Thursday 23 October 2008

20 October 2008 Monday – Avant moi le deluge

Lots to do today but another crap night’s sleep, so I don’t get out of bed until 9am. After speaking almost no English for 2 days, French conversation was running round and round my head,
I start getting the painting paraphernalia gathered together in the bedroom. Despite the poor weather forecast it is a glorious day, so I go down to the ground floor studio to open the shutters and windows to air it out.
I go into it’s shower room and there is water on the toilet seat, on the floor, splashed over the walls, sink etc and the shower has black water lying in the tray.
The tooth mug on the shelf has half an inch of dirty water in it.
I whiz upstairs and get the key for the 1st floor studio. It looks like the water has come from the fridge / washing machine area of the room.
I send an email to the letting agency to let them know that I am not happy.
I need to go into town to get a birthday card for KTW and mum, so I pick up a poly bag and head for the stairs.
The tenants have arrived followed shortly by a man. That’s quick.
I ask the bloke who he is. He is from the lettings agency.
I tell him about the flood and take him downstairs to show him.
We go back upstairs and he starts poking around their shower room. I direct him to the kitchenette area.
Sure enough there is water beside the fridge. The tenant unplugged it last night. I pull the fridge out from under the cooker (don’t ask), and there is a big puddle under it. the top of the new fridge is also burned and has bubbled up from the heat from the rings above it. Perhaps the fridge the previous owners bought was too big for the space. There is no side support for the cooker/sink unit at that side, so anything heavy placed on it could lead to contact. I must get this sorted quick. Where is your builder when you need them?
I leave them to sort out the mess.
The sun is still shining and I get 2 cards from the English shop. I sit in the sunshine to write them, then post them in the “etranger” section of a post box.
I buy some more supplies from Casino and head for home.
The tenant’s van and the agent’s Audi have gone, so I dump my shopping and head to the flooded studio to check on it.
It is bucket and bleach time, so I clean the walls, floors etc. In cleaning mode now, I sweep the staircase and the hallway and mop that too.
Finally late afternoon I get a reply from the letting agent. There is not a problem, the agent and the tenants have dried everything out.
Also they are in the process of checking the references of the next tenant for the studio.
I go down to the studio to check. Pulling out the fridge, it is still standing in a big pool of water. The inside Perspex trough has about half an inch of water in it and pulling out the tray from beneath the ice compartment about half an litre of water sloshes onto the floor. Fortunately I brought my mop and bucket down with me. The fridge has not been cleaned. I am not pleased, so I email the agency again to tell them that the floor and fridge have not been dried out. I also tell them that I have spent part of the afternoon cleaning up the dirty water from studio 1. Also that the electricity and the automatic water heater have not been turned off. I refrain from saying that the agent who came out is obviously a useless ****!
I lug the stepladder down and arm myself with wallpaper paste and implements. I begin pasting up the bits of wall paper which have begun to part company with the tops of the walls. Showers of grit and dust descend upon me. After the paste runs out, the worst of the paper is repaired and I sweep up the debris and mop up.
Sometime during my lunch I also put some of the photos from the choir weekend outing onto a flickr account which I have to create. You can see them at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/foixgraham/sets/

It’s best if you view them in slideshow mode. Wish you were here?

I make a chicken stew for tea, talk to S on Skype and start writing up the last 3 days worth of blog.
The weather forecaster on the tv is giving out an orange alert, with 3 months worth of rain due to fall on some neighbouring departments to the north east.
I go out right now and shut the velux window on the landing just in case…

This is a photo of my tenants at about 10:15pm just before they drove off with the last of their belongings.

yes that is a sofa just sitting on the top of their van.

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