A strange week - full of ups and downs. Added to this, my diary tells me that the weather all week was ‘Grey’ except for Saturday when it rained all day. Not the sort of weather to excite us at all. The weather forecast kept telling us that it would improve on Sunday, which was good news for the Vide Grenier, but we didn’t really believe it. Imagine our amazement when we peered out of the window on Sunday morning to see patches of blue sky and a bit of sun that was definitely getting stronger. It was also marginally warmer than the freezing days we had been having, which was good too.
However, I am getting ahead of my self, so let me go back a bit to the beginning of the week. Some people we have got to know, who are restoring and altering an old house, asked if Neels would give them a hand with fitting a couple of wall sockets in the newer part of the building, so we made a date for Tuesday and after the usual scenic tour, meaning we got lost, we found our way to the house. The first part of the job was fairly simple as it really was just to fit a couple of sockets to the end of the wires which were already there, but they also wanted an extractor fan fitted and this entailed drilling a twelve centimeter hole trough the wall for the outlet pipe. As it was an outside wall, this meant going through plaster board, insulation (a bit like drilling through cotton wool), then bricks and cement. It turned into a really big job and we ended up spending all day there, and having lunch too. However, if they are satisfied with what he managed to do, perhaps they will tell a few friends so that Neels can have a few more odd jobs to do.
On Wednesday, we heard much talking and dogs barking outside when we finally surfaced at about 8.30 in the morning. When we looked out, there were cars paked everywhere, men milling about and dogs rushing everywhere. We were mystified until we heard a few short blasts on a horn which sounded just like one of those old-fashioned rubber-bulb car hooters. Aha! Now we knew! Hunting season has begun. Dogs and men moved off and for the next few hours there was plenty of barking and shouting from the valley below us, but thankfully no shots, so we guess they found nothing that day. It will be interesting to see how often they try the same area.
The same day we received an item in the post that gave us quite a shock but there is very little we can do about it now. When we arrived, as we had been instructed by the French Embassy in Cape Town, we sent off a special form and various copies of passports etc to the Immigration Office in Toulouse, in order to validate our one-year visa. They, we were told, would send us stickers which were to be affixed to our passports next to the visa to prove that we are legally here. However, either the rules have been changed or we were misinformed, as the letters we received instructed us to present ourselves at the office in Toulouse and be prepared to undergo a medical examination and have x-rays taken, and to bring with us Revenue stamps equivalent to a large amount of money. Failure to comply, the letter went on to say, would mean that we would be staying in France illegally. At first we were completely horrified, but then decide that this was what we had been aiming for ultimately, so we should just go ahead and not complain. So on Monday 28th June we will be off to Toulouse to try our luck with French Bureaucracy.
Later in the week though, we had an ‘up’ episode. We had been told of a second-hand car parts shop in Eauze, so on the off-chance we went there and asked if they had the piece of beading that is missing off the door of our car. They did, and so we came home and practiced a bit of amateur panel-beating until the strip could sit flat against the door. The effect is startling! No longer does it appear as if the car has recently been in a bad accident, and at first glance, it is hard to see the damage at all. Neels is as pleased as Punch, and now feels less embarrassed driving around.
After the miserable weather all week, we decided that, as we intending going to the Vide Grenier anyway, we would look for and buy ourselves a jigsaw puzzle as an occupation during the next spell of bad weather. We ending up buying two 1000 piece puzzles for a Euro each – not a bad bargain, but when we got home, we couldn’t resist the temptation and started doing one immediately.. We will have to eat on our laps until it is complete as it takes up most of the only table in the house, that is, if we get any food at all, as the cook finds it hard to drag herself away from the puzzle. It also explains why this weeks blog is a day late, for which I apologise.
No comments:
Post a Comment