O'Reilly réflexions du dimanche matin

It’s hard to appreciate it but we’ve been here over a week and I wonder what have we actually done?

Yeah ok, I have hovered downstairs and upstairs as well as dusting around and we’ve cleaned the bathroom, oh what exciting lives we live. I brought very little actual work with me as I was lucky enough to action most of it before I left as well as leaving a number of tasks to the team – they made the mistake of saying “no” when I asked if had they much on their plate to work on!

However I do “have to read” the 10 books that are on the Independent Bookshop Book of the Year as the judging lunch is the day after I get back. Lunch; yup we make the decision of the best book over lunch, that’s what really swung it for me when asked.

So the piles of books are placed on the shelf above the fire and off I read. A week in with seven down and now I have just three left. So far it has been immensely enjoyable which is just as well as I have said yes to being a judge for another award and that involves 40/50 books. I felt the need to repeat the 5 weeks in the summer we did last year as time is needed to read that many books.

It’s now Sunday morning and there’s a storm brewing, weather wise I mean. The wind and rain is very strong so I am proposing to yer man that it’s soup (which I am making) and then an afternoon by the fire. However, the most exciting thing that’s happened this morning, is that someone else has parked outside our house… yes I know outside OUR HOUSE. This is just like being at work when I leave to do school deliveries and someone else parks outside the bookshop in my parking space. At the bookshop we put up signs saying no parking, and though it makes no difference, but I am not sure we can actually do that on a public road in France… I’ll put it to yer man and see what he says. Himself was off buying food for dinner, firelighters and a pain au raisin as a treat for us this morning and had to take the car because it was raining.

I did text him to say someone had parked OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE but he had his phone on silent so he didn’t know until he swung back around to park! 

The phone was on silent because, I think, he was out of the house and thought to himself phew a break from yer one and her requests of “let’s move this” or “let’s clean that”.

WHY US?

The most exciting thing of yesterday was that we bought a new pole to open our new Velux windows and a new toilet seat – how good does it get, I ask?We needed a new toilet seat because the guy who was fitting the Velux windows either stood on the seat to reach the window, or else he thought he’d piss from a height. Whatever it is not the toilet seat we left here in August and dos not fit properly. Now that’s a mystery that we’ve been unable to get to the bottom of (excuse the pun) but there you are and currently the gnomes are taking the blame.

The new Velux windows look good, there’s no more rain dripping into the third bedroom however, say if I am wrong here; you ask for the job to be done, it’s spec-ed up and all looks good. We turn up and what do we find, he didn’t think it was worth including a pole to open the bloody things! What did he think we were, 10 foot giants, I mean did it not cross his mind that one of the thing we just might want to do is open the windows. So whilst we were shopping for the toilet seat in our favourite shop in the whole world (Leroy Merlin  cf B&Q), we spotted they also sold Velux windows and thought, would they, would they just maybe, sell the poles to reach up and open them. They did and because we knew the price of what they were in England (doesn’t everyone) we thought we’d check the price before buying, just in case there’s the slimmest chance that they are more expensive in France – as if.  We wanted to know the price in particular  since we’d only found the telescopic version, whereas we wanted the normal version, we are not the smallest people in the world. A simple task you’d have thought but took three members of staff and you’ve got to ask how come there’s 15% unemployment here?
First up it took two guys to scan the bar code and read it, or not in this case, on the computer. After a couple of attempts and blank faces one of the guys took us to another till point where a third guy got involved. In the middle of all this I helped a small woman lift a huge plank of MDF from the top of an enormous pile of wood – all without exchanging a word (that’s female solidarity for you)

Whilst my back was turned helping the little woman, himself managed to somehow ditch the telescopic pole and have in his hands a normal pole. I only had my back turned for a minute and I say wow how did that happen and he said he didn’t know, they third guy just gave him the smaller version. So it might take three of them to sort us out but they are telepathic – whose says French workers are not the real deal. So as the tale goes, all’s well that ends well though we still didn’t know the price.

And we did more, yup once you are on a roll why stop. We decided we head out for lunch, over to l’Aubrecay which is a little enclave about a mile away so we cycled. There are lots of pluses to cycling there including the fact that you can have a glass of wine. The restaurant is on a roundabout with about 30 houses backing onto it, we have already had reports from Michael and Ann that it was great and so thought we’d check it out and are delighted to confirm that it lived up to all our expectations. By not being in London this Saturday morning himself missed his French class so it was great to get a bit of chat with the Madame of l’Aubrecay which included her telling him that it is a long time since she spoke English. I was in such relaxed and chill form that I choose not to have anything vegetarian but went for the fish stew, the daredevil that I am. Once I’d passed over the langoustines and scallops to himself, I was grand.

After all that stress and exertion we thought we’d take a rest and watch Pointless Celebrity, no wonder no one wants to come on holidays with us.

Parfois, je pense qu'il est tout totalement inutile