Ca marche?

It's Sunday, 8th June - so much for being efficient with my blog. I have been making notes, but just not getting round to finishing them. However today we are in Le Bourg Dun and it's just started raining so hard that we thought our bonfires had gone wild but it was just the rain evaporating up from the hot road surfaces. And there's 20 minutes before I have to take the notes of a Worldcon Skype, so I thought I'd look at what I've been writing for my blog. Hah! I've been saying I'll get this organised for ages now, and just never have enough time to finish, so I'm just going to post what I've got, and start afresh. Who said retirement was boring? Or even relaxing! It's no wonder I'm still drinking my wine and therefore not losing weight. Hell, so what, tomorrow I may die, so why not enjoy today - after all, I am almost 10 years older than my mother when she died, and about 4-5 years older than my dad when he had his car accident and got brain damage, becoming a child again, but no longer my father. It sounds weird, but it's true, the more I think about the members of my family (extended - my brother-in-law came down with multiple sclerosis at too early an age, my father-in-law was the same with Parkinsons' Disease) the more determined I am to ensure I enjoy life to the full rather than take it for granted. There is no way I am going to be like my mother after dad's accident, bemoaning the fact that they had planned to do all the things they wanted when they were retired, but that was no longer possible.

Anyway, enough boring stuff and on to the posts I've been writing recently. (If you're observant, you will see the underlying theme! Yes, it starts with the letter 'w' and ends with 'e' with 'i' and 'n' somewhere in between!)

24th April

We arrived back in Le Bourg Dun at 5 a.m. yesterday following a trip to the UK for Eastercon up in Glasgow. Managed to do around 1,750miles seeing friends - Stanstead Abbotts, Sheffield, Motherwell, Glasgow, Colchester, Burgess Hill and home! Today the weather decided to turn bad just because I needed to work in the garden, but it didn't stop me - oh no! In fact, done so much work that I need to sit down with a nice glass of red wine now whilst John makes lunch/dinner (well, it's 4 p.m., so what label should you use?).  So I thought I'd get on with the blog that I've been making draft notes for but never getting round to finalising them (just like the house that I'm talking about!). Life has been just a little frantic, hence no posts, but I thought  I should still talk about what has been happening since it's been an important time in our new life. So here's February - I haven't changed anything, so you can see what I was thinking at the time as well as what actually happened.

5th February

Well, it's only the 5th February and already things are moving along like a hurricane! Johanne has been in to finish the placo (plasterboard) in the bathroom and bedroom in the main house, and I was just getting the walls in the bedroom stripped ready for redecorating when Dmitri (VERY French name that!) turned up to say they are going to start doing the kitchen next week! That means we can get up to Normandy for mid February and, more importantly, be there for 20th when the Connect Club has a meal. (That's a club run by an English/French couple designed to allow different nationalities living/having holiday homes in Normandy to meet with each other. We tend to have Dutch, English and French mainly. It's a great idea and they have at least one social event each month. These vary from meals out (as in February) meals/barbecues, book exchanges, visits to local tourist sites, wine tastings, etc. Now we are in La Vendee most of the time, we don't get to attend many, so it would be great to be able to be there for the February.).

Anyway, back to the renovations, that means I have to change the order of work a bit now. When John eventually finishes doing 10+ hours a day on the Worldcon website (and no, I'm not exaggerating!) he can finish the preparation work he's doing on the back wall and we can get the final couple of radiators in. Phew, I really am beginning to believe we will have the main house 'livable' by my birthday!!

No, actually it would be safer to not think that, since something is bound to happen which will delay the whole thing.

At least it looks like we'll have a much more developed house for when Alison and Bob (John's sister and her husband) come to visit which we hope is going to be around my birthday - since we could then have a double birthday celebration as hers is at the end of February. In fact, I was talking the other day of perhaps getting all our English friends together for a meal at L'Escargot - a restaurant in the next village where we have developed a good relationship with the owners thanks to Olivier (the guy we bought the house from). We went there for a drink with him to celebrate selling/buying the house, and then later to celebrate his birthday. The owners are a nice couple and the food is OK - not exactly haut cuisine, and not too much of a choice, but absolutely fine. The Brits would definitely have arrived if that came off, since we thought there would be 10 of us if Alison and Bob were here too!

15th February

What a 10 days we've had - forget about the developments in the house, we seem to be constantly taking backward steps. Talk about bad things coming in threes - not that anything serious is happening, it's just really hard work sometimes!

Vancendeau came and did 90% of the kitchen!! That's good, but we have to keep on nagging him for things that he's forgotten, like the fact that they were providing us with a dishwasher, and a cupboard for all my cookery books! Plus the wok holder was broken, as was the border underneath the cupboards.

