18.12.2008 Thurs – Clou less at last

Up relatively early thanks to the noisy bin men waking me up at 5.10am. The weather is still dull, but no more rain after last night’s showers.
I noticed that the neighbour’s manky old mattress and all his other junk has been removed from his drive / my wall.
I got a phone call from the Commune on Monday. Did I know that it was forbidden to dump items on the pavement? I said yes I knew that “Is that your mattress on the pavement?” “No I said, it is my neighbour’s. What is his house number? What is his name? I told them that I did not know the answer to either question and that we were not best buddies due to me not letting him park his car in my parking area (as long time readers will be aware).
I don’t know if they managed to contact the lazy sod, but the junk has finally gone after lying around for months. Hooray!!
I am starting to feel fitter.
This morning’s task was to have my slow leak investigated. Before you get too excited, it is one of my tyres that is leaking.
“Vulco” removed the tyres to investigate. The tyre mec quickly spotted a small nail located right in the middle of the tyre.

While I waited I took a photo of one of the businesses across the road.
Viewers of the TV comedy “Only fools and horses” will be familiar with Del Boy. I don’t know if the owner is a Brit or just a French fan, but I would have thought that connotations of Del Boy total incompetence and ‘ookey gear (goods of doubtful provenance) "Transports DELBOY" might not be the best marketing ploy ever.

The man in the tyre office was very keen to try out his English, which is unusual as most are too shy to try.
Tyre repaired, I parted with just under 30 euros, but now I don’t need to worry about remembering to pump up the tyre every week.
The bad news was that I could not remember the PIN for my carte bleu. Fortunately I had my big cheque book with me.
After going home to check my PIN, I headed out to Intermarche for a bit of shopping.
The sea food counters were groaning under the weight of the number and variety of fish on sale. There were also lots of boxes of oysters on offer. I didn’t see anyone rushing to buy them though. The big tank with the huge live crabs seems to have disappeared for the moment.
I don’t know about you but I prefer my supermarkets not to have crabs.