Welcome to Mary Treacy, this is Our Nantilly blog. You will get emails when we do a posting and besides seeing the post there will be a link you can click on and visit the blog and catch up with past postings.

When flying here from Stansted there are always a number of
people who travel the route regularly who chat away about journey options, some of them clearly commute on a weekly basis. The chat on Friday was all about Ryanair increasing the cost of travelling substantially, soon it will be £5.00 to check in online. It is food for thought but it does seem clear that on the routes where Ryanair has no competition they are no longer seeing themselves as a low cost provider but rather a regional supplier with a captive market. I had a taste of a "regional supplier" a couple of weeks ago when I flew from Nantes to Madrid and back with an Iberia regional subsidiary, £600 return!

A wet and cool Charente Maritime

Both Friday and Saturday nights were nights to be in by a roaring log fire and that's exactly what we did. The rain put us off the idea of playing golf and the journeys to Marlonges precluded any future afield travels. Still it has been a lovely way to spend the weekend with birthday treat galore.

There was no real DIY to do although there are a couple of finishing touches to do here and there. It is ridiculous to suggest inanimate object can feel things but the house does seem to enjoy having people around. It has been almost continuously occupied since April 13th and Frank and Anne will be back here on Thursday.

We have started to talk to Pat about her returning to England as the Maison de Convalescence thinks the time is not too far away, maybe as soon as next weekend. Sunday morning is a dismal as yesterday so a bit of breakfast, a few domestic chores, a visit to Marlonges, a meal and then back to the airport for the six o'clock flight to Stansted.

Out in the back yard one of the yucca type plants seems to have sprouted flowers - see picture.

Friday evening moves or do I mean movies?

Well we will leave about 10.00am to drive to Caen for the late afternoon ferry back to Portmouth snf then the run up the A3 to Beckenham. Just listening to England trying to score the 32 runs they need to win the match against the West Indies. Currenly 14 for no wicket. What do you think to this?

Nantes Atlantique Aerogare is a 90 minutes drive...

...which a bit of a pain compared to the 10 minutes to La Rochelle but it puts it into the scope of "possible" routes. Air France fly from London City but it is expensive, cheapest fare I found was close to £200 return.

I am musing on this as I flew from Nantes to Madrid on Tuesday afternoon and fly back there tonight. Thank goodness that this is a business trip as the fare was £600! Zoot alors as I believe personne dit!

Picture as promised

With a leap of DIY imagination the unit to house the TV, the Freesat, the DVD player and the sound system amp is finished and installed. With only several DIY bodgings needed the deed is done and in place. We went down the route of buying a couple of pine 30cm planks and cut then to size ourselves. This would prove to be a smallish DIY problem down the track. We got a supply of plastic right angle joints and a couple of bags of screws. These proved hard to find as we did not go to Leroy Merlin but a local and much smaller Briomarche in NsM. However SOR spotted what we thought we needed.

9.00 am this morning work commenced on cutting up the planks, marking up the shelves, drilling the starter holes for the screws and then assembly. That is when I noticed that the screws had a peculiar "star" head and not the cross-head I thought I had bought. Hmmmm no screwdriver to fit. About to give up and through toys out of pram when I remembered seeing a small set of Screw head bits in a boxset of drills I have and low and behold there was the much needed T20 head, perfect fit for the power screwdriver.

The top goes on fine, as does the first shelf, but the second shelf not...I had not cut it square - much grunting and groaning and planing and it sort of fits, but it does represent the major bodge of the job. The power screwdriver went flat before the job was finished so I had a break while i recharged. Total cost about 20euro and another cut on my thumb!

All this took most of the morning and so we went of to visit Pat and only installed the unit when we got back. As I worked on this SOR applied some varnish (two coats) to the new tongue and grove and in a dim light, with a drink on board, you cannot see the difference. Picture of this will follow.

A snippet from last week

When Sheila, came over a week ago she collected a new television from Darty, a rather nifty 26 inch model which makes it a lot easier to see the subtitles. A job for today is to make a stand for it. Pictures will follow.

The excitement is intense....

Le distribution de les sacs poubelles commence en Lundi and we are here. Zoot alors!

Commune de Marsilly

Just catching up on news from the Maire; during 2008 the commune recorded 27 births, 14 deaths and 12 marriages. This seems about right for a growing community. I guess it depends whether the "naissances" and parents stay in the area.