22 Sept 2008 Monday – Bankers

We are hanging out the second lot of washing in the morning sunshine when the builders arrive. They have an electric cement mixer in the van to mix up the special floor compound that they will be laying on top of a polythene sheet in the bathroom. It is a mixture of polystyrene balls, some sort of fibre and cement type stuff. It is very light we are told.
Vehicles need to be rearranged so that they can do their mixing, then it is all go. Buckets of gloop start making their way up to the 2nd floor and are then spread onto the bathroom floor. By about 11am the job is done. It will take 2 days for the gloop to dry, so they will be back on Wednesday morning to lay a level, skim coat on top of the dry surface.
We have something to eat then walk into town and pay a visit to my bank. Luckily my account manager is able to see us, and we get a number of things sorted out. S opens a current account, I take out my top up medical insurance (Approx £78 per month) which will bridge most of the gap between what the state will pay for if I am ill, and the real cost. I still have not received my final tax square for my car windscreen, so I have another temporary one printed off. I also need to transfer more money into my current account to cover the forthcoming building account payments.
By the time we get home, it is 3.30pm and I put out the weekend’s green waste for collection early tomorrow morning.
I have an email from the lawyer’s office. My studio tenants on the first floor are leaving on the 22 October, so I will need to find more tenants.
Rent money has at last been vired into my current account. Hooray!
Tonight is the choral societies AGM. I have been told to come along. I will not be able to vote, but there will be a drink afterwards….. On the night I received my first petit bissou greeting. The French love to talk and the meeting went on and on. I understood some of it though. When it finally finished, the big plastic pop bottles containing an orange liquid were opened and cake and nibbles appeared. You could choose between orange from bottles marked sans alcol or the unmarked bottles which might contain alcohol, they couldn’t possibly say. I chose the unmarked orange and had two plastic cups full as any investigative journalist worth his salt would have done. It might have been vodka?

21 Sept 2008 Sunday - Patrimoine day, a big organ, and a trip

Sun shining again, so more washing goes onto the line. We walk into town and wander around. One of the “historical” buildings open to the public today is the Prefecture, built on the site of the original abbey. There is a large crowd of people outside presumably waiting to be let in so we give that a miss and climb the hill to the castle to find that today entry is free, but there is only half an hour to go before it closes at noon.

We pass this fountain on the way up the hill.

Tip of the day!

If you left click on the photos in the blog, it should open up the photos larger in a new window

There are 3 towers a museum and a shop to get round. This is impossible to accomplish in the time available, so we walk around the walls once, then go up the round tower, which is the most recent, being built in the 14th century. It is busy and S stops at the second landing. I continue up to the top of the tower and take more photos of the surrounding views from the top.

View of the abbey towards the river

The little pointy hill is the "Pain au sucre"

It is now 11.55am, so I head back down the stairs, taking more photos of some of the graffiti which has been carved into the tower walls over the centuries.

Is this the only blog to feature graffiti?

We leave the castle grounds and find a restaurant to eat at. We sit outside in the sun and have an excellent set lunch of 3 courses with wine and coffee for £10 each. It is baking hot and my face, head and arms are starting to sting a bit by the time we leave.
The guided tour of the old town is due to start in half an hour, so we sit on a bench in the shade before making our way to the tourist information office for the start of the tour. The guide sets off, without telling anyone a) that she is the guide, and b) that the tour has actually started. She is about 14 years old. We trudge around the streets and learn very little except that the Rue de le grand duc was not named after a Duke, but after an owl called le grand duc who used to live in the eaves of the houses hundreds of years ago.
The 40 minute tour takes about 25 minutes and we set off home.
It is bulb planting time and my hundred or so bulbs disappear in a small part of the cleared flower bed.
At 5.15pm we set off for the abbey to listen to an recital, which has been organised as part of the patrimoine events. The big organ is used for the recital (the abbey also has a small “jewel” of an organ too) and the organist is Christianne van Gorp, or at least that is what her name looks like on the hand written programme. The programme consists of 7 pieces, written by people that I have never heard of and takes about 40 minutes.

