Posted on by loveleyjoy

D0N’T HELP THE NEIGHBOURS!

A cautionary tale.

When we had a lot of building work going on across the road, the demolition disturbed the sewers and the rats.

One day I was in my lounge and I saw a rat jump over my neighbour’s fence, pass along the foot of the wall at the bottom of my garden, entre my other neighbour’s garden and return with something round in its mouth. This happened several times.

Not something I wanted to see every day, so a search of the internet to find out about the habits of rats and how to get rid of them. Having learnt that they eat poo and that the local Mairie is happy to supply poisoned grain. A nice young man further down the street knocked at the door and said he had killed 5 rodents using a spring trap. The Mayor sent round the rat man who inspected my garden, and gave me some of the grain. I wrote all this up in a letter for the 20 neighbours in the road. The problem was solved and people knew not to leave dog poo in their gardens.

Forward a few years. We had major work on our drains that involved not only digging up all of the road but all of the foot-paths as well.

Ever since we had owned this house we had had water entering the garage during heavy rain, not under the garage door or back door but seeping though the wall we shared with the neighbour. We took the opportunity to speak to the boss of the site and he agreed that water could back up from the drainage pipe that lead from the house down-pipe and across our garden and was supposed to exit under the pavement. We learned some new vocabulary. The concrete hollow cube that our down pipe went into was called a ‘regard’ – not a very helpful word due it being easily confused in conversation with the verb ‘to look’.

We had tried to find a solution to this dampness in our garage several times. The French way is to contact your insurance company. They will tell you to get three quotes and your insurers will chose which one they will pay for. One expert wanted to fit extractor fans in both the front wall and back wall. Our lounge is situated above the garage. The colder the garage, the colder the floor of our lounge. I had spent a lot of time blocking up holes around doors, and we had insulated the garage ceiling so as to have a cosier house – causing cold air to enter from either end was not my idea of progress, and anyway that did not address the problem of where the water was coming from.

The second expert wanted to drill water absorbing rods into the wall. Again not an answer to where the water was coming from. Another expert wanted to re-plaster the wall without finding out about the source of the water. We were stuck as the quotes were for different solutions.

I wondered if other homes had the same problem and wrote a note to the 20 identical houses in the street to find out if our problem was replicated elsewhere. Our adjoining neighbour the other side also had the problem and was fed up with her garage being flooded and the damage it was causing to the internal wall. The neighbour who shared her garage wall was also affected.

We passed this information on to the workmen.

One evening it rained heavily. We returned home from being out for the evening . The footpath was still missing which meant that the ends of the pipes that traversed the gardens and exited though the garden walls were able to be seen. There was no water flowing out of our neighbours pipe. That begged the question, ‘Where was all the rain water that fell on her roof going if it was not exiting though that pipe? Our pipe was a mini torrent flowing into the void of rubble that was for the moment our pavement. The neighbour the other side of us had no water exiting though the wall, neither did her neighbour. I took a video of the flowing pipe and the 3 non-functioning ones. An awful lot of rainwater was not exiting away from our houses. In fact every drop that fell on the rooves of the neighbours.

Once again I wrote a note to say what I had observed.

A few days later our French friend across the road beckoned me over. ‘Joy, stop writing notes to the neighbours – they are getting fed up with you.’

‘Oh, don’t they want to find a solution to this problem by working together at it?’

‘No, it’s not how we do things in France. We contact our insurance company, who sends an expert and he finds a solution’.

‘But don’t neighbours work together and help each other,’

His reply was in the negative. He also added that his work had been in water services. He was in fact our neighbourhood expert. He knew that our neighbour was wasting her money when she paid to have a bigger soak away installed to stop water rolling down her sloping drive and into her hallway when there were heavy rains.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘O.K. No more notes to neighbours, then. No chance of working together and co-operating like we would in England?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s sad but true.’

However, a few days later there was a workman in our neighbour’s garden. He was replacing the old pipe that should be taking water from the downpipes, into the ‘regarde’ and across the garden.

We have not had any problem with damp in our garage ever since.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

CELEBRATING OUR 40TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

We are trying to downsize in preparation for our return to the UK. How to celebrate when we don’t want more stuff? A nice meal out? We certainly had that.

