then how was I to know that they had called at all? 'No'

'Please don't worry Mrs Smith, I will personally ensure that someone calls you and comes to sort out the problem as soon as possible. Please do not worry about it. We will repair your phone line as soon as possible.'

I felt reassured.

Stupid.

Monday 3 March pm.

'Hello. I haven't heard from your contractor yet?'

'I will contact them for you and make sure they call you to arrange an appointment as soon as possible.'

Tuesday 4 March pm.

'Can you please let me know when someone will come and fix my phone?'

'I'll just try and find out'

Rubbish 'hold' music for 5 minutes.

'I'm sorry, they can't tell me when it will be'

'Then if I haven't heard in 24 hours I will be cancelling my contract with you'

'That, Madame, is your choice. I completely understand how you feel'

Thursday 6 March am, France Telecom Agency in Cahors.

I am told that France Telecom would love to have our account back and it will be very easy just to transfer our number back again.

Just a minute, the telephone number you have given us doesn't exist.

'I can assure you that it does exist and we have had that telephone number for 10 years'

No, the telephone number does not exist. It has completely vanished from all telephone records. Where? Who knows?

Ah well, just to resolve this issue we will accept a new number. No problem, received new number, received France Telecom's 'Live Box' (yes, I know they can be flaky but I will try anything at this point to get a phone and the internet back). We'll have a mobile phone too while we are here. It comes with 5 Euros credit, I'll top it up tomorrow just so that we can be contactable in case of emergencies and can equally contact others.

The phone line will be connected in 10 - 14 days.

Tuesday 18 March. Mobile phone. Tried to call France Telecom technical assistance. Five minutes on the phone being told that it will cost me 34 cents per minute from a fixed line and other operators will charge accordingly. Waiting time, however is free from a fixed line. I'm on the mobile. Five minutes later, I can't get through.

Tried the main France Telecom line for reporting broken phone lines. Held on for 10 minutes was connected to an operator.

'Please hold for a moment'

Ten minutes later I was cut off.

Checked the credit on my mobile and was dismayed to find it had reduced by 15 Euros in the last day.

Gave up. Had a large glass of white wine with lunch and got on with other jobs.

Wednesday 19 March. Went to a friend's house to use their phone to call France Telecom technical assistance.

'Are you by the phone line, live box and computer?'

'No.'

'Then I can't help you. Please go home and call us again when you are in front of the computer'

Aaarrrrrggggghhhhhhh.

Twenty minutes later

'I'm in front of my computer and the live box. Please help me'

'Is the live box plugged into the electrical socket?'

'Yes'

'Have you connected all the other leads correctly?'

'Yes'

'I've tested the line and there is nothing wrong with it'

'Yes there is'

At this point the mobile phone cuts out. I have just spent another 15 Euros for 10 minutes on the phone and run out of credit.

I'm looking at the phone, dumbstruck, expecting it to suddenly turn into a pumpkin or a white mouse or something when it suddenly springs into life and rings.

'Hello again Madame Smith. I'm going to send an engineer out to you tomorrow morning to find out what is wrong with your phone'.

Hoo-bloody-ray!

This morning. 8.15. Mobile rings. Man is coming out to help me.

10am two men arrive. One wants to go up the pole and see what might be wrong but the other stops him saying that it is bound to be a problem in the house.

Takes phone socket apart. Tries various other tricks but to no avail. He goes to leave and says he will return. Fortunately he has left his tools behind so he will HAVE to come back.

He does.

'It's fine now. Yes. Look here, the ADSL light is lit and not flashing any more. Yes. The problem is solved.'

I wait for an explanation.

'Ah, yes, well, the wrong line had been connected in the exchange. Sorry. You won't be charged for the call out or the engineers' time.'

I should hope not.

Well, I can't stop and chat any more. I've got 353 e-mails to read.

Do I want to join an on-line casino?

Will I give someone all my bank details including my pin number please?

Do I want any Viagra?

A very wealthy man has just died in Nigeria and they want to share his money with me (co-incidentally he has the same surname as me). Yeah, right!

Boy, have I missed my e-mails.

It's good to be back.