Then the central heating packed up, which we thought was possibly because we'd run out of oil, so ordered some more. The problem was we had to wait a week for the delivery, and it was COLD with no heating. We managed to borrow a paraffin stove, and bought one ourselves so it wasn't too bad in the lounge. The problem was that the central heating still wasn't working after the oil was delivered, and we had to wait for M Mignon to come. As it was all he did was reset the red button and all was well, but we didn't know that! 

And then we got up yesterday and there was no water! Since we have a well, and the weather has been somewhat wet over the winter, we didn't think that we had run out of water, and were looking into it when Eric, the electrician came to see what work was needed to finish their rewiring. With his help we identified that the pump at the bottom of the well had packed up, so we would need M Mignon again! In the meantime, Eric phoned the water company for us (we had no mains water in the house at all) who said they would try to get round to turn on the mains within the next 3 days!

Luckily they came within about 3 hours.

Hooray, we have mains water! We should have known that when the water man came within a couple of hours that things don't go that easily for us. First of all when the engineer turned on the water in the house, there was a massive leak! So John spent most of the afternoon trying to fix it - not that it was difficult in itself, but tucked away in a hole in the bottom of the wall, and John just couldn't get at it to tighten it up. Since the dial on the water meter next to this joint said 000, it looks like Olivier, the previous owner, never used mains water! Anyway, John managed to half fix it so there was just a small drizzle, and we thought that would give us time for his knuckles to recover before we had to get it fixed properly.

Oh no, that's not what this week is all about. Once we got the main leak fixed, we could see that it was also leaking on the other side of the meter. That belongs to the water company, and there is an anti-tamper collar on the water pipe so we can't fix it. So we turned the water off again, and thought about what we should do. Oh, that means a telephone call and I hate talking French on the phone, let alone to a help line. Aha! I had the great idea that we could get our neighbour, Laurent, to do the call for us since it was Saturday morning and he'd be at home. So he came to look at it before making the call but of course, as always, it wasn't leaking any more! An hour or so after he'd left, it started again but by then we realised it was actually leaking all the time, but if we turned the water off the residue soaked into the soil below the floor and the dribble isn't very obvious until there is enough to leave a puddle. When Laurent came we'd obviously had the water off long enough for it to drain away and we hadn't noticed the dripping.

By the time we realised this, it was too late to be able to phone again, so we decided to leave it until next week, and just turn the water off overnight. At least the leak is before the meter so it's not costing us anything! We will ask Marie to make the phone call when we have our French lesson on Tuesday.

Still, it's Sunday now and the sun is shining (in between the rain clouds anyway!) and we have three-quarters of a new kitchen! Ca marche (things are moving)!

 

(It was actually end of March before the kitchen was finished, but it was worth the wait!)

 

 

 

 

 



New Year - Old Records

 

I always get a little reminiscent at New Year - thinking about what has happened in my life and whether or not I like it. This could be why hearing Johnnie Walker playing Bridge Over Troubled Water a short while ago started old memories storming back - which is quite amazing really, since I've heard it so many times and never before has it had quite the same overpowering effect.

The memories were of the day I actually bought the LP - back in either February or March 1970. At the time I was still in my first job, working as a secretary for what was then the organisation controlling television - Independent Television Authority - later it encompassed radio as well the name was changed to the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Anyway, this job was up in London - opposite Harrods - and I was still living at home in Brighton, so had a long commute each day. To be honest, I seemed to have a long commute for all my jobs except one (Sussex University) until the late 1990s when I started life as self-employed.  Anyway, back to the 1970s, the commute was usually almost 2 hours, with 1 hour on the train. That was an 'interesting' experience! On my first journey I found an empty seat on the 7.35 a.m. train and got peculiar looks from the people around me. It was only after I had used the same seat for over a month that I realised the looks were a result of me taking someone else's seat. Not that it was reserved, or that they actually knew the person who normally sat there, but you just automatically sat in the same place every day. Why? Don't ask me. The only time we actually did talk was the day I bought the LP.

Little did we know when we left Brighton at the usual 7.30 a.m. that a train had broken down in one of the tunnels through the Downs, and trains were stacking up. We travelled to the outskirts of Brighton and then stopped. Then moved a mile or so more, and stopped. This carried on with absolutely no information of what was going on - well you didn't get any in those days. I was crocheting a new dress at the time (well, it was 1970!) and virtually finished it whilst we were still just outside Haywards Heath station. After about 2 hours, we actually started talking to each other - what a shock! Never happened before or after! And by about 10.30 when we still hadn't moved for over 45 minutes, revolution occurred and all the passengers decided to climb out of the train - which had carefully stopped just a couple of hundred yards PAST the station, with the train behind being a similar distance BEFORE the station. Good planning, eh. We clamboured out and along the side of the track back to the station, with the railway employees shouting at us and these normally smart and sophisticated businessmen shouting back. Great!

