Our place in France Chapter 34

For anyone reading this before Monday 31^st, you will get a bonus chapter. For those who only look for it on Monday, you will get a short weeks-worth. As we will be travelling on both Sunday and Monday, I decided that a short week was better than an off-kilter week, so here we go.

Once again, it was a week of fits and starts as people who suddenly realised that we would be leaving at the end of this week, began dropping in from time to time to wish us farewell and bon voyage. It was so kind of them to do so but it did sort of interrupt everything else. However, we have made great inroads on the furniture and boxes that have filled the conservatory and part of the garage for the last five years, and I think that sorting through everything and throwing things away has been quite therapeutic for Carol and, quite literally given her a bit of breathing space.

On Tuesday we went to visit friends and cousins who live in Warrington and Wilmslow, respectively, having a light lunch and a chat with one and tea and cake with a longer chat with the other. As the two towns are on opposite ends of Manchester, it was a day full of driving but Carol seems to enjoy it and even took a huge detour on the way home for us to have a look at some carpet tiles in an enormous hardware and homeware store, in order to finish off the carpeting at home. We found some good ones in a contrasting colour so went back the next morning with our sample to make sure and to take advantage of the Wednesday discount! I think they will look fine.

The Garstang Ukulele Group had a booking to play at a pub not too far away on Thursday night so off we traipsed again. The pub was crowded and with the twenty-odd players in the group, it was very full and very hot! I think the heating was on high because within minutes the perspiration was glistening on everyones foreheads. In spite of that though, a very good time was had by all. They sing well known songs and ditties, so the audience tend to sing along which is always more fun. Oh dear! Another late night!

On Friday it was my birthday and I was overwhelmed with calls and texts. A lot of people hadn’t taken the time difference into consideration, England being an hour behind everyone else, so there were a couple of really early wake-up calls but I enjoyed receiving them all. A bit later when I eventually did get up and get to my computer, there were a whole batch more, of e-cards and messages. Thank you to all of you. It was so lovely to know that we may be gone, but are not yet forgotten!

On Saturday, today, we did our furniture removal act again. An elderly gent phoned up in quite a tizz yesterday to ask if there were any beds still for sale as his had collapsed the night before and he was sleeping on a two-seater couch! There was still one, so he came around right away and paid for it. Then this morning there was much pushing and shoving, and huffing and puffing as we loaded a huge double bed and mattress with headboard into Carols trailer then the same in reverse to get it out again and into his tiny house. I think he was really chuffed with his ‘new’ bed and it was certainly and improvement on the couch! Apparently his little terrier-type dog usually sleeps on the bed with him but kept on falling off the couch, so eventually went to sleep in an armchair where he “snored all night”!  We wished them a good nights sleep tonight.

We haven’t had a whole lot of photographic opportunities, but the weather has been grey-ish most of the time anyway, but I did manage to get a shot of the three Acer plants in my cousin’s garden which are simply glorious at the moment.

Our place in France Chapter 33

This week has seen more of the same as last week. Clearing up, clearing out and getting rid of! Again, various trips to second hand shops etc but at a slower pace. Carol had also advertised a few goods on the internet and by putting up notices in the supermarkets and so on, which brought a steady response, if a bit strange in some cases. One person phoned to say that he was interested in a double bed and mattress and could he come and have a look at it at five o’clock, after work. When he arrived, he was riding a bicycle, which caused a bit of a laugh as he doesn’t own a car. However he thought he had a friend who could help with transport, so off he pedalled to find this friend. While he was away, we decided that if the friend was not available, we could load the bed and mattress, as well as a chest of drawers and a stool which he had also bought, into Carol’s trailer and deliver it to him, for a small fee. Ker-ching! In the end, friend was not available so this morning we loaded up his purchases and took them to his house. It was only about two miles (we’re in England now!) away, but what a pretty drive and a pretty day to match. It was sunny and blue-sky-ed with little puffs of white clouds here and there, but an icy breeze blowing. A good day to be inside the car and not on a bicycle.

