Seen outside our local hospital this morning.

• Ambulance with doors open.
• Ambulance driver
• Man on stretcher……

……

…. man on stretcher was smoking a cigarette while chatting with the ambulance driver!

Darn it!

We were just on our way out when a car pulled up across the driveway.  Out got Mr Smiley-Face the postman (who never smiles).   

He was armed with a selection of 2010 calendars.  Bless him.

There was no escape – no pretending we were out.  We thanked him and gave him money.

Now we are expecting the firemen on Sunday morning with their calendar – that is a little more serious as they write down in a little notebook whether we did and how much!

I wonder what happens if you don’t and there’s a fire at your house?

…..?

I have just spent a couple of days in the UK catching up with our girls and grandchildren.

I was very proud to see our Alice in her first Remembrance Sunday parade as a new recruit to the Army Cadets, we can’t believe how grown up she looks. 

It seems very fitting to post this photograph of Alice collecting for Remembrance Day in the town centre on Armistice Day.   Isn’t it time that the UK Government saw fit to make 11th November a UK Public Holiday as it is in France?

After so many months of dry weather, as I sit here tapping away, I can hear rain on the roof.

I’m glad I can hear it because it is much quieter than it has been in the past now that Jon has been working so hard boarding up the ‘walls’ in the loft, and we can hear (or not hear) the benefit of all his hard work.

It is very long, slow job as our dear old crooked house never has had a straight line and to make anything really straight would mean making it small too, so to maximise the space Jon has painstakingly cut each ’slat’ to exactly fit its hole.  We think that the end is in sight for this particular part of the project.  But, reader, don’t worry, we still have plenty of work to be carrying on with.

We were very surprised to see this 1949 Austin 8 ahead of us in Villefranche not so long ago.

This photo is for Merv!

Fortunately no-one is hurt.

Jon is working very hard in the loft.  Day after day sees him adding more lambris to the walls, fitting it in between the beams.  We decided that, although this is more work and uses more wood, it was the best way to cope as the loft is so crooked that if we were to try and get flat walls we would end up with only half the space we have.  So poor Jon is up and down the ladder, sawing wood to fit each space individually.  The best thing we did was (accidentally) buy a nail gun which works by a hydraulic pump – it has been a real boon.

Last Friday he needed to move a lightswitch and we naturally turned off the electricity at the mains.  The switch was thrown, everything went quiet and Jon went back upstairs.

Ten seconds after throwing the switch all the lights came on in the house – none of the switches were on – things with timers beeped, the lights flashed and then went out again.

Frightening.

Luckily neither of us had been touching anything at the time or heaven knows what might have happened.

When we had calmed down a little Jon bravely continued doing what he had to do, but then the electricity kept tripping out every so often.

We went to check the pool and found that the heater was trying to run but the programmer was blank, obviously it has blown.  We have turned off the power to this area.

The electricity still kept tripping and I noticed that one of the laptops, which was connected to the mains, was trying to run on battery and was flickering.  We then discovered that both new laptops, which had been connected to the mains power at the time of the surge, have had their power supplies blown.

Since disconnecting them we have had no further power outings, so we believe we have located all the damaged items now.  Two new power supplies are on order but it is a real pain working with my very ancient and stroppy laptop at the moment.

We have to wait until later in the week until our pool guys can come out and see what damage has been caused to the pool heater, but hopefully it is only the programmer that has been damaged.  I have, of course, told the insurance company that we may well be making a claim.

We still have absolutely no idea what could have caused the surge.  It was very frightening, but of course, one could never replicate the phenomenon – nor would one want to!

Things are still going well in the loft and as soon as I can get back to a decent computer we’ll add some photos.

Suddenly the mornings are looking misty and full of mellow fruitfulness. Children are back at school or college, most people have completed their summer holidays, our influx of tourists is beginning to dwindle, even the light has changed.

We are enjoying warm days after a couple of rainy days which arrived far too late to save vegetables and flowers.  The fig tree outside the kitchen is groaning with fruit (which I actually don’t like), so the fruit is rotting on the branches. 

 The other reason that the fruit is rotting is because the tree is emitting a constant humming noise as, for the first time that we have noticed, it is alive with wasps and hornets,  flies and butterflies.  The garden resembles Sheffield(*) on a Friday night as these creatures are getting drunk on the rotting fruit and picking fights with each other.

