It’s been a long time since our last post and it’s not entirely our fault. We’re currently without Internet since we’re in the process of switching providers. So far, we’ve been without since Wed of last week so nine days in all but more on that later.
Since Will’s last entry, we’ve had the green light on Sites for Homes. Firstly, Will is is now officially an auto-entrepreneur (or sole-trader) here in France. He spoke to someone in the Perigueux office shortly after discovering that his application wasn’t being processed and she got it moving the very next day. We also met with Maitre Parisiene, our local notaire who we used for the house sale. He spent nearly an hour with us, mainly discussing the web site idea and thankfully, he didn’t see any problems with the majority of the business idea. We won’t be answering classified ads since that could be constituted as bringing together buyer and seller but we really didn’t want to do that anyway. He did tell us, however, that we are allowed to take photos and write descriptions for the seller so we can expand our coverage area a bit. On top of the good news, he didn’t charge us anything for his time.
The weekend after Anne and Andrew were here, we did very little except the Vide Grenier in Champagnac from which we left empty-handed. I had a very small bit of work of the computer-geek-on-call variety. In terms of compuer jobs, it’s lowest on the totem pole. But at this point, work is work and he sought me out after I was recommended to him by our mutual friend Mike. His name is Lester and he turned out to be a rather odious fellow. I had to go over twice and the first time, they had Fox news on the telly so I had to make a comment. The second time, he sent me off with a Jewish joke. Nice. Anyway, it turned out to be an easy job so hopefully, that’s the last of that type of work – certainly for Lester anyway.
Also on the work front, a former co-worker put me in touch with a woman who works for a high-end jewellery company. They are trying to do more social media so wanted pricing for a mobile web site, iphone and facebook apps. She will get back to me in June after she finds out how much, if anything she can spend. I’m not counting on the work happening but it would be nice if it did.
I’m currently sitting outside in St Pardoux, waiting for Will while he has his driving lessons. These are still of the classroom variety, concentrating on theory. Still no word on his provisional license which is taking a long time to process. Speaking of long time to process, we have been without Internet since last Wed when the engineer showed up and did something to the line. This is all routine and we’re still within the window of the time it takes them to provide us with service. Still, most people we speak to there say they normally have things up and running much more quickly so it seems we’re just unlucky. Tuesday of next week is their deadline but I’m not holding my breath.
As a result, I’d like to say that we’ve been productive in other ways but that would be a stretch. The weather has turned slightly in that we’ve had some cloud and even one storm but almost no rain whatsoever. It’s the driest April for many years and it’s not helping the garden at all. Despite that, things are continuing to sprout, most recently the beans and carrots that we planted a few weeks ago. We’ve gotten away with only using water from the well for the garden and it shows no signs of drying up so that’s a bonus. Also, the fruit trees are doing nicely and I just discovered today that we have a small peach tree and nectarine tree in the front garden. I hope the fruit trees harvests are staggered or else we’re going to be drowning in it. Also in the front garden, the roses are blooming as are the orchids. I’ve taken a few pics with my camera phone so hopefully they’ll come out.
The main event since the last entry is Gavin’s visit. He arrived on Good Friday where we collected him from Limoges. We had a late lunch at cute waiter restaurant and then picked up a few supplies from the shops before heading home. We had Thai chicken curry that evening, one of our favourites that we rarely have these days because of the cost of the ingredients. That was followed by cheese and cookies and it was all washed down with red wine. We got caught up over dinner – in general, Gavin is doing well. He’s been hard at work on the job which includes a lot of driving. His employer is slightly disfunctional so that makes thing unnecessarily difficult which is frustrating. It was therefore nice for him to do a bit of relaxing, French style.
On Saturday, we started at the boulangerie where we got croissants, a few loafs of bread including a walnut one that we’d not tried before and an assortment of patisserie for dessert. We came back and had breakfast and then went into Nontron to the garden center where Gavin bought us three house plants as a house warming gift. The first is rubber tree plant with verigated leaves and she is called Audrey after the plant in Little Shop of Horrors (not flesh-eating we hope). Gavin also bought us a nice pot for her to sit in and she’s perched comfortably next to the fireplace for now. The second plant is a spikey desert type plant called Kath and yes, we’re going to get another plant, a cactus and call her Kim. The third is an ivy that we’re going to hang from the beam and train around the woodwork. She’s called “I.V.”, a Kath&Kim-ism.
We came home and had lunch which was our “sandwich habituel” and then went for a walk to prepare for the evening’s feast. He had tamale pie for the meal, followed of course by cheese served with walnut bread and then we ended up eating all four of the patisserie. We finished the evening with more red wine and some Kath & Kim. We didn’t leave the house on Sunday except to go for a walk in the afternoon. We made a chef salad served with some pate that we got from the store plus cheese so it ended up being a bigger meal than planned. It was also the day of the storm which entailed a bit of thunder and lighting and 30 minutes of rain, some heavy but then it cleared. We had our walk afterward so it was a bit muddy but nothing serious.
Dinner that night was confit de canard accompanied by a new recipe for mac & cheese that called for bleu cheese and was then baked plus a side of broccoli. It was hearty and very tasty and we barely managed to polish off the cheese that evening. Gavin brought along some Cadbury’s eggs in honour of Easter and despite dropping numerous hints about an egg hunt throughout the day, eventually had to come out and tell us that he’d hidden them around the house. So we managed to polish some of those off later but only just. We took him back to Limoges on Monday around midday and that was about all we managed that day.
This week has been very slow without the internet. Sharon was kind enough to let us use hers during the week and we’re going there tomorrow for dinner. Her sister is in town from London and she’s interested in a property website so we’ll talk about that with her tomorrow. Mike and Jean will be there too and it’s been awhile so it will be good to see them. Earlier today, we wandered down to the Mairie having heard that they have computers with online access and they sure enough they did and we were allowed to use them. They were running IE6 on Windows98 so it was a bit of a flashback but they worked more or less. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.
Ok, just took the brownies out of the oven for tomorrow’s dinner so best go make sure they’re alright.