Another bed went to a lady who really didn’t know what she really wanted. First she phoned to find out the exact size, although it was a standard double bed and had been advertised as such. Then she phoned again to find out if it had storage drawers underneath, which it hadn’t. Then she phoned again to ask us to measure the height from the floor to the bed, in order to be able to put storage boxes in underneath it and then finally she phoned again to ask if she could come and see it the same evening. She came, and strangely enough, it was exactly what she had been looking for! So another piece left the garage. As did a washing machine and a dish-washer and numerous ‘smalls’. We managed to find someone to take three large boxes of ancient books, who then found someone else who was really interested in seeing them, and the ‘someone’ else knew yet another person who would ‘just love to get his hands on’ a selected few of them. Great! Some more satisfied customers and more room in the garage.

So having made all this marvelous space in the garage, and while we still had the trailer attached to the car, we swung by the storage unit that had been rented to accommodate all the extra furniture, and huffed and puffed until we had the three pieces of a bedroom wardrobe and dressing table set all neatly packed into the trailer and took it home where we huffed and puffed it all out again and into the space we had cleared. So now the garage is nearly full again!

However, it wasn’t all work this week. On Tuesday, Carol and I took the afternoon off and went to a demonstration and workshop of floral art. Not really my scene, I thought, but it turned out to be quite fascinating. The demonstrator did two arrangements, especially for Autumn, using only leaves which are available now. I was amazed to see just how vibrant an arrangement one can make using only foliage. Very clever indeed. Then, all the ladies who had brought materials with them started to do their own versions of what they had just seen. Time passed very pleasantly and then it was tea and biscuits and then home. The ladies were all very friendly and eager to show off what they had learned and some lovely arrangements left the building that evening.

On Thursday we did a round of local carpet shops to look for some carpet tiles to finish the carpets in our house, but finally gave up. There are so few shops that stock them and nothing that we saw was anything like the ones we put down initially. The Carol surprised us by taking us to a birthday lunch for Neels whose birthday was the following day, at the wonderful Midland Hotel in Fleetwood. It is housed in a grand old Art Nouveau building, with the hotel name picked out in quite small letters above the front doors. All very understated. We were not eating in the dining room as that would have broken the bank, but instead we had  a lovely meal in what is known as the Rotunda Bar – a circular bar counter with tables arranged all around with huge windows looking out on to the sea. It looks out on to Morecombe Bay which is where, some years a ago a number of mussel pickers were drowned when the tide came in.. I had always sort of wondered at this story – wondered why they didn’t just run for the shore when the sea started to come up, but now I understand. There are little hills and valleys all over the bed of the bay, to say nothing of the sinking sands, and the tide spreads over the huge flat area unbelievably fast, swirling around both sides of little islands of sand until each is cut off and then sweeping over the top at a great rate. It is frightening just to watch and must be terrifying to be caught out there as the tide rises.

We must have become quite cold-hearted over the years as the thought of the poor mussel-pickres didn’t spoil our appetites at all and when we eventually rolled out of the hotel some time later we couldn’t have eaten another thing! Sadly we had to say ‘No’ to 'Afternoon Tea on the Verandah' at only £17.50 a head! That is nearly R300 per person for a cup of tea and few cakes or sandwiches1 We were very glad to walk away from that.

On Saturday evening we went to a fund-raising event at the Arts Centre, here in Garstange, in the form of a Lancashire and Yorkshire variety concert. The main performers were the Garstang Ukulele Group of which Carol is a member, and they opened and closed the show with some rousing renderings of ‘local’ songs. I say ‘local’ because some of the  connections to either Yorkshire or Lancashire were a bit vague to say the least. In between that we had different people reciting humorous verse, some in Lancashire idiom; a man who was a primary school pupil when the building was a school, who sang the school song for us, now probably defunct as is the school; an ex-headmistress who read us an hilarious account of a trip to Paris in a ‘charabanc’ and all the high junks everyone got up to; there was a most amusing magician who had a mass of corny jokes to go with his magic  and the man who kept the whole show moving was dressed as the Hall Caretaker and managed to keep everyone in stitches as he deftly cleared away props and brought in others. The actual opening of the show was an announcement by the Garstang Town Crier, preceded by ringing a large brass bell three times and shouting ‘Oh – Yeah! Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah!’. She looked very grand in her official garb of black skirt and boots, white blouse with a ruffle at the neck, red waistcoat and a black tricorn hat. She presides at all sorts of functions and certainly added a touch of glamour to the evening.

