Sunday 21 December 2008

20.12.08 Saturday – Three wheels on my wagon…

Walking into town the other day, I passed this car parked neatly at the side of the road. Could this have happened to my car if I had not had my tyre fixed? The car’s other three wheels were all okay.















I have recently noticed that Monsieur next door has not moved his car from his driveway for some time. I have also seen him and his wife waddling off in the direction of town a few times.
Walking home today I passed him in the road. I said bonjour and he seemed to want to engage in conversation.
Is your house full? (Meaning is your rentable accommodation all full) I said incorrectly that it was all full. Well there are a lot of cardboard boxes in the downstairs studio, so technically I have no further rentable space available.
What he was asking in a non-asking way was, if you don’t have your full complement of renters can I park on your parking area?
Now we went all through this in June, and I told him that he could not park in my garden / parking area.
“My car is broken” he said. “Oh dear” I said.
“It is the height of the entrance that has broken it” he said.
I have a small area of dropped kerb outside my house, he has not.
Now why did they never teach you the French for “Have you asked the council if they will lower the kerb?”
Anyway he was able to understand my question. He has asked them a long time ago, but nothing… (Welcome to France mate)
I hate these Mexican stand-offs. He was content to stand there all day waiting for me to cave in and beg him to park his rust bucket at my house. No way!
I am sure that he is now my very best friend after me telling him that it is healthier to walk and for pointing out to him that at least the rain had stopped.
But it is forecast, he said as I walked away.
Here is a photo of him, his car and his wife in “happier” times, when the car was not en panne.













Now that the council has cleared all his crap from his drive entrance, perhaps he will do something about his manky terrace, manky garage containing manky old car, manky driveway etc and stop letting their rubbish fall into my garden……Looking more closely at his property I can see that at some time in the past the front boundary wall has been demolished (to make room for an entrance and a garage built.

3 comments:

  1. She always keeps her head covered. What you see is a very, very attractive scarf.
    As you will know, most French women over a certain age have varying shades of orange hair.
    When you return to France, your first stop should be the hair salon for a tint top-up :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. lissen you, I'm definitely NOT over a 'certain age' if it means orange hair! lol.

    ReplyDelete

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