I have time to kill and a blog entry to write, which is a good combination. I am yet again waiting at the doctor’s, but this time its not me with an appointment – Matt’s has put his back out in quite spectacular style. It’d been nagging him for about a week but not too severely – up until Friday night when it really started to seize up. I’ve never seen him have it this bad – he can barely dress himself and getting into and out of chairs has become a lengthy process. None of our painkillers were making a dent so he’s hopefully being given some more potent ones as I write this.
In contrast to the last few weeks, things have become very quiet out here recently, so this should be a quick roundup. I’ve been making a dent in Christmas shopping and, barring a trip to Nontron for some last bits n bobs, I am nearly done. Matt had two choir rehearsals, on Tuesday and Thursday, in readiness for the first of two christmas concerts they’re doing.
He is also full time on his big project for Abby so has been concentrating on that. I’ve had bits to do on several sites I have ongoing, but only one of these is is going live any time soon. It should be done tomorrow in fact, which will be a relief as the client is a nightmare to work for – to which we can both attest.
We had absolutely no social activities over the weekend, but not for want of trying. It was curry night on Friday so we invited Manu and Mathilde over, but as it was their daughter’s birthday, they declined. So we ordered anyway and had it to ourselves.
On Sunday, Matt’s choir performed a concert in Miallet and although he went in with low expectations, he returned pleased with their performance, so that bodes well for the next one. This will be this coming sunday at the church Milhac.
The only other bits of news, wildly exciting as they are, concern some minor home improvements. Back in September, we ordered a water filter from the company that installed our radiators and new boiler. We’d been fairly pleased with them until now, but it took them until this Tuesday to show up, and that was after once failing to show. Their admin team are also less than useless with bits of paper going missing all the time, so this definitely concludes our business with them. But in theory, we should no longer have a problem with calcaire clogging up our pipes.
The second development is that as of today, we have a functioning kitchen sink again. It’s had some sort of blockage for months now and all our attempts at home remedies failed. As luck would have it, two of our new friends, Mark and Troy, who both came to our last gig, brought with them a chap called Carl. Carl is english, lives locally and is, yes you’ve guessed it, a plumber.
He’s in the final stages of getting officially signed up as a sole trader (a process that has become more convoluted and expensive since we went through it) and in the meantime, is working on the black to pay his way. He was with us an hour and a half this morning and has completely cleared the blockage. Best of all, he only charged us 40€, which was v generous. We gave him 50€ for his trouble instead. He was very complimentary about our gig and asked us to let him know whenever we have another one. I think that may have been politeness more than anything*, but it was nice of him to say so.
Ok, I really think that’s all I have to report! Until next time.
*He can be seen in the recording of Let’s Twist Again (previous entry) at about a minute in, heading out for a cigarette and looking decidedly bored.