You might want to make yourself a cup of tea or a glass of wine before you sit down to read my first blog of our 2012 French experience. We had a good trip over except for the usual hanging around in airports and train stations, we eventually arrived in Agen to damp cold weather with grey skies, as expected as we arrived three weeks earlier than usual.
As we drove down ‘our lane’ low and behold a bloody great tree had come down completely blocking our way, not only that it also had taken down the electric cable and completely snapped off our telephone line. Great start, it is now 6pm so we head up to our
friend and saviour Jan at the duck farm, who informs us that the tree is owned by Jean Paul the recluse up the road who is a complete nutter (our words not hers). Luckily we had Philippe with us a French speaking French man to speak to M Jean Paul, who completely denies it is his tree, luckily with more discussion he agrees to come down our lane with complete with a pre-war blunt chain saw. Eventually we are able to get down to our house and luckily and amazingly we have electric, but of course no phone. We are now waiting for the 48hrs that French Telecom promised us that they repair the line, we wont hold our breath. Quite update the phone took 5 days!
Although it has been cold and wet, our second day in we have sunshine, the first for weeks apparently, Terry reckons he will be in everyones good books as they will think he bought it over from Perth !!!!!! The reason for our early arrival is that we wanted to go to the flower festival in our next village, well we went today and it was wonderful. We sat in the sunshine drinking coffee and watching the world go by it was wonderful.
One week later and it looks like the summer is beginning (not including last night where it rained at least 2000 litres into our pond).
We are getting into the swing of our French lifestyle by going out for spectacular and cheap 4 course French meals for a princely price of $16 including wine and coffee!! Good job our lane is a good evening walk, we have just got back it took us an hour up our lane and to the next corner through the woods, amazing, 8.30pm and the sun is still shinning, we looooove daylight saving.
I mentioned the pond in the garden, not only in the garden but 8 metres from our bedroom window, I bring this up because the noise the frogs or toads make in the pond is so loud at night we can hear them loud and clear through our double glazing, I must admit last year Terry had to ‘cull’ them as they were so bad, but hand on heart they are worse this year, we are going away for a few weeks so they have got a reprieve.
We are going to the UK and then off for a ‘holiday in Jamaica” with our friends Helene and Dudley for a bit of R&R, just what the retired couple need!! ha ha.