So I had to catch a bus back to Brighton which took another hour, by which time I was pretty stressed since this was, of course, before the invention of the mobile phone (which, according to Wikipedia (yes, I just checked!) was not available to the general public until 1983) so I was not able to let the office know I wouldn't be in today. To calm myself down I went and bought this album in Brighton on my way back home. Great afternoon just playing it over and over again. And the next day my boss even apologised for not believing my excuse when I did actually get to a phone - the evening papers had been full of it.

God, it's a day for memories, whilst waiting for John to bring second helpings of the pork joint (VERY LOW PRICE! VERY BAD FOR THE DIET!) Walker started playing California
Saga/California by the Beach Boys, which we played as we were driving down that coast and seeing Steinbeck's museum!! In fact, as we drove down the coast to Monterey we were playing Beach Boys all the time - and then we stayed in a motel next to the Monterey County Fairgrounds where they held the 1967 Pop Festival. Shame that wasn't because we had been there, but it was still an important event in our history


Since I'm wandering along memory lane, I thought I'd go right back and start a life history - it's OK, not the whole life, that would be too long in one go.  That's the problem with getting so old now, there's so much to remember and I would like to get some of it down before I start losing my marbles! This history isn't necessarily accurate, but just as I remember it with absolutely no research to back up my memories.

Had a slightly different upbringing to most Brits since I was born to a German mother and English father. Dad worked away from home most of the time - coming home roughly one weekend a month - which made life hard for mum who was always very conscious of being 'foreign' so didn't have many close friends to help.

One of my first memories were of playing out in the rough ground at the back of our Council flat underneath all the washing lines, cutting my hand quite severely with a spade, running in to mum who was with a visitor (no idea who, but must have been someone official) and so poo-pooed my cries.  I still have the scar on my hand to this day! That makes her sound very strict, which is wrong, she just had no time for exaggeration and honestly thought I was going OTT just to get attention. As the mirror image of that, I remember her not giving a damn about what people thought as she was shouting at me out of the window of our flat "Breath Eve, Breath!!!" I had suffered from bronchitis for about 6 months (something to do with enlarged kidneys I think, but why they should be connected I have no idea - remember I said no research here.) and one of the consequences was I had to remember to breath rather than it coming natural. So as I was playing away quite happily, I'd often forget to breath and collapse.

Other family, a half-sister who is 5 years older than me.  She is from my mother's first marriage in Germany. I did have another half-sister from my dad's first marriage, but she died about 2 months before I was born. Pretty bad build-up to my birth for mum really.

As a young child I was quite shy - I remember crying my eyes out at junior school (I'd have been about 6 or 7) when we were merely doing a dance in a circle.  I didn't know anyone there and I was scared!  And I craved acceptance by others.  This got worse as I went to secondary school, since I no longer fitted into the local gangs as a 'Grammar School Girl' living on a council estate.  Just having homework was enough to make you stand out.  Also, I couldn't fit in properly at school since mum wouldn't let me bring anyone home - or at least not without a few days notice so she could tidy up. When do teenagers plan that far in advance, I ask you?

All this estrangement was good for my education, though, as I spent most of my time studying and did really well at school. 

Now, that sounds terribly sad, but it wasn't that bad - after all I didn't know anything else.  Towards the end of my school career things began to look up.  I made friends with a couple of schoolfriends who were involved with the Court School of Dancing, and got me to go along.  Not only did I learn to waltz, tango, etc, but over the years I also learned that I wasn't too bad as a person, and that boys liked me.  (The latter being the most important, of course!)  The Court School had this great idea of a 'disco' on a Saturday night where the girls would sit around hoping to be asked to dance by some hulk before the half-time break.  Why then? Well there was no alcohol sold on the premises, and if you'd 'scored' you might well be taken to the pub nearby for a half-time drink.  Girls on their own just wouldn't go into a pub.  It was at one of those Saturdays that I met Graham - the boy who was my first love (both emotionally and physically) - but that is getting ahead of myself a little.

The other way of meeting boys I had at this time (early-mid 1960s) was to go to the local cinema on a Saturday afternoon.  It was the 'done thing' to go to the cinema mid-afternoon, and during the interval between the 'B' film and the main feature the boys would see what 'talent' was in and if you were lucky you'd be picked.  None of these 'dates' lasted more than one or two meetings, though.