Meanwhile, up in the loft, Jon is doing sterling work on putting the lambris walls in and enjoying his new toy, a compessor which works his nail gun.  This neat little tool sits quietly most of the time and then, just when you least expect it, bursts into life, whirring away to build up pressure again. 

Along with all the school children I will be returning to school tomorrow as I have found an advanced French class to attend.  I will be packing my satchel with sharpened pencils and a notebook and hoping to relearn all those tricks (including the dreaded subjunctive) which seem somehow to escape me when I am trying to make ‘intelligent’ conversation.

(*) I have never been to Sheffield on a Friday night so this comment is made purely on what I have seen on my TV screen

We have just spent a very pleasant week in Italy. 

We stayed on an organic farm where the cinta senese pigs and a group of sheep regularly passed by our kitchen door, the sheep bells alerting us of their presence and the chomping of teeth alerting us to the pigs. 

Cinta senese at our kitchen door

There were free range chickens and a peacock, and a free range dog, Shalom, who accompanied us on a long walk (longer than we had anticipated!).

Beautiful Shalom, our hiking guide

The downside of this lovely farm was access.  To reach it we (this in the loosest of terms as Jon was doing all the driving last week) had to negotiate 1.5km of stoney, rocky, track that threatened to remove our exhaust and damage the car every time we climbed it.  It was a long, long driveway similar to (I imagine) driving a dry river bed.  Thank goodness our car isn’t a Porsche or similar!

Coiano in the Mugello

We spent one lovely day driving through Eastern Tuscany stopping for lunch at the beautiful village of Poppi - and what a lunch it was; beautiful food, simply prepared and delicious.  We were amazed to see a couple at the table next to ours being presented with a huge raw T-bone steak.  They smiled and nodded eagerly.  Fifteen minutes later the steak was returned cooked (barely) and was carved for them.  I daresay it weighed close on a kilogram but the couple ate it with no veggies or carbs like a couple of grazing lions.  Our own meals were far more modest.

The next day we visited Florence.  It was very hot and extremely crowded but we enjoyed looking at the architecture and soaking up the atmosphere.

The Ponte Vecchio - Florence

Piazza del Campo - Siena

Forgive me, but just at the moment WordPress isn’t allowing me to name the photos from our recent trip to Tuscany – neither will it let me turn around the photo that is the wrong way.  I will do my best to repair this when I can.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the photos.

After three years since I last saw a doctor, this morning I woke up with vertigo.

I tried not to have to go, but with our impending trip to Italy next week, I thought I should get checked out.  After all, if I see the leaning tower of Pisa and it isn’t leaning, or I’m leaning more than it, I might feel cheated.

So Jon bundled me in the car to the local GPs house. 

It’s like going back many years in the UK.  You wander into what appears to be someone’s house (and actually, it is) and take a seat, having of course exchanged ‘bonjours’  with anyone else who happens to be in there.  Eventually it will be your turn.

Monsieur le docteur, wearing jeans and looking like an ex-rugby prop, greets you at his door, shakes hands and leads you in to his surgery which is the untidiest room I have seen since our girls grew up and left home.

After a few preliminaries, filling in a form to register, I explained what was wrong and he led me to his examination room which, although cluttered, was a little tidier.  He checked my blood pressure which was deemed to be OK then checked my eyes.  He then grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me onto the couch.

‘It’s a good job Jon is just the other side of that partition wall’, I thought, wondering if this was normal practice for a French GP. 

Monsieur le docteur sat me up again and looked carefully at my eyes.  After a while the room stopped spinning.  He then explained that he was going to do the same thing but turning my head to the side this time.  I braced myself and ooooh, off the world went again, leaving me behind.  He then went back into his surgery telling me to follow when the world was back to normal again.

He then relieved me of 22 Euros and sent me to the pharmacy with my prescription.

The pharmacy then relieved me of a further 26 Euros and gave me three different types of pill.   I suppose the theory is that one of them will stop the giddiness eventually.

Now we need to work out how to get our money back from the French health service and our insurers. 

Meanwhile, if you hear a strange rattling noise next week anywhere between here and Italy, it’s probably me having taken all those pills.