Wednesday 10 September 2008

29 Aug 2008 Friday – Orange Friday

We are not expecting any workmen until 4pm so we set off into town for the regular Friday farmers and craft market. I need something to keep all of the documentation that I have to carry with me whilst driving. The police in France do spot checks and if you are missing any of the pieces then you will be fined or worse.
We bought a some fruit and more of the nice olive bread and browsed the stalls before returning home for some lunch.
We just finish eating and 2 French telecom vans arrive. We now have 2 technicians. One is the chap from yesterday. There follows an hours of head scratching, cutting wires, and finally we have Internet access. The problem seems to have been the mishmash of internal phone wiring. If anyone from FT phones, I am to say that there was a fault at the box on the outside wall.

There is just the TV decoder left for us to install, and the internet phone will become live anytime between 10 minutes or 36 hours.
It is a very hot day again, into the 30s. I sweat buckets trying to get the thing to work. Just as the correct things are happening on the screen and with the decoder display the happy plumber arrives with his quote and a catalogue. He stays for about an hour, and I tell him of my latest plumbing problem, the shower which is leaking from the bottom. Again try saying that in French.
I tell him that I would like him to carry out both the bathroom and the kitchen / Velux projects. He will require 30% up front, the rest upon completion.
He will return at 6pm on Monday with a small piece of concrete and another catalogue. The concrete is a sample of what he will use to seal the bathroom floor.

He leaves and we return to wrestling with the TV decoder. I seem to be able to access lots of foreign channels and CNN and BBC world news, also I can pay to view movies for 3.99 Euros a time. Then the picture goes haywire and I give up, switch it all off and have some tea.
Once switched on again it works, so I plug in the desk top pc to the livebox. Internet access with that too, no problem. I must be getting good at this. Later I return to my laptop and I switch it off. It shuts down but refuses to switch off. I can find no reset button. It is late evening and still about 80 degrees inside. I send some emails on the desktop. I then take out the laptop’s battery as the machine feels very hot. Time for bed, but cannot shut my brain down due to trying to puzzle out the laptop issue.

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