Back to my shyness and inferiority complex - this meant that I didn't believe I was intelligent enough to go off to university, and with a foreign mother who didn't really understand the education system, plus a working-class dad who finished school at the age of 14, no-one pushed me to stay at school after 'O' levels (as they were then).  I went, instead, with my 8 'O' levels, to do a 2-year business studies course at the local technical college - financing myself with holiday jobs. Here I blossomed - I had a whale of a time and got a good grade, plus another couple of 'O' levels and an 'A' level in English Law (that one I'm really proud of).  Back then, though (1969) the only career that non-university girls were really groomed for was secretarial work, so I became a secretary with what was then the ITA - the Independent Television Authority (now you can put the first bit of this blog in context). 

We were the governing body that ensured 'standards' were kept within the independent television network - I seem to remember there was a committee who sat each day to both time and quality control all the advertisements that were going to be aired that day.  What a job!  Still, it meant that we had one of the very first colour television sets - a large one too.  That is until 2 men in brown overalls came in one day and took it out the front door - they looked like workmen so no-one thought to query what they were doing!  

Anyway, there I was feeling really grown up because I was commuting from Brighton to London each day and my world changed.  No kidding, though some of the impacts would have happened anyway, such as the launch of colour tv (1969 for ITV for those historians amongst you, whereas the BBC had been broadcasting colour since 1967).  The other event which would have happened anyway was the first moon landing.  Now there was something absolutely mind-blowing, and the bosses very kindly allowed us into the 'viewing room' so we could watch it on colour tv.  Have you ever seen those early pictures?  (Silly question for most sf fans, I know!)  Not much colour - the moon is mainly grey, the sky black, the sun white... the only colour I can remember was the stars and stripes patches on the arm of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  Still, at least we could see that there was no colour!

I was only at the ITA for a short time, but it was full of firsts:

• Saw first landing on the moon there
• I was involved in the launch of decimalisation
• FIRST TRIP TO FRANCE!! That's where we come virtually full circle in a way. Not that I fell in love with the country on that trip. It was a bit weird - I went with a girl I used to work with at the ITA, although by then I had moved on and was working at Sussex University. It was a trip full of weird experiences.
• She had bought tickets on the train from London, where she lived, so I had to catch the train from Brighton to London to meet her, just to come back down to Newhaven again - but since they were combined train/ferry tickets I couldn't just meet up at Newhaven.
• We were on the train from Paris to the south of France (where her father had rented a house for 2 months) when I went into the toilet - an empty room with a hole in the floor in one corner and a sink in the other. I was so scared that I'd gone into the wrong room because there wasn't actually a toilet there, that I couldn't go. I managed to last over 6 hours without using that room!
• I realised for the first time that 'upper class' people weren't all pompous asses - her father had retired, but was called back by his employers - Barclays Bank - so he could organise the bank's move to decimalisation. He used to be Chief Accountant/Treasurer for the Bank! Not the sort of person that a council estate teenager usually meets.
• I found I didn't like coffee, didn't like wine, didn't like much French food at all! Amazing how things change!

And on that bombshell, I think I'll stop this history and let you all get off to bed! More next time - probably again the first weekend of March, but who knows, maybe earlier, maybe later.

Our First Christmas

29th December

Well, it did and didn't start well. The first good bit was we did actually have heating as well as lighting in the main house. As I mentioned in the last post, however, as with everything French - almost! Well, from the ouvriers' viewpoint they are waiting for us to do various jobs, but there are still a couple of radiators which could be fixed and some of the electric sockets. Anyway, we've got used to this French work ethic and don't want to become one of those moaney customers - we want to keep friends with them.

The second good bit was we decided on the kitchen providers and paid a deposit on the 'meubles' (just before the TVA (VAT equivalent) goes up) - so we should have a kitchen in March. My first thought was it would be great if it was early March, then it would be a birthday present! And we could have a soiree for the neighbours for both the finish of the major house renovations and my birthday. Realistically, though, (especially given what I've already said about French ouvriers) we are more likely to be getting ready for Easter before it is finished!

And now the bad bit - well, it had a good portion as well, luckily. I was browning off a large oxtail joint and dropped it in the boiling oil, which splashed all over my face. The good bit was it didn't go into my eyes, but I've been suffering with the burns for the last 4 days, picking off the bits of dried skin and looking like I've got measles with the red patches! It's not just the look, though, it is sooo painful. Next time I'll be a bit more careful, but accidents do happen.

