Not a rockery then.

On the 8th of December I was sitting in Rigsby towers when I heard a loud “Beep! Beep!” reversing noise coming from the main road. Grabbing my trusty camera I looked out of my window.

Yes it was a load of earth in a big tipper lorry.
It was the most exciting thing that had happened all day so I felt that I had to monitor its progress.

The soil was tipped and a few days later some small bushed appeared. Lovely!

Surely this is the end? Don’t worry, as your reporter on the spot I will keep you posted.

Little town squirt

I was mooning around in Rigsby Towers recently when I heard the sound of running water outside. Earlier I had noticed Madame’s Portuguese friend examining Madame’s motley collection of plants that she keeps outside on her terrace during the warmer months. This must be the day to take all the plants inside her apartment, I thought. No room for her to move around inside until next May or June.
Madame had my hose out and was standing in her doorway dressed in her dressing gown, directing the jet of water at all the mud and crap that had accumulated over the year.

She was not making a very convincing job of it. so her pal took over the hosing.

The result of this cleaning spray, was that my paths and steps were covered in dirt, grit and mud.
All the rest of her crap, old sink, bits of wooden box, broken plant pots, breeze blocks, red bricks, broken wooden chair etc remained in situ. Some people might think that she is a lazy wotsit. Surely not...... She does possess a broom, but it was not woken from its slumber against the wall. Despite her often telling me that the twig brush is the best, I have only seen her use it once in over 2 years.
She has been hard “at work” over the past weeks, going to demonstrations with her banner and loudhailer. She must be exhausted poor thing ......
Miaowww!

Pilgrim’s progress

It’s been a busy week! So busy, that I find it hard to remember what I have done or who I have seen. Hopefully it will all come back to me as I type. I will spread it out over several days so as not to overtax any readers that I may have left.
I found it difficult to get back into the French language even after only 6 days away.
Of course the day after my return, I had an appointment with my Instep advisor, who always gives me a hard time about the standard of my French.
As usual I was kept waiting for about 25 minutes while she finished off the previous appointment.
I explained my travels from CCI to URSSAF to ANPE and that I had then been on holiday.
So it was my shortest meeting yet. Probably lasting about 20 minutes.
I have to go to my bank to find out how to become someone who can get paid by the cheques service employ system. I have to go to a company that runs a homework help, extra tuition, etc service. Lord knows what I have to talk to them about. My councillor was a bit vague. Sigh!
I have to phone or go and see the medical / hospital centre that I wrote a speculative letter to about giving their staff English lessons. Difficult as my French teacher wouldn’t give me a specific name or title to send it to.
Then next time she is going to try and arrange an appointment for me with another organisation which helps people to set up businesses. I think that the man she wants me to see is on holiday. This will also involve a trip to the next town.
My grass needed cutting so I got my tondeuse out and began. Three strips later it stopped cutting. I think the belt is no longer working, so I have found one on ebay and ordered it from the UK. There, even I fooled myself. The hard part will be trying to dismantle the mower to fit the new belt. I can see part of the old belt, but I can’t see how to get to it. I cannot find the mower instructions, and an internet search has not yielded any results.
Bee-boy has been absent most days and nights. Madame tells me that he is making honey. I don’t think it’s a euphemism, although there seems to be a Bee-girl hovering about him these last few weeks. Yes it is time for him to make the year’s first batch of honey.
Madame’s latest hobby of furniture painting continues apace. She now has an light blue dresser next to her orange/beige bottom half of a dresser. I know this because I was drafted in to help some of her friends to lift the (very heavy blue top onto the blue bottom), She explained that it was heavy because it is real wood.
Two days later one of her friends arrived with a large selection of paints to begin the decoration process. I enquired yesterday if the dresser was now finished and was told Presque (nearly) and that I would have to come and see it.
No wonder I could hardly sleep for excitement last night!

Tiers before bedtime

Friday night was my bank's annual general meeting. It was being held in a part of town that I was not familiar with so I consulted Google and planned my pedestrian route. A 21 minute walk. I put on a proper shirt and trousers and even a jacket. It was a warm night and it would be uphill for the last half of the trip, but had a lot to look forward to.
“L’assemblée générale se poursuivra dans la convivialité autour d’un apéritif et d’un buffet , un orchestre animera la fin de soirée”
That is to say there would be a drink, a buttet and an orchestra. So I did not make myself an evening meal.
I stopped part way up the hill and took a photo of the chateau from a new (for me) vantage point.

A bit further up the hill, I took some photos of the remaining show on the hills.

