Travelling again Part 2

Not much to write about this week. We seem to have spent an awful amount of time getting to grips with the idiosyncrasies of the house and the appliances in it. To say nothing of the complete day spent watching videos! How totally decadent!
Last week while doing some ironing, I thought that the iron was performing rather badly and then discovered that it was getting cooler rather than hotter. Thinking that I had overheated it, or something, I put it aside meaning to return later and try again. Well, later became the next day but before I tried ironing again, I thought I would put in a load of washing. I also thought that that I could remember how to operate the washing machine but, try as I might, I couldn’t get it to switch on. Time to call the Handy Man! In no time at all he had established that the earth leakage fuse had tripped, probably something to do with the water in the steam iron, and the washing machine was soon sloshing away with vigour. The iron, without water, also worked, so that chore was completed too.
Next thing to misbehave was the gas stove. We are used to cooking with gas and are not afraid of it, but found it very mystifying when the stove would not light, in spite of having been used a number of times since we arrived. Perhaps the pipes had frozen, we thought, although by now it really wasn’t cold enough for that. However, the Handy Man came to the rescue again and took all the pipes apart but could find nothing wrong anywhere. Still no gas supply to the stove though. Eventually we pulled the stove away from the wall and found a sort of manually operated valve behind it. This was twiddled a few times and, hey presto! We had gas. Since there was no rhyme or reason for any of this, we didn’t know if the ‘cure’ would last, and as Sod’s Law would have it, it didn’t. The next day we had to twiddle the valve again, and again on the third day. Since then everything has worked in the scullery and in the kitchen.
The next to go was the television set. We had been lent the DVD of ‘Downton Abbey’ which I had been looking forward to watching since before our arrival. We switched the channel from normal television to audio/visual and suddenly we had nothing – no picture and no sound. Anxiously, we pushed all the buttons on the remote in turn but nothing happened. Suddenly, after a few more frantic stabs at the buttons, we had sound. Sound, but no picture. We were now getting really worried. After all, we are only borrowing someone else’s house and belongings and really didn’t want to have damaged the TV set. Or to have inadvertently changed some vital settings. There was nothing for it but that the Handy Man had to crawl in behind the set and see what he could see. He moved some wires and there was a flash of picture! So he laboriously took out all the plugs, cleaned them and put them back. Hooray! We had sound and picture. Then we were too nervous to watch the DVD!
Meanwhile the small TV set in the main bedroom had also gone on the blink, but as he was now so good at fixing these things, Mr Handy Man had it going again in a flash. We had spent the better part of a day getting everything working as it should. The next day we spent the better part of the day watching all seven hours of ‘Downton Abbey’ and didn’t feel at all guilty!
Earlier in the week we had been very honoured to receive an invitation from our friend in Peyrusse Vieille, Ady, to have lunch with her. Did she ever do us proud! She had laid the table beautifully and had even fanned the table napkins and put them in the wine glasses. It all looked very pretty. We started with a generous glassful of the local aperitif, Floc, which is a bit like sherry. With this, we had some thin slices of a salami-like sausage topped with a blob of what could have been feta cheese. Then the soup was served – a clear vegetable broth with plenty of vegetables cooked in it. There were beans, carrots, potatoes, onion and garlic. After the soup there was a magnificent roast chicken served with wild mushrooms, picked by Ady herself. I admit to being a bit nervous about them but they were simply delicious and we all still live! Ady has a wonderfully careless, medieval attitude to carving a chicken and it was not so much cut as torn to pieces. Who cares? It was yummy!
All the while our glasses were being filled and refilled with a delicious red wine, until we just had to decline. There was still another course to come – dessert, and an enormous chocolate tart appeared on the table. I estimate it could have served at least eight people but Ady thought otherwise. She quickly quartered it and handed a huge piece to each of us. Of course, it was delicious, but wow! What a meal for the middle of the day. Finally she gave us tiny cups of black coffee which was good idea after all the wine. When we took our leave a short while later, she made it quite plain that she was off to have a few zz’s. We, poor things, still had to drive home. At least we didn’t have to walk it!
Oh, and by the way.......if any of you have tried to Skype us without success, we are not ignoring you. The company from whom we bought the data bundle for our modem seems to block Skype calls, no doubt hoping that callers will use their mobile phones instead. When,and if, we get different internet access, you will be the first to know!
The pictures I have include this week are of a delightful inn sign in Saint Mont; a general view of the countryside at present; and a novel use for the lower section of a water reservoir

