Our place in France Chapter 80

Once again, I can only apologise to those who expected a new chapter to be ready and waiting , first thing on Monday morning Last week I feel I had a bit of an excuse as I wanted to include Saturday’s jollities and then ran out of time to write it all up on Sunday. This week I really have no valid excuse – apart from the fact that it was a really boring week! No-one wants to read about someone getting on with their daily chores which are very much the same the world over, and when nothing happens, there are no pictures to illustrate with either. Oh dear!

There are some exciting items on the horizon, but I am not allowed to mention them yet, so we all wait in suspense. Something that I can tell you about though is the fact that the whole family has been nagging us to do something about getting the house better insulated. The upstairs, which is the new part of the house is not a problem as it is very well insulated. It is the lower floor where we spend most of our time, that lets in the cold. Earlier in the year, Neels, with help from both Andre and Pieter, managed to put thick insulating boards on the underside of the floor – in other words, the ceiling of the cellar – which made a fair bit of difference. But both Pieter and Tilly complained about the cold that comes in through the glass-paned front door. As it leads straight into the main living room, one can feel it quite well. So we started to do some research. Replacing the door with a double-glazed one was never an option as the door is not a standard size and would in any case have to be replaced, frame and all which would entail altering the existing door opening. As the outside walls are 60 cms thick, this was just not even a thought. Replacing only the door would be almost as difficult as – see above – the door is not standard size, but apart from that, having a door specially made would have been a lot of expense but without the tightly fitting frame, not as effective as a proper double glazed door. Option three and the one we finally decided on was  what they call ‘over-glazing’. This is a sheet of glass with a specially constructed frame which fits on to the existing door surround and seals tightly thus causing an air space between the glass in the door and the new sheet. People say that it works quite well, so we will have to wait and see. We have ordered the panel which comes ready to install, and should be here in about two weeks . Of course, since we started all these frantic preparations for winter, the weather has warmed up again and has been positively spring-like.

Although the days have warmed up a little, the signs of an approaching winter are still obvious, one of them being how short the days are getting. When I first started having to be at the hospital at 8 am for these eye injections, which was in July, we were leaving home at 7am in broad daylight, whereas the last time we left home at that time (last Friday), it was pitch black, and foggy to boot. And then of course, it gets dark at about five o’clock these days whereas before, it was light until 9.30 at night. With such vast differences, and the autumn leaves all around we are certainly more aware of the changing seasons than we ever were in South Africa.

During these days of inaction, I keep myself busy with my knitting and tapestry; stitching during the daylight hours and knitting while we watch TV in the evenings. Both projects are making good progress and I now have eight little dolls in my mini-family. Still haven’t really decided what to do with them when I get tired of making them. Any good suggestions will be gratefully received, as long as they don’t involve posting a box of dolls to South Africa. Last time anything was posted to SA from here, it took three months to arrive, and it was a cheque! Fortunately it was crossed and in Euros so we weren’t too concerned, just annoyed that it had been sent all the way to SA when it was really supposed to come to our address here. People outside of Africa have hardly any idea of how things (don’t) work there. They are amazed when we tell them that we require visas to come to France. “Visas? “ they say, “What is that and why do you need one?” “Why can you only get one in your home country?” And then when they say “Why did you come to live in France?” our stock answer is “Because we like it here and everything works”. Could there ever be a better answer.