I was just about to re-incline myself, when a woman in the garden next to which I had been taking the pics started talking to me. But no, it was not trouble, it was the lady from the choir that was debating over whether or not to buy a clematis. She had been cutting one of her little lawns. Did I want to see where she had positioned the clematis that she had bought? She probably thinks that I am a plant stalker. In the UK I would have got a “What the bleep are you doing here?” In France it is assumed that you are tracking down plants. I said that I would like to see her plant, and she duly took me to another part of her garden, and sure enough, if you looked very closely, you could see where it had been planted. Fearing that she might think that I was a stalker, I showed her my bank letter and explained my mission.
I noted that there was a big chain attaching the floor of the second storey of her house to the ground. It is on a very steep slope and seems to hang out over the void. Still she does get a good view of the town and surrounding mountains.
I get to my location and note two big bank signs fixed on to the railings by the entrance to the university grounds. Not a sign of anyone, although there are some people sitting in cars. It is quarter of an hour before the meeting is due to start, so I wander further up the road, wander back, then enter the grounds. No sign of any welcome party, no signs to say, “This way” so I stroll through the leafy grounds, looking closely at the buildings I pass. Nada, I become aware that I am being followed, but I continue on trying to see what their open air amphitheatre is like. I do find it, but not because the signs point to its actual location. I spot a building with some suits standing near the entrance and make for that instead. Nestling below the building I find the amphitheatre.
I hover about a bit. There are no notices up. No one goes inside. More people arrive and at just before 7pm people start to shuffle inside. I join the queue, and over my piece of paper, sign a list, and when I ask I am given the same leaflet that everyone else has been given and a biro.
I look around to plan a quick route to the food and drink after the bank gig. No sign yet.
I enter a lecture theatre, which had tiered seats and choose one. I read the leaflet, I watch the projected films. The carpets are as new, the desks in front of the seats are unmarked, no initials carved, no chewing gum stuck underneath. There is a poster on the wall advertising a tourism conference dated 2000.
Eventually, only 35 minutes after the start time, the suits take their places and we begin. There must have been just short of 100 in the audience.
The 4 suits have stupidly long, grand titles. Their business cards must continue on the reverse side. They drone on as we look at figures and pie charts. Then we are voting for things. No idea what, so I just vote for the first option each time. All the motions are passed.
Then there are presentations of flowers, someone wins a holiday for 2. We also celebrate someone being dead. Then the guest speaker, with an even longer title talks about the problem of sub-prime mortgages in America, which seems to have caused the current crisis.
Finally the talking is over, no one has any questions Hooray!
I hang back a bit as I do not want people to think that I am only there for the free food and drink. I listen for the strains of a distant orchestra.
Yes. You’ve guessed it. Not a saucisson, not a Semillion, not a sonata.
Every one leaves the building, they get into their cars, and away they go.
I make my way home, clutching my biro, stomach rumbling. Never trust a French banker, or even a bunch of bankers. Bigger bankers is not necessarily a good thing.

Madame’s damp patch

I foolishly went under the stairs again today. There is woodworm damage to other areas in the lower set of stairs and more little piles of sawdust. “Thank you so much!” as Basil Fawlty might say.
I did a bit more gardening this morning in the picking up twigs and weeds department. While I was just about to call it a day, Madame came down the steps clutching some Publicity dating from December. This contained details of some wall radiators as I had discussed with her yesterday. She also had the latest small catalogue from a firm which brings it’s stock in a big van to a location just outside the town, where you can go to pick up items that you have pre-ordered from the catalogue, or shop on site. Tomorrow is one of those exciting days. Madame says she has bought lots of items from them in the past. In the UK it would equate to stock held by Kleeneeze or Betterware or Scotts of Stow. Cleaning products and household / garden / car gadgets that might be useful, but when you get them they don’t quite work as well as expected or which turn out to be very much smaller in size than you expected.
I have now commissioned her to pick me up a solar powered, motion sensor activated outside spotlight to illuminate the concrete steps up to the house. She assures me that it will be powerful enough and not feeble like her existing solar lights. At approx 44 euros I hope she is right.
At about 6.30pm my doorbell goes and I go downstairs to the front door. There is a flood in the ceiling of her bathroom she says. Having gone up her twisty stairs I am disoriented so she will wait until I get up to my flat and bang on the ceiling so that I know where the problem is.
Banging duly takes place and I look at the sink unit in the bedroom and pull out the washing machine. The floor is dry. I check the bathroom next door and that is dry too.
I go back downstairs, and upstairs into Madame’s bathroom again. Steps are found so that I can feel her ceiling. It is bone dry. We decide that it must be condensation because as we know none of the ventilation fans except for the ones in my flat, work. It is one of the problems that my workmen were supposed to be investigating and resolving, but they have not been back since about November last year. I hope my evening will be Madame-free.
What excitement will there be when she has her party tomorrow night?

Gardening and cinema

Another pleasant day and time to do a bit of weeding in the garden to see if any of the bulbs that were planted late last year are still there.
We must have planted well over 100 but only about 20 are poking their heads above ground.
When I reached Madame’s erb jardin, there was barking and something small and grey rushed out the greet me. No, it wasn’t Madame, but her small dog. The dog was however, followed by her mistress. She inspected what I had done and joined in, borrowing my secateurs to chop back some shrubs. By 1.30pm I had had enough and was hungry. Madame had finished trimming her bush, so it was a good time to stop. (Ah. The old jokes are still the best).
Tomorrow I will do some tree snipping if the rain holds off, as the green waste collection comes very early on Tuesday morning.
Late afternoon I walked into town to the cinema to see “Frozen River”. It was a reasonable little film, with no names that I recognised in it. It was however VO, which means version originale, i.e. a USA film in English with French subtitles. This continues my movie theme of yesterday. Bonne continuation, even if I do say so myself.