5th January 2014

At the moment I'm sitting  watching Miss Congeniality 2 up here in Normandy,  and thinking about being more efficient!  Hah! That'll be the day! But, it's the start of a new year, so it's the good old 'first clean page of the exercise book'.  So let's get back to finishing the description of our first Christmas of our new life down in Nieul. 

As I mentioned in the last post, we'd got the bathroom in the main house refitted with a lovely walk-in shower, double sink unit plus black and white tiling, so we'd thought our Christmas present to ourselves would be to christen it on Christmas morning. We slept in the new bed in the main bedroom Christmas Eve, woke up there and had a beautiful shower Christmas morning. Trouble is, we also found out that using black tile grout is OK when all the tiles are black, but where you have a strip of black tiles amongst white ones, the black grout runs into the white grout. Oh well, hopefully it is just excess and will wash off soon, and then I'll just have to bleach the white grout round the edge.

As is our Christmas morning tradition, we had champagne and smoked salmon scrambled eggs for breakfast (really virtually brunch, but hey who's counting?) and started watching tv. This tradition was started when we watched the original 3 Star Wars films in one Christmas Day, just stopping to get dressed and for meals now and again! This year it was the first series of 'A Person of Interest'. The meal we stopped for was venison rather than turkey and it was brilliant,  - starting with a taste test to see if we could decide which was best, foie gras of duck or goose. We preferred the duck, surprisingly enough. The other surprising thing was that the venison was English!

Boxing Day meat was rib of beef and we had both cold venison and beef for several days afterwards!

The only disappointing thing about Christmas was that we couldn't cook it or eat/watch tv in the main house. This had been one of the key points in our original plans, but hey, we didn't know about French workmen's scheduling skills when we originally made that schedule. And to be honest, why does it matter? When looking at it logically, there's just us so it's not like it is crucial that we had it finished. However, we do use times like this, and the visits of friends, to give us the impetus to complete one or more of the stages in the whole process, just not the optimistic one we started with. As Eric, the electrician said, 'Of course you can have the house finished for Christmas - just don't specify which one!' (he said it in French, obviously!).

We had planned to come up to Normandy the day after Boxing Day, but a combination of bad weather, not being organised enough, and realising there was no reason to rush, meant we didn't leave till Friday. The only downside of that is that we couldn't get to the doctors to get a new repeat prescription. The system over here is rather more complex than back home - or perhaps its not a France/UK difference, just a resident/non-resident aspect. We have told the UK authorities that we are no longer resident in the UK, so we were no longer able to use the national health system from the day after our phone call. To get under the French system, however, is a little more complex. We have to get the S1 form which says we are no longer under UK national health, birth and marriage certificates translated - but not by anyone, it has to be an authorised translator. Then we have to register it with the local authority here in Dieppe, and hopefully after 3 months we may get our carte vitale which means we get 70% of the cost of medicines repaid. Unlike the UK, no-one gets free medications here (mind you, we only got free medicines when we were 60, before that we either paid a fixed fee per item, or paid an annual amount to get free prescriptions for the year).

So Monday saw another first - an appointment with a French doctor. I took copies of our repeat prescription requests and it was quite interesting as she'd never heard of one of John's blood pressure tablets . How much difference 75 or so miles can make! Total cost of not getting our residency sorted out earlier was over 100 euros! Still, it was for 3 months' prescriptions (apart from one of my blood pressure pills, which was only a month's worth for some reason) and as soon as we start the process, we'll get reimbursed the 70%  of any further medications we need when the process is all completed.

Tuesday - NEW YEAR'S EVE!!!! 

Round at Carole & Martial's from 8 p.m., so we had a light meal at about 5 p.m. because we knew we wouldn't be eating till about 11 p.m. And we were right! Mind you, it was worth the wait - started with lobster, followed by fruits de mer (seafood platter), then cheese and dessert as per usual with French meals.  Nice small group - just 11 of us, Carole & Martial, of course, then John, Mary, Dominique & Valerie, Igor, Lulu, and Igor's young son. We eventually left around 3.30 a.m. and in bed by 4, ready to start again for lunch. I do love the French concept that you should start your first meal in the New Year with those that you said goodbye to the old year with. The trouble is, no-one is really up to it so soon after the excesses of the night before. Lulu and Igor got to bed around 6 a.m., Martial and Dominic about half an hour earlier whilst Carole and Valerie gave up about 5 a.m. I think. Though I think Lulu's problem wasn't so much the lack of sleep as the bottle of whiskey that she and Igor managed to finish between them the night before. John and I only managed to last until about 5 p.m., of which I'm sure Carole was more than grateful.

What a great way to start the first New Year of our new life!