Included in the cost of the ticket was a meal of Lancashire Hot-pot, which can be served with either red cabbage or beetroot, traditionally. We got ours with beetroot and it was delicious. With about 70 to 80 people in a relatively small hall, all breathing, talking, laughing, moving about and eating hot food, the place warmed up nicely so it was a real shock to go outside again into the chilly breeze. I do think Autumn has arrived.

Our place in France Chapter 32

It’s been a funny old week, in all sorts of ways. We knew when we came that this was not going to be a sight-seeing holiday, although we have managed a bit of that too, but the main activity was to help Carol sort through an accumulation of furniture and odds and ends that having been gathering dust since they first moved from a large five bed-roomed house to a much small three bed-roomed one. I think most of us have been in this position, and like most of us, everything that wasn’t outright junk was brought from the big house to the small one. On top of that, the death of two elderly relatives saw them acquiring two more households of furniture. It just became too much for Carol to handle and she was just about at her wits end. So we came to help.

Sunday and most of Monday were a write-off as we struggled to deal with the after-effects of our marathon drive. It is very annoying that things keep reminding us that we are no longer as young as we wished we were. However on Tuesday we were back on track and the first thing we both did was have a much-needed haircut. After that we could start thinking properly and could see where we were going!

Since then it has been a succession of trips to second-hand dealers, the tip and hospice shops, as well as dealing with people who have responded to adverts pinned up in the supermarkets and on the wall outside.  Slowly a dent is appearing.

By Friday we were able to take quite a large load to the tip which is about a mile outside town. What a lovely drive it is to get there! Lush green meadows and trees, with cow, sheep and even pigs grazing on them. It all looks very beautiful at the moment.

Saturday took us off to Blackpool where there is a world renowned horse sanctuary. They seem to rely on donations to keep going, but are doing a wonderful job. The horse boxes for the new intake are spic and span and there are permanently employed girls who do the grooming and mucking out and so on. They also run a small tea-room which serves light lunches as well, so we treated ourselves to some of the most delicious baked potatoes I’ve ever tasted with a delicious salad. Perfect!

After lunch Carol took us down to the beachfront at Blackpool. The famous Christmas lights have already been switched on for this year, but of course they are not on during the day, although we could see and admire the displays.  It really is a place to see because it is like nothing else I’ve ever seen, although people say that Coney Island in the USA comes close. Let me try to describe it to you. The road runs along the shore line with a tram line between it and the beach. On the other side of the road is an endless line of buildings – shops, amusement parks, hotels and apartments. Hordes of people crowd the pavements and there is no parking anywhere, so we didn’t join them, but continued to battle our way through the two way traffic interspersed with horse drawn carriages.  Music and announcements blared out of many of the buildings, some overlaying others when you got between two of them. It was sheer pandemonium and I really cannot imagine anyone going there for a quiet break at the seaside. This all continued for the entire ten kilometres that the Christmas lights stretch. It was one big sticky candy-floss encrusted, ice-cream-littered, noisy, over-abundance if kitsch. But for all of that it was fun.

The weather has been better than we expected with lovely sun and clouds each day, with a very cold wind however. Today, though we are back to true British weather and it is pouring with rain. Never mind – the farmers will be pleased and it gives a good day for doing things inside.

Our place in France Chapter 31

Our place in France Chapter 31

Whoops! Must have lost a day somewhere! I suddenly realised that today was Monday and that I hadn’t written a chapter for yesterday. So sorry.