Travelling again. Part 1

After a really good flight from Cape Town, and quite a lot of sleep, relatively speaking, we arrived in Amsterdam which the pilot had told us was a chilly 3 degrees. Luckily we disembarked through a gantry straight into the airport terminal so were unaware of the cold. A friend who was on her way to the USA had been on the same flight as ourselves, so we were able to enjoy a cup of coffee together before we went our separate ways. It helped to fill the time between flights very pleasantly.

On arrival at Toulouse we were met by my cousin and rather grey weather. It was also extremely cold, so we were not really surprised to see snow covered fields once we had cleared the city. At first it was just a sprinkle here and there but as we drove further it became thicker and thicker, although the road was perfectly clear. The closer we got to our destination, the less evidence there was of the heavy snowfall of the previous week, although there was a thin sprinkling in the driveway of the house, which stayed until Thursday.
Various friends had been into the house and we found the fire burning, food in the frig and the cupboards and even a bottle of our favourite wine! A delicious stew was waiting to be heated up in the microwave after which we treated ourselves to ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. Even the black and white cat, Flo, gave us an enthusiastic welcome and made us feel very much ‘back home’.

My cousin had announced that she had recently changed both her cell phone and her service provider and offered us her old phone complete with SIM card and time on the card. What a bonus! When we switched it on the next morning, we discovered that there was a message from the people who had cared for our little car for the past nine months. It was to tell us that there may well be a problem with the car’s battery as it had been very reluctant to start when it was brought across to the house. And how right they were! The battery was absolutely as dead as the proverbial doornail. So now we had a bit of a problem. We are about 8 kms from the nearest suitable battery outlet and wanted to try to sort our problem unaided. First we found the battery charger in the storeroom and hooked that up while we unpacked and found places for everything. However, when there was simply no spark of life after a few hours of charging, we had to try Plan B. Part One of Plan B was to use the battery of the other car which is parked here and try to jump start Goldie. Uh-oh…..no jump leads. Part Two was to put that battery into Goldie but it was too big. So we had to revert to Part Three which was to drive the car (a Volvo estate car) to the nearest battery supplier and buy a new battery. Of course, we had forgotten about the two-hour lunch-time in France so found ourselves sitting outside the garage for about half an hour. It was worth the wait though and we were soon back at the house and fitting the new battery which happily solved all the starting problems.

We have already submitted our documents for renewing our long-stay permits so it is just a case of waiting for a card in the post to tell us to fetch them again. Of course, the goal posts have been moved again, in true French style, and the photographs which were acceptable last year are no longer acceptable this year and we had to get others done. And we can never get going early enough in the morning, so we end up having to sprint around furiously to achieve everything before that lunch hour!

We have also been back to Peyrusse Vieille to say hallo to our dear friend Ady. When she saw us walking down the path to her house, she flung open the window and shrieked her delight at seeing us. She certainly does one’s ego a huge amount of good. We were so busy talking that she almost forgot about ringing the church bells at midday. She suddenly looked at the clock and shot out of her chair with an ‘Ooh la la!’ and rushed off to the church which is practically next door. The fact that it was by then almost ten past twelve didn’t seem to faze her at all. All the farm labourers waiting for her lunch time reminder would probably just take ten minutes more at the other end of the two hours.

On Saturday the sun came out for the first time and the sky was brilliant blue. What a difference sun makes to one’s surroundings! I hope it stays like this for while so that we can go and visit old haunts and see them at their best.

We rounded off the week with a visit to the cinema –a very novel exercise for us as there has been no ‘movie house’ in Hermanus for quite some time. We saw ‘The Artist’ which has recently won a number of awards. It is a silent movie, in black and white, which is unusual. However, with brilliant camera work and eminently suitable music, the producers have managed a remarkable result. We loved it!

We have been so occupied this week that it feels as if we have been away for months already, and it is only the end of five days!