First Week in France May 07

Bonjour

We arrived at the house at 7pm (still day light) and what a shock, the grass was up to our waist and the weeds are higher still should have got a lawn mower man in!! We got into the house, no problems there except a few cobwebs in the corners and of course boxes and furniture all over the place. So we straightened out our bedroom first and went to bed very tired but happy to be in our house at last. The next day was a day of moving furniture and thinking about mowing the lawn, as it happened the battery on our tractor mower was not working so two days later and three trips to the lawn mower man, Terry has made a start on the lawn at the front of the house, did I say lawn I really mean meadow. After speaking to a kind English man in the village he got straight on the phone to his farmer friend to ask him to bring in his tractor mower to really tackle the job, he should get enough hay for his cattle for at least a couple of months.

Luckily the days are long in France, we get up about 6.30 – 7 and here we are now at 11pm still working, we have made progress by getting the washing machine plumbed in, not as easy as we thought. Terry being a plumber and all, he really wanted to plumb it into the garage but I won’t even begin to tell you problems that would have caused so we carried it up the stairs, I have never been so scared I was convinced it was going to fall down the stairs and taking Terry with it, but luckily it is now in a bedroom upstairs. Sounds strange, but this is where the last owners had their laundry room, so with some Australian plumbing adjusting we now have a working washing machine..yeah.

I still feel like we are camping albeit being upmarket camping, John, Judy, Mum and Val arrive tomorrow thank goodness, I am looking forward to some help to straighten up the house. Its all very exciting, today we travelled 46km to find the biggest L’Clerk in the area so we could buy some essentials, coffee pot, toaster, cutlery, glasses, etc etc etc also the most important item ..... RAT poison, we have an uninvited visitor in the roof space, so war has been declared, I said to Terry before you do anything you must put down the poison, so at 8pm tonight, torch in hand he was up in the loft of the garage putting down poison, I am almost feeling physically sick at the thought of the vermin and Terry comes down about half an hour later filthy dirty with a big grin on his face and says “ you know, there is a huge room up there we should look at sorting it out” I won’t say my reply but the big grin didn’t stay on his face.

Our French has started to kick in very slowly, I don’t know what we would do without our hands, today we needed to buy 12 pillows for the beds and there was only two on the shelf, so in my best French I asked the lady if she had 10 more in the back and she looked at me very oddly and then held up 10 fingers as if to say have you got that right, so I was quite impressed that I had. We find if you make the effort to speak French people are only too keen to help and its quite amazing within the few days we have been here we have picked up some words we have forgotten and for me some words that I had learnt in my lessons and had forgotten, but I am finding I am understanding alot more since having the lessons.

We are really enjoying the fresh French food, especially the cheese and the bread, apparently our local boloungerie is famous and people come from miles around just to buy the bread.

We will keep you updated in a week and hopefully some photos.

Abiento