Mind you, there wasn’t much to say although that may well change. The first part of the week was taken up with finishing off the TV installation which took until Wednesday because of various disruptions which were minor but took quite a long time to deal with. And then on Thursday morning there was no time to lie in bed watching the news, as was our habit in South Africa, because we had to start packing for a trip to the UK. We had originally planned to have two weeks there starting from the 19^th but when we were asked to come earlier, we dropped everything to come. How nice to have no responsibilities! It was quite a trip! We had decided to drive rather than fly as we knew there were large bulky items waiting to be brought back to France, but we hadn’t really thought about the distance. We left home at about ten in the morning and seven hours later we had covered over 700 kilometres and had arrived in Caen where we were to catch a ferry. The French motorways were brilliant and by ordinary standards, not too busy. We then had to wait until ten o’clock to board, so we sat in the little port-side café; had a nice meal and wasted several hours just people watching. By the time we went back out to the car, there was a huge TV screen above the entrance showing a documentary about cycling through Normandy and Brittany. Fortunately it was on a ‘loop’ so we ended up watching it about three times before the gates opened and they started loading the cars. The ferry can take just a bit less than 700 cars and over 2000 passengers so there was mild chaos when we finally got aboard and went to find our cabin. Thank goodness we had been given a four-berth cabin! I hate to think what a two berth one looks like. We had to stand sideways to pass each other. But we won’t knock it – we even had our own bathroom!

By this time it was close to midnight so we made all haste to crawl into bed and had a fairly good sleep until the public address woke us up again at quarter to six – an hour before arrival in Portsmouth. Not much of a rest before driving a much more taxing four hundred kilometre route. Really!! The English drivers are something else – all going like mad; four lane’s wide; and the same in the other direction. There are just so many cars and trucks everywhere. Phew! Too many people!.

We arrived safe and sound at Carol’s house at about two in the afternoon – totally exhausted. That state lasted until well into Sunday which is why, I’m afraid, I didn’t get around to writing anything yesterday. Hopefully this week will be more productive and next week will have some pictures as well.

Our place in France Chapter 30

Another week of nothing to report. We are staying in bed later and later because the early mornings are getting really cool now and it takes real effort to leave the cosy snugness. The tree next door is changing from green to golden and dumping masses of leaves on the ground and as I look across the valley to the far distance, I can see autumn colours beginning to show.

An interesting item arrived in the post this week – a letter from the Health Service notifying us that we should go and get a ‘flu jab as soon as possible, and that they will cover the cost. Apparently sent to all over 65’s, people on chronic medicines and pregnant women, this is one of those pleasant surprises of living in a first world country. Whether it is true or not, they certainly appear to take care of the people. The letter went on to say that ‘flu is an extremely dangerous ailment and that numerous deaths result from it each year – mainly in the over 65’s. So, being the law-abiding folk that we are, we quickly made an appointment and are off there next week. Anyway, it is free, too!

Now that it is more or less in the past, I can also reveal that, a few weeks ago, I committed the unforgivable ‘old lady’ sin. While we were away I slipped in the hotel shower and fell. It was a ridiculous shower anyway. With only one solid wall and curtain on three sides, when I slipped I instinctively put my hands out for something solid to grab onto but of course, there wasn’t anything and I continued my quick journey to the floor. I whacked my head, back and leg but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was a very cramped bathroom with a basin, a loo and shower all in a row on one side and not much space between them and the opposite wall. So when I fell, I landed in the small space between the wall and shower and loo. On my back. All wet and soapy. Neels came rushing in to help me and found me slithering around like a beached whale on the nicely tiled floor. Eventually he managed to help to turn over so that I could get on to all fours and then stand up, but not before we had laid all the available towels on the floor to stop me sliding around. What a performance! At one stage I thought they would have to call in the fire brigade to get me up again, but fortunately it didn’t come to that and I have nothing to show for it except a nicely healing bruise on my leg. However, it is not an exercise that I would recommend.

Something more positive that has happened this week, is that for two days we huffed and puffed, pulled and pushed and tried our best to get the necessary wires up and down various lengths of electrical conduit in order to get the TV signal up to the bedroom. All in all, we must have threaded about fifty metres of wire, only to discover after all this hard work that we were still short of two essential parts and had to suspend operations. However, thank goodness for the internet and Amazon, because we quickly ordered what we needed and it should be here tomorrow. This whole operation also involved plenty of shouting back and forth, and, as the house is three stories high in all, plenty of running up and down to find out what the other had said. Really! These games that we invent to keep ourselves occupied! It wouldn’t be nearly so much fun to get a professional in to do all these little things.

I apologise for sending out such a boring chapter this week, but when nothing is happening, well, c’est la vie!