After the recital, we walk out into the sunshine and head home.
My mother now has two black eyes, and can just see through her closed eyes. My dad, aided by nephew C, sends me an email photo of mum.

Not a pretty sight, but she is not in pain like she was yesterday.

Don’t do it again mother!!!

The discolouration gets worse over the following days.

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.

19 Sept 2008 Friday – viewings and increased renovation costs

Builders turned up at 9.45am so we left them a key and set off for our property viewing appointments. The first property had a small pizza / takeaway restaurant on the ground floor, which we duly inspected. The business had started up earlier this summer, so it was all sparkly white tiles, pizza oven and a humungous mixing machine. Then it was upstairs to two or three tiny apartments, all with teeny shower type bath. All apartments were the same size, so it was interesting to see the difference a curtain dividing the living room / sleeping area made. The pizza man lived in one of the apartments and it was a bit of a mess. Then up some rickety stairs to a tiny roof terrace which had a stunning view over the town and of the castle. The castle seemed to loom over the terrace and was a spectacular sight.
The next building had a bead shop on the ground floor. The first floor tenant, not moving out anytime soon, was living with his very barky dog. The place stank of, hopefully, dog pee and was manky. The next floor up was empty and it was useful to see what the apartments were really like. The top floor tenant was at work, so we did not see that one.
Next was the mystery viewing. A house that had not been lived in for 2 years. The owner had gone into a retirement home and the children were now selling the house. This place was just habitable, if you installed proper electricity. There was a cellar, and four floors. Once the work had been done to remodel the floors into apartments the estate agent thought it would bring in a maximum of 1,500 euros per month. There were also nice views of the mountains and the abbey, but you had to lean out of the windows on the top two floors to see them.

Viewings completed, we headed back to the fruit and veg market next to the abbey and bought pears, yellow plums, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, peaches etc.
Back to the ranch and the second layer of bathroom floor has been lifted to expose more poor floorboards, but only a few holes in them. The extra work involved, plus tiles and other materials to make the floor sound will come to around £800, but the work has to be done.

After returning home a gentleman arrived in his car and started poking about. It turned out that he is the insurance salesman who currently insures my building. He had a look around, and said that he will send me a quote for the building, contents, personal liability etc etc policies that I will need. It seems that me living on the premises confuses things a bit.
It rained off and on during the afternoon, but he sun made its appearance at last at 5.30pm just after the builder had left again, clutching his latest signed works order.

18 Sept 2008 Thursday – Apres moi le deluge

Work commenced on the bathroom this morning. The toilet and wash hand basin were removed and the shower cabinet was taken off its shower tray. The lino was ripped up to expose a shockingly badly laid floor. Some floorboards covered with thin board, and some odd bits of wood under where the shower had been. Tomorrow work will recommence and they will decide what to do about the bad floor.
In the afternoon we walked into town. Rain was threatening and after we had done some shopping, including small silver ceramic coffee cups and saucers including a silver stand / holder we had a beer outside a café.
Then the rain came. Fortunately we had a small umbrella but the rain had almost stopped by the time we reached home.

We were watching TV mid evening when Madame from downstairs came up to the apartment to tell me that she had water coming through her hall ceiling.
I felt the joints that had been sealed in the bathroom, no leaks. I checked the sink and washing machine connections in the bedroom, no leaks. I went downstairs to her apartment and she showed me her wet hall floor with the water dripping slowly from the beam. She said that it had started after she had flushed her toilet. I had recently done the washing up, so that too could have been the source.
We went back up to my apartment and I phoned my builder’s wife. To save everyone time, I asked Madame to explain the problem.
S made us a cup of Earl Grey tea with ivy leaf china cups etc and Madame thought that the cups were very pretty. She seemed to enjoy having a cup of tea like the English drink it. We don’t have jumbo-sized sugar lumps en Angleterre though.
Father builder turned up very quickly. He had not been home or had any food, but he got down to investigating. He decided that the problem had happened because his son who had done the work earlier, had forgotten to cap one of the waste pipes. He got on his phone and the son arrived about 5 minutes later. Plastic pipe was fetched and some sealing gunk.
Job done, Madame left with them and the evening resumed its normal calm.

