Week two and a week of
events and surprises – some pleasant, some unexpected but all of them
interesting. The first surprise was waking up on Monday to a white world and
the air filled with slowly drifting snow-flakes. It was beautiful but
obviously, freezing and I darted around the house taking photographs from
inside the closed windows. It continued to snow for most of the day but
drizzled a bit in between, so the snow never got more than about three
centimetres thick. Certainly not enough to build a snowman so we didn’t even
try going outdoors. We did get post,
however, and it turned out to be the documents we had been waiting for from the
UK, that were necessary for our permit renewal.
By the following morning
practically all of the snow had melted and, as we now had everything necessary,
we drove off towards Auch under a brilliantly sunny sky. The snowy conditions
were not really past though, and the closer we got to Auch, the thicker the snow was lying
on the sides of the road. However the sunny sky persisted so we carried on,
with the car’s heater giving out a warm blast of air. The office we were aiming
for is located next to the magnificent sixteenth century cathedral, and there
is a handy parking area on the other side of the building, which we have always
used in the past. To our surprise we found half of the parking unusable and
barricaded off to allow workmen to prune the trees in the area, so had no
option but to return to the maze of one-way, narrow streets that the old part
of the city consists of. The cathedral sits on the top of a small hill, as so
many of these old churches do, and we found ourselves getting further and
further down the hill until, right at the bottom and next to the river that
runs through the city we found a place to stop. Quite coincidentally it was
right across from an enormous staircase which is known as the Escalier Monumentale,
which leads back up to the cathedral. Excellent! But most of you know that I
‘don’t do stairs’ and 220 steps later I was beginning to remember why. It was
also absolutely freezing and our breath was coming in little puffs of white
cloud as we struggled up. Once at the top though the rest was plain sailing and
we were in and out of the office in a matter of minutes with our temporary
permits in hand and a promise of a phone
call when the new ones are ready. The fact that the calves of my legs were
agonisingly stiff for the next four days we will just try to forget about!
The following day, we
decided that as we had been coming to this little village for the past three
years, it was probably time to introduce ourselves to the Mayor’s Secretary.
These ladies are essential to village life and pretty much run everything that
happens. In the smaller villages like Espas and Peyrusse Vieille, the Secretary
usually only works two half days a week, but works in several other villages
too, so they really do know everything that goes on in the area. The day that we
went to meet ‘our’ Secretary, the Mayor happened to be in the office too so now
we have met the entire gang.
Almost every day since we
arrived, strange parcels had been arriving all addressed to Pieter and on
Thursday, the man himself arrived, in the Land Rover he had bought in Spain.
Not a new vehicle, but a very basic model with none of the accessories that his
South African one has. That was all to be changed though, and starting on
Friday, all sorts of bits and pieces appeared out of the many parcels and began
to be attached. It was sometimes a difficult task as special tools were often
required and of course, we didn’t have them. But as they say, ‘n Boer maak ‘n
plan and at one stage we had the whole bonnet of the vehicle lying on the floor
of the lounge keeping warm in front of the fire so that the glue attaching the
checker plate could ‘cure’. To help things along a bit, we had filled all the
available saucepans with water and they were positioned at intervals around the
bonnet. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the two men of the house had bought
themselves white paper paint-suits to wear instead of overalls and they looked
for all the world like two technicians out of an American Crime TV series.
The weather has improved
enormously and today was even warm enough to have windows wide open and to leave
off one layer of clothing. The forecast indicates that it should stay like this
until at least Wednesday of the coming week, so hopefully by then all the car
renovations will be finished. By then too, we will have learned a few new words
in French. Our neighbour across the road is a fairly handy fellow so we have
been able to borrow things like a hack-saw and a few other tools from him, but
we have had first to learn the names in French! Ah well…………it’s all part of the
learning process and the adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment