Our place in France Chapter 65

I had thought that last week was pretty hot, but this week was even hotter although I haven’t been able to fine a superlative for ‘sweltering’. Believe me, if there is one, it describes the beginning of this week. It hasn’t really rained for quite a while now and we were starting feel distinctly droopy – a bit like our plants before they get watered! Courtney went off by train to visit her friend, on Wednesday and as we drove into town the thermometer stood at 40 degrees. To make matters worse, it is a steamy, muggy sort of heat which just drains all ones energy. Thursday was the same again and the two of us sat in the lounge with a fan blowing on us and watched movies all day. Just like a couple of lumps of mashed potato! Neither of us had slept very well the previous few nights so we were delighted when it cooled off a bit and a few drops of rain fell. Since then it has stayed cooler, thank goodness.

So you shouldn’t be too surprised to see a very short chapter this week. We have hardly moved away from the house so there are few pictures to show you – just a couple of close-ups of the geraniums of which we are very proud. They are such forgiving plants and appear to be able to survive rather extreme temperatures, apart from making the house look really attractive.

We have taken to buying seed balls for the birds and get much entertainment watching them bicker over whose turn it is. The pigeons are very envious and stand on the verandah rail watching carefully but all too aware that they have no chance of reaching the ball. It hangs on the end of a piece of stiff wire and although the small birds can manage to walk along the wire quite easily, I think the pigeons realise that their claws are far too big and that even closed up tight, they will just end up upside  down on the wire which would be far too undignified.

The French can be amusing at times. They seldom comment on how hot it is; they say instead, ‘It is a little warm’ or ‘It is not cool today’. Masters of understatement.  They also say that an item is ‘less dear’ when they mean ‘cheap’. No wonder we have trouble understanding sometimes. A person doesn’t faint, they ‘fall among the apples’; a pothole is a ‘chickens nest’ and when it rains a lot, it doesn’t rain cats and dogs but it rains ropes. I’m not sure where the cats and dogs came from originally, but I really can see it raining ropes. The trick is, of course, to remember these phrases when speaking to people, and be able to drop them into the conversation. We haven’t quite reached that stage yet.