I have had an English Conversation group for several years. Maximum attendance is 3-4 people, as I don’t ask people to enrol for a term, they are free to go on holiday or be sick and they are not out of pocket.

Alain Number One, (we have an Alain Number Two) spent his pre-marriage years in the UK, working in hospital kitchens and learning English. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease which meant he had to give up driving. He has a very dynamic wife who takes moving houses, redecorating and creating gardens out of badly neglected parcels in her stride.

Alan has the most amazing imagination and once I challenged him to tell a story from some prompt cards and he spoke for an hour!

We visited him in hospital taking with us our pink picnic basket, plastic cups, a thermos, and slices of cake and couple of balloons for us to bat back and forth to give him some fun exercise while having to be bed bound. He hoped to be out by his 80th birthday and he was.

Today, we were invited to celebrate his birthday with him, 25 friends, neighbours and family.

The party started in their newly reclaimed and replanted garden that had had hedges so thick and tall that the neighbours couldn’t see the house. The obligatory glass of champagne accompanied little glasses of avocado and cream cheese, apericubes and lozenges of flavoured cheeses, smoked salmon rolled into tiny sausages, crisps, cashew nuts (my favourite) and refilled glasses of champagne.

The neighbour in the house behind them turned our to be very happy to help with the reclamation of the garden and all there is between them now is a waist height chain-link fence with a newly opened gap to allow physical communication between the families.

The neighbour was manning the barbecue that he had built. Coals were glowing and brochettes of chicken cubes, beef cubes were roasting. Plump duck breasts were on a higher level waiting for a space closer to the heat.

We were called to take our places at the tables as it was assumed that our stomachs were feeling empty! Not when there are cashew nuts and crisps looking so tempting.

The brochettes were served along with a cold pasta dish containing mini grilled tomatoes and chopped cucumber.

When eating French meals it is necessary to pace oneself. Even if the dish is the most delicious that you have ever tasted don’t, I repeat, don’t eat until you feel satisfied. We have learned this from experience. All will become clear.

When those dishes had been circulated a few times, the sliced duck breasts appeared, served along with tinned green beans to which the chef had added, fresh young celery leaves and a beetroot with apple salad. A pureed onion sauce was also passed around and I mustn’t forget the diced fried potatoes.

On the table were baskets of cut baguettes and red wine for those who wished for more alcohol. Conversations about the possibility of the police checking drivers limited some from second glasses, even though they knew that even one glass could lead to difficulties if stopped.

No meal in France is complete with out a cheese board. A blue-veined cheese, a goats cheese and a Brie are the starting points. Pace yourself – don’t forget those words.

It was a birthday and I wondered what the cake might be like. The day before we had been to afternoon tea with a couple from our church and a 12 inch disk of pink meringue, filled with fresh raspberries and cream was enjoyed by us all.

The friendly barbecuing neighbour was not only a keen gardener and outdoor cook, he also made cakes! He presented a ‘pièce montée’. Weddings, baptisms, births can be celebrated with one. First make an oven-full of choux pastry buns. Our man made 80 for this 80th birthday. Fill them with a ‘crème’ like a thick custard. Make caramel and mix in some chopped hazelnuts to make nougatine (caramel and nuts) and use that as the solid base. The little choux buns are dipped in the hot caramel and stuck together circle above circle until a tall cone takes shape. Our man proved his skill by taking hold of the whole creation and holding it horizontally, to prove it was well made!

More champagne was needed to accompany the distribution of the mini choux buns, and their copious caramel glue which was now very hard. I had fears for my recently crowned tooth and tried to eat and crunch with care.

We had arrived at 11.30 and were the first to leave at nearly 6pm when guests started reminiscing about things that had happened among them during the past 80 years.

So, to celebrate our 40th anniversary we had been treated to a multi-course meal thanks to Alan and family.

Posted on by loveleyjoy

I’M BACK (2)

I thought I was back! I had my new computer, so what could go wrong. Cataracts! Having been diagnosed as having cataracts, I was booked in to have the first operation -right eye- in early September and the left eye a week after.

