If we thought last week was somewhat boring, this week was
even more so. This ‘house-sitting’ as opposed to just staying in someone else’s
house is proving to be quite restrictive, as far as outings and exploring goes.
There always seems to be something that needs doing around the house, and then
it is really too late to be starting out for a drive. So perhaps I should
concentrate on what we have managed to achieve this week instead of being
negative about it.
We had our first day of coping with the char-lady,
Veronique, on our own, which proved to be quite entertaining. As I said
previously, she speaks no English, really – just a couple of words that she has
picked up and which she likes to throw into the conversation in an effort to
help us communicate. The results, as you can imagine are sometimes hilarious!
However, the house got cleaned, the laundry done and mostly ironed and when she
left about two hours later, I’m sure one could notice the difference. There is
always a lot of vacuuming to be done as the dog sheds copious amounts of hair
which seems to blow around and end up in balls in the corners or under tables
and chairs. In which case………..thank heavens for Veronique!
Having now been away from home for almost a month, I decided
that it was time to get out my embroidery and do a bit of work on it. Monday
was a simply glorious day and I spent most of the afternoon sitting out on the
patio with my cross-stitch. That evening, just as we were starting out for our
daily walk, one of the people we had recently been introduced to, arrived and
stayed and chatted for about half an hour. During this time she also sold us
tickets for a pantomime which is being put on in the village by the local
amateur dramatic society. I wonder what it will be like. Time will tell.
The next day was still gloriously sunny but a sneaky wind
had appeared out of nowhere and was icy cold. Spring may have sprung but winter
is not letting go easily. That evening, we had been invited to a neighbour’s
house for ‘an aperatif’ and when we got there they had a roaring fire burning,
so perhaps we were not the only ones feeling the chill. We spent a chatty few
hours them and discovered a number of points of contact. The husband describes
himself as ‘half South African’ and still has family there, and in fact they
had just recently returned from a trip to the Cape. What a coincidence.
We needed to replenish the tub of dog treats and another tub
of suet balls for the birds, both items that come from a particular shop in Poitiers
so on Wednesday we went off to do just that. One can get on to the motorway not
far from here and then it is only about a forty minute drive, but I found it
very scary. I have mentioned before how huge the trucks are here on the Continent
and this particular motorway is the direct route from Paris to Bordeaux, so is
always very busy. The trucks are not allowed to overtake each other for long
stretches where the road is only two lanes in each direction, but this means
that they end up driving in convoys of ten to fifteen trucks at a time. And it
always seems that we have no sooner passed one lot when the back of the next
convoy appears ahead of us and we have to do it all over again. Of course, we
are not the only car on the road so when something faster than us wants to
overtake, we then have to dive back into the line in amongst the trucks. Not
what I call fun at all, so on the way home, we chose some of the back roads and
hoped we wouldn’t get lost. We stopped for while in a little village called Rom
where there are apparently some really good Roman remains, and mosaics in what
was a Roman villa, but they were all covered up for the winter.Next to the twelfth century church there was a
small museum though, with some fascinating things in it which had been dug up in
the area. The village itself was small and fairly uninteresting except for a
coin-operated machine which we found on the corner of one of the streets. It
was a baguette machine! The idea was that in villages where there is no bakery
where the residents can buy their (literally) daily bread, one of these
machines would be installed in a central location. Put your fifty cent piece in
the slot and out would come a nice hot, freshly baked baguette. The idea didn’t
really take off as most villages without bakeries have a visiting bakery van
that comes around every morning and together with your freshly baked baguette,
you get a good helping of fresh gossip. No machine can do that! Unfortunately,
we couldn’t try out the machine as it apparently has Wednesdays off!
On Thursday we just pottered around. Having been into Sauze-Vaussais to buy some meat, I made a huge curry and
froze two thirds of it for later meals. I just had to take a picture of the clock-tower in the centre of town. It looks just like something the pre-schoolers make out of empty toilet rolls, empty boxes and bottletops! Neels spent a long time installing a
motion sensor and lights in the workshop, and when I asked why it had taken so
long, he told me that he had had to drill holes in the beam above the outside
door and that it was so hard that he had to take numerous tries at it. This is
in the original part of the building which is built of stone and oak, and is
probably a couple of hundred years old. The untreated oak timbers have almost
turned to stone as time has passed.
The rest of the week just slid past. Some more of the huge
lawn got sprayed with weedkiller and part of it was also cut. This is something
that Neels has been looking forward to being able to do. He has a choice of not
one, but two, ride-on motor mowers. Mowing about an eighth of the lawn took
nearly an hour, so it’s going to be a long job. He also took part of our car to
pieces again to get rid of the last of the mouse nest in the ventilation ducts
and we hope this is the end of the story. Before he tackled it, the car had
been standing for a day or two, and the weather had been fairly warm and the
pong when we got into the vehicle was eye-watering to say the least. Enough to
convince him that it was a job worth doing, at any rate. We bought an
air-freshener last time round at the supermarket and hope that it will manage
to override any lingering smells
We have promised ourselves that next week we will make a
concerted effort to do some exploring and find some interesting places to take
pictures of.
No comments:
Post a Comment