A rather boring week all round, I would say. The weather has
been cold and grey, not at all conducive to driving out and sight-seeing but
apart from that we have been quite busy trying to sort out the repairs that have
to be done to the car for it to pass the road-worthy test. First of all, we
drove down to Ruffec where there is a reputable Peugeot agent and workshop to
find out if they agreed with the inspector who told us that the whole back axle
needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, the inspector was quite right and the agent,
with a gleam of dollar signs in his eyes, offered to book the car in right away
– at a huge cost. We said we would consider it and returned to Sauze-Vaussais.
A friend put us in touch with a qualified mechanic who offered to find us a
good second-hand part, and to fit it with the aid of a friend, another
mechanic, for half the cost of the agency garage. Had we been in South Africa,
we might have had serious misgivings about letting a back-yard mechanic do the
job, but since the work will be later scrutinised by another inspector and this
time hopefully pass the test, we thought it was probably all right.
All of that took up almost the whole day and it wasn’t until
the next afternoon, when the sun peeped out for a short while, that we took
ourselves a little way up the road to a tiny place called Sainte Soline. Apart
from wanting to just ‘go and see’, we needed to take the second car that was
left here, for a run to keep the battery charged. By the time we had driven the
eight or so kilometres to the village, the sun had decided to cooperate and had
rolled back most of the clouds for us. The village is on the River Dive and
next to it is a large open area that we presume would be full of picnicking
families in summer. At one end of the area is a netball court and a boulles
court. A charming pathway has been created to wind through the trees and is slightly
raised, no doubt to prevent flooding of the picnic area. It was very quiet with
just the sounds of the birds and the soft chuckling of the river, and we
thought it a lovely place for a picnic. Apart from the park though, and the
usual 12th century church, there were a series of bath-houses along
the river bank. Unlike the wash-houses that are fairly commonly seen and which
were, and sometimes still are, used for washing laundry, these bath-houses had
three shallow, wide steps inside them, the lowest one being on a level with the
water. We are fairly sure that the idea was to slip off one’s wrap while inside
the house and then slide into the water, either to bath or to bathe. They are
obviously not in use any more, and the water has a strange grey colour which is
a bit unappealing. Quite picturesque though!
On Saturday we decided to have a change of supermarket and
went to Lezay which is about eight or nine kilometres in the opposite direction
to Sauze-Vaussais. First, though, we needed to find a tabac, a tobacconist’s shop where one can buy papers and magazines,
birthday cards and toys, cigarettes and smoking accessories. I was looking for
a birthday card for a friend and we needed to cash in our winning Lotto ticket –
all of two euros worth! As I turned to close the door behind me, my eye was
caught by a rack of new-release books, and especially by one book entitled
KNYSNA in huge letters. This was the very last thing I would have expected to
see in a small bookshop in France so we quizzed the owner about it. Apparently
it is all about the French football team and their trials and tribulations
during the 2010 World Cup, which for them was a total disaster. We then told
him that we had actually lived in Knysna for many years and he asked us how to
pronounce the name correctly, and what were we doing in this part of France all
the way from South Africa etc etc and by the end of the conversation we were
friends for life.
Later that afternoon our back yard mechanics phoned to say
that they would be picking up the car at eight the next morning. Horrors! We didn’t
know that eight o’clock even existed but we managed to be up and decent in
time. Then, seeing that we were up so early, and seeing that we have only
cleaned the house sporadically over the past few weeks, and seeing that we have
no idea if Veronique is going to be fit enough for work before we leave, and
seeing that it was a thoroughly miserable day anyway, we got stuck in and
cleaned the house properly. By the time we had finished everything was
sparkling and dog-hair free, although I know it won’t last long. And not too
much later, there was a ‘toot-toot’ from outside and the car was back – fixed and
ready to go.
Hopefully the weather will clear up again soon and we will
be able to get out a bit more. We have some places in mind that we would like
to visit, but it needs to be good weather. So we are holding thumbs and hoping
that the Met. Office is wrong in their forecast of grey, miserable days for the
foreseeable future.
No comments:
Post a Comment