In the UK friends and family have reported that they get a booking for a walk-in clinic, sit in a chair and a cataract is treated within the hour with very little fuss and you are sent home.

In France, it is firstly a visit to the central Anesthesiology Department used by all the hospitals. ‘Fill in a form’ it says at the entrance. ‘You must complete the full Health Questionnaire’. The machine will only print a form that asks you 3 personal data questions. You feel something is wrong because you were told by the medical website ‘You must complete the full Health Questionnaire’, but there was nowhere to down load it how ever hard you looked.

Anyway, the anesthetist who sees you has paper copies of the mystery form. You pay for the services of these health professionals two weeks before the operation.

Forward 2 weeks, get up early to have a shower as instructed, enter a completely different hospital that specialises in day cases. Shown to a side ward and given all the gear, disposable paper shoes, pants, gown, trousers, mob-cap, and even a paper dressing gown. Lock your valuables in a coded cupboard along with the clothes you arrived in.

Walk to the operating block and hop up onto a trolley where the anesthetist gives you and injection to relax you. The first time I knew what was going on, the second time I knew nothing until I came round after the procedure.

Here is where my excuses for not writing start! From this point on, your old glasses are no use to you, For the next couple of months the eyes are adjusting to their new normal. It didn’t help that the second operation had to be postponed due to a short hospitalisation, so my second eye was not operated on until a month later. With the Christmas holidays as well,I have only recently got new glasses to suit my new eyes. Using my mobile phone was possible with some old reading glasses, but working on the computer was very, very awkward as it had to be propped up on cushions on my lap in order to be as close as possible for my wonky eyes to see it.

That’s it – all my excuses!















Posted on by loveleyjoy

IT DOESN’T ADD UP!

Every week we get supermarket flyers in our mailbox. One shop regularly offered a 4 euro reduction voucher if 40 euros was spent in their store. We made it into a regular weekly activity.

My husband is excellent at mental arithmetic so it was his job to total up the purchases until we got just slightly over the target amount. It would not have been profitable to spend 50 euros as the 10 % would only have been 8 1/2 % off. (I told you he was good at mental arithmetic!)

The problem was that our calculations and the shop’s calculations were rarely the same. We would arrive at the tills to find that we were either 20c short and had to quickly run, so as not to annoy those in the queue behind us, and find a packet of peanuts to bring us up to and over the thresh-hold or we were over and buying more than we needed;

We soon learnt to take a pencil and a paper on which to list the items and their prices so we could see where we had gone wrong. However, when we checked the till receipt against our list we could see that each week several items were marked at one price on the shelf and another price at the tills.

In France, as in the UK, the law is clear. A shop must sell any product at the price shown on the shelf label, if that is less than the price at the till. We would regularly point out these discrepancies to the staff especially if we were being overcharged.

Eventually, I had a collection of till receipts that I had annotated with the errors . I scanned several and wrote to the shop’s headquarters.

In the post I received a letter of apology and a voucher for 5 or 10 euros – I can’t remember which.

When I next did some shopping and presented the ‘bon d’achat’ the lady on the till looked at it with astonishment. She asked where I had got it from. I replied that it had come from her shop’s headquarters. ‘ I’ve worked here for 10 years, but I’ve never seen one of these before’.

It was then that I realised that French customers rarely bother to complain.

The manager got more and more irritated with us pointing out the errors. One day He angrily took my paper out of my hand, disappeared for several minutes and reappeared having changed all the wrong labels, saying ‘There, they are all correct now!’

That shop closed down soon after – the whole chain disappeared from France. I would think that competition with Aldi and Lidl had become impossible. The manager now works for one of our favourite stores which is also a German owned chain. I was a bit nervous of contact but always said ‘hello’. He greeted me with a friendly reply one day when I complimented him for watering the plants on sale – something that rarely happens in any shop. He now greets me with a nod of acknowledgement. I expect he has realised that the management of his former chain did not make life easy for their staff. Working for a German chain is probably a lot less stressful. We can say hand on heart that we have never found any discrepancies between the shelf prices and the till prices in any of the several chains that have taken over France, and the world, with their legendary teutonic efficiency.