Wednesday 17 Sept 2008 – St Girons

Weather set to be good again today, so after having a mad French driver whiz across the roundabout right in front of me I followed him in the direction of Cos, which is where I had been indicating that I was going.
The road meandered upwards into the hills and eventually became a one lane road with passing places. The views of the hills from some of the properties that we passed were exceptional. Unfortunately there was nowhere to stop and take photos.
Eventually we popped out onto a main road and headed left to St Girons.
We had been passed the town in March whilst house hunting, but this was a chance to visit it. We parked on the sunny side of a street on the outskirts and followed the signs to the centre of town. It is much bigger than our town and cars hurtle along roads that you would swear must be shiny pavements.

Once again this is a town with a river running through it, lined with picturesque houses. This is the view used in our guide book. Although we searched the town, we did not find any other outstanding bits, although there was a short run of arcaded shops.

Here is a photo of a plaster saint that I met in the church. St Jude in fact.

There was unfortunately a hell of a lot of dog shit in the town, and we watched while someone with a big dog, let it crap on the grass before he set off again. Not far away was a dog crap bin, but unfortunately it was invisible to the dog owner. Still it provided local colour and a new aroma for the people eating their picnics a short distance away.

On the way back just after 2pm, the temperature was still in the mid 20s. We stopped off by a long stretch of river, shaded by trees, and which has facilities for mobile homes etc and a local produce shop. Once again the stench of dog crap in this beautiful spot was overpowering.
We crossed the wide main road and went to explore the small village. There was a bread shop and a sign indicating that cheese was for sale down one of the 2 streets. We never found the cheese, but there was a house for sale that we had seen in an estate agents in St Girons. There was also a house on the main road with their washing hanging out of the windows. Black seems to be their favourite colour.

It was back to the car and onwards to Foix to collect my file storage unit. Despite being metal, it comes flat packed, so that will be some homework for me. Possibly not tonight though as choir practice starts tonight.

16 Sept 2008 Tuesday – Mirepoix

Filled the car up with diesel today and then we headed off to Mirepoix. The weather was hot and as we had set off late, we did not get there until about half past eleven.
We followed the signs for the medieval historical centre and found ourselves in a beautiful arcaded square, with a market halle in the centre and shops and restaurants under the ancient wooden arcades. There are still many of the original wooden gargoyles under one of the arcades.

We wandered into some of the shops which remained open after 12. There were many more estate agents than we had seen anywhere else, with a wide selection of lovely properties to choose from.
The town has a very large ex-pat community and almost every passing voice that we heard was English. As we passed one of the restaurants, the English waitress congratulated the two English couples sitting outside upon their having signed today. I.e. They had completed the buying process.
The English shop was supposed to be open until 1pm but when we reached it at 12:50 it was closed for lunch. It was very small and has recently been taken over by an Englisman.
We visited the church, which was very broad and had patches of damp on the roof, a pity because it is ruining the ancient hand painted stonework. Some of the flagstones in the church were also quite wet.
In less than 2 hours we had done Mirepoix and headed back along the road to Pamiers and even more hypermarkets.
A bigger LeClerc than ours beckoned and once again essential items such as car mats and the elusive special offer silicone baking moulds which had not been visible in our own store.
Then it was off home. The sun was still shining so we walked into town stopping in at the English shop for a chat with the owner, then it was on to the cybercafé to tell the owner that I was not going to pursue taking over his business.
Next stop was the Asian/African shop to buy some incense sticks and a holder. I am hoping that this will overpower the bad smell that seems to be coming from the walls that we have painted in the living room.
But phoned to say that my filing drawer unit had arrived and was now ready for collection.
Later in the evening I received a phone call from the builder’s wife to say that he was still running behind schedule and will not be able to start on my apartment until this Thursday.