Whisky and Whine

31.3.17

WTF am I doing here??

So today saw us set out just after midnight on the Dieppe ferry.  Just the 3 of us, Chris, me and my bloody chest infection.   A jolly time was not had by anyone, particularly the people sitting near me.  Despite 4 lots of medication I coughed for the entire journey and ended up barfing into a travel sickness back [courtesy of BA] whilst I was going through passport control.  The guy insisted I took my face out of the bag so he could check my passport.  Bloody jobsworth!!

The 4 litres of water I had drunk on the boat ensured that we needed plenty of pit stops so tempers were well and truly frayed by the time we stopped for lunch, which I couldn’t eat because I felt so unwell.  We finally got to the house around 4.30, later than we’d hoped because of all the pee stops.

Stuart has mowed some of the lawn but appears to have forgotten a big bit but, however, he has weedkillered a 20 metre by 3 metre sloping bed, which I had planted with seeds and plants just last October. There were tears – mine!!!

The house was OK but a bit musty and very cold and I just felt that is was too awful to be here when I could be living in our snug little house in Eastbourne.   I had a cool shower because I just couldn’t wait for the water to warm up any more.  I dragged the bedding out of the car and wrapped myself in it at 6.30 in a desperate attempt to catch up on some of the sleep missed over the last 2 nights and the hope of oblivion.

Wednesday 5 April

Well I’m not sure where some of that time went, a few days were spent in bed, feverish and unwell – best glossed over.  Then I awoke to the knowledge that the removals guys had delivered our stuff, the place is overrun with boxes of things that we have no cupboards for.  What was I thinking of?  Friends had visited to welcome us back apparently.  I have no memory of it at all.

The internet is not working in our commune because there is a problem with ADSL and it will be a week before all is working properly again so we are forced to make daily visits to McDo to sit in the car park and use their wifi……………  However the bitterest blow was a speeding fine from September, sitting in the post box just waiting like a little grenade waiting to blow our lives to bits..  Originally 45Euro but risen to 180 – if only.  When I tried to pay online it informed me because I was so late paying it had gone up again but it won’t tell me how much it is.  We went to the Municipal Offices and they said, you’ll have to wait til you get another demand.  We went to the police and they said you’ll have to wait til you get another demand.  We tried to pay by phone, it cut us off.   No one knows what to do, no one cares except us.

The weather is fine outside, the house is freezing inside.  We are not happy bunnies!!

Friday 7 April

Well, I am OK, Chris has man flu.  The internet has been repaired with good grace. [Oh shit, that means something awful will happen in the future].  The weather is good, we are starting to make inroads to the things we wanted to do.   The gardener has come back today to strim, shopping has been done and all would have been well if the pressure hose had not given up the ghost half way through the job!  But that’s all OK, we can deal with that!  Georges invited us around to his place this week but we were both too knackered/pathetic to manage to actually get there. The excitement of trimming the olive treeand pressurehosing the pergola was just too much for us to bear.

Despite antibiotics and a daily tot of whisky, not a lot of progress has been made on the health front.  We’ve been here a week and so far it’s not been fun.

Things have got to get better................

Saturday 8 April

After a morning trying to finish powerwashing the pergola, Chris gave up and we headed to the beach.  The weather was glorious, it wasn't too busy and we had some splendid oysters.  However, we couldn't find a hotel room so we drove back to the airport and stayed in a hotel there.

Despite both setting our alarms, we managed to oversleep so it was a frantic rush to get to the airport on time.........except that there was hardly anyone there so we had a leisurely coffee and croissant before Chris flew back to Senegal.