An early blog this week because my computer is off to the local IT man tomorrow to see if he can get it to show DVD's and I won't get it back until Monday. This house doesn't have any TV, but various people have said they will lend us DVD's which would be a good substitute when we are tired of reading.
The week started off in stark contrast to the week we arrived - it was freezing. Happily, the owners of the house told us to go ahead and light a fire in the big stove thingy in the lounge, and what a difference that made.
We are more settled in too. We went to Eauze to do a big shop and came back with lots of lovely goodies to eat. Now, I think we will be able to have more balanced meals instead of the rather scrappy affairs Neels has had to put up with up to now.
The cold weather and freezing rain persisited right through until Thursday which meant that we couldn't go to the weekly market at Marciac on Wednesday as planned, so we invited Nicky for lunch and we all sat in front of a roaring fire and chatted, and even fitted in a game of Scrabble in the afternoon.
By Thursday Neels and I were beginning to suffer from cabin fever, so when it showed signs of clearing slightly we decided to first go for a walk which was not a good idea as it was still bitterly cold outside. Then we caught sight of our one neighbour trotting off down the road. We had been told that she rings the church bells every day at noon, so we ran after her and introduced ourselves. We walked with her to the church where she bing-bonged away merrily for a while then gave three tugs with the right hand, three with the left then another three with each hand again for twelve o'clock and then lots more bing-bongs. She invited us for aperitif which we accepted, and she led the way into the kitchen of her house where a fire was smouldering in an enormous fireplace. What a character she is! Although we could barely understand each other we all chattered away for about half an hour, and from the bits that we could understand we discovered that she is 88 years old; has lived in the same house almost forever; has two sons living in the vicinity; lived through the war which was terrible and is not in favour of cold weather in May! She demonstrated to us how she sits on an upright chair with her feet in the fireplace to eat her meals, and then sits astride it to warm her back and to watch TV! She also promised to tell the bakery lady who whizzes through the village each day, that we would also like to get bread from her. We parted as good friends.
In the afternoon, with the weather still looking fairly good we drove to Nogaro about 25 kms away to finally get a SIM card for my phone. When we got there we discovered that the shop only opened at 3 pm, but quite conveniently, we had parked right outside a bakery which had a very obvious board outside stating that parking was for customers only. So we just had to go in and buy a couple of delicious vailla custard slices which we sat in the car and ate. After a few minutes the bakery lady came out and asked if we were going to be staying long, becasue there was long-stay parking behind the church across the road. feeling a bit embarrassed we told her that we were waiting for the Orange (cell phone service provider) shop to open but would move at once. then she was embarrassed and said that it was perfectly allright to park there as long as we didn't stay for longer than an hour - it was really nothing to do with the board uotside her shop! She didn't want us to get a parking fine.
In the end we did stay a bit longer than we intended because buying a SIM card is such a mission. I had to give my date of birth, for goodness sake! Then when we had the card and it was in the phone and I had a number, we had to go across the road to the 'tabac' to buy some time to put in the phone, and then go back to the first shop for someone to help us key in the voucher number. What a performance!.
On the way home we were thrilled to see a deer cross the road ahead of us not far from this village. It's nice to know they are still in the woods around here, although when I mentioned it to Nicky she said warningly 'Remember, there are always two'. I believe there have been some nasty accidents with people hitting or nearly hitting them. Still, we enjoyed seeing it.
On Friday morning we awoke to brilliant sunshine and a clear sky. A good day for photographs, so we dashed outside and started snapping everything, in case the sun disappeared again. So now you can at long last see what the house looks like that we are staying in, and how it is situated in the village. In the picture of Neels and the house, that is all one house although it looks like two.
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