29 Sept 2008 Monday garden thoughts

Pascal the young builder arrives to grout between the floor tiles. I am not to walk on them until at least 6pm tonight. Looks like a late night second coat for the bathroom. The good news is that tomorrow I will have the shower back, as well as a new sink and wash hand basin. No more having to trek down the stairs 2 floors to use studio 1’s facilities. Hooray!
Regarding my painting, Pascal tells me that the undercoat needs to be done fast, and that the next coat of paint should be put on slowly and carefully.

Food supplies are running low, so I go to BUT to collect my second cube, visit Casa to measure a garment rail hanger / storage unit and on to the Intermarche which unlike the other stores in the retail area does not close for lunch.
I do a bit of gardening as it is green waste collection tomorrow. Madam has picked a few of her remaining tomatoes.
She comes out and has a chat and tells me which herbs she has planted and where they are. She does not mind if I cut down the big tree in front of her patio area. It has a thick trunk and its roots have cracked part of the concrete path. Her cousin could probably do it in the spring next year… I wonder how much having a tree cut down will cost me?
I attach a further two “Parking prive” signs to the wall in my parking area. Madame does not think that this will do the trick. She thinks that only a chain across the entrance will stop people parking on my property. It would also be a bloody nuisance though.
At 6.30pm I start giving the bathroom a second coat. I run out of paint at 9pm but only small bits behind pipes and an easy to reach bit of wall remain to be completed. I will have to buy more paint, but I will be able to use it in the new kitchen, so not too much of it will be wasted. Another busy day over.

20 Sept 2008 Saturday - Jardinage

Up early to get to the Intermarche before the “rush”, then into the Bricomarche for a trowel.
Bright, sunny morning, so we are first to get our washing out on the clothes lines, then it is time to do some more gardening. I cut the grass and we tackle some more of the “Flower” or ivy beds. This takes well over 4 hours with just 20 mins for some lunch. The sun is very hot and I have not put a hat on, so I now have a headache. That is enough gardening for today. I think that it is always best to leave something still to do. Although the garden is small, there is no shortage of things to do.
Our builder’s van toots as they whiz past sometime around midday.
I phone home to chat to parents but there is only C, R and K at home. The others have gone off to hospital. My mother has tripped outside the house and cracked her head. I say that I will phone later. It seems that R has a girlfriend and so is not hanging about outside next door’s garden like he usually does when his family visit, hoping that the girl next door will come our to “play”. K is watching baby TV, and C is in charge.
We get cleaned up and walk into town. It is about 5.30pm and still over 20 degrees in the shade. Looking in the tourist info window, we discover that we are in the middle of two days of local history activity. We have, of course now missed day one. We head over to the abbey to see if any of the all day activities advertised for that area of the town are still going on. Nope.
We pop into the English shop and we are told that this weekend you can get into historical buildings for free, that you would normally have to pay to get in.
We will probably try to go on one of the historical town walks tomorrow and see some of the dancing and other events. The weather is supposed to be good again.
We stop for a beer at the Auberge and instead of 25cl of Stella each at 2.20 euros, we each have a 50cl glass. I am disappointed that it comes to 4.40 euros per glass. Unfortunately there is no discount for bulk purchases. In the supermarket I could easily have bought 4 bottles of wine for the price of our 2 beers.
Back home we have duck gizzards, which prove to be tough as old boots, so we have to abandon eating them.
The TV is still being a pain in the bum, and many of my channels which I have been watching, have become not part of my package for some reason. I will have to investigate once I become fluent in French.
I phone home and mum is back from the hospital. She has a bandaged head which is hurting, a black eye and a bloody nose. Fortunately my sister will be able to do all the catering…… J for the rest of the weekend.

4 Sept 2008 Thursday - Bad news!

We wander into town to the UK shop in the afternoon and have a chat with the owner, then we wander off around town, picking up a loaf of bread from the baker who bakes his bread over wood in the traditional way. Instead of olive bread though, I choose a lardon loaf, which has pieces of ham in it.
The bad news is that the bakery will be closed for annual holidays from 13 – 29 Sept. This means that I will either have to start going to another bakers, or buy bread and freeze it. We also inadvertently stopped off for a beer in the bar that we had visited back in March.

When we get home, it is still in the 30’s so ideal weather to do a bit of gardening. I had bought some weed killer and now was the time to deploy the garden sprayer that I had brought over from the U.K. For once there was only my car in the parking, so I had a clear run at it apart from having to make up a second sachet of weed killer and shunt my car around.

Next I get into the crawl space under the house and start dragging some of the timber and other crap which has been dumped there, out into the open prior to getting rid of it. After about 10 minutes I have a headache and call it a day.
Once this work is completed (not today as it is too hot), there is another crawl space under madam’s patio full of bits of pallet, lino, rubble and other as yet unknown items. There is also a black and white cat that seems to go under there a lot too.
We have been having good weather, but a few hours after I deployed my weed killer, it rains for the first time in many days. I just hope my efforts have not been wasted.