Hot sunny day, with clouds in the background, but never seeming to come to the foreground.
I got up early with only one thing on my mind – to try and get the kitchen units finished. I had breakfast first, of course, and I felt particularly brave enough to venture off the All-Bran and back onto solids. It being Tuesday, the bread-van came at eleven, but I still had enough bread to last me the day so I didn’t have an excuse to go out and chat in a neighbourly way about bread (or weather) related matters. Shame!
Basically, I spent all day doing woodwork. Cutting, filing, chiseling, screwing, drilling, planeing, hammering, measuring, nailing, glueing, smoothing, filling, laughing, skipping, dancing ….. …. oh no forget the last three they got into this woodwork list by mistake.
How come though I spent just as many (if not more) hours effort into the same job today and there doesn’t seem to be so much as progess made? I mean, I did a whole load of stuff yesterday and the results were very visible, yet today there just seems to be just more mess and still a whole bunch of stuff to do before the job’s finished. It might be down to music. Yesterday I was listening to music all day – I found a CD with 111 of my favourite tracks on it and I listened to it all as I worked. It took pretty much all the day listening through it and it seemed to make the day go quicker. Today I didn’t have any music on and that doesn’t seem to make things happen.
Just before midday, Mrs Tronche came venturing into the driveway (which she’s never done before). No drama though, she just had a huge punnet of strawberries she wanted to give me. I thanked her very much, although to be honest I still haven’t got through the last punnet of strawberries she gave me which I put in the freezer. Trouble is, that you either eat the bloody things fresh with cream & sugar, or you have to freeze them with a view to making something exciting some other time. I still haven’t got round to the some other time yet, so I just ate my way through as many of this fresh punnet as I could and put the remainder in the fridge. Oh well, things could be worse – I mean I’m living next door to a farmer whose produce includes strawberries, veal, and beef. What to do when she comes round with a plate of veal, I wonder?
Got my phone bill today and it was £190 for last month. £190 for one month!!!!! So I thought I was all very clever with the contract that I’d chosen and I had only made TWO calls last month and they weren’t very long so I imagined that I would have something in the region of a £30 bill. What I didn’t realise though was that I was paying everytime Ilka phoned me from Germany, and that amounts to about 300 minutes of ‘extras’. So she pays 9 cents a minute from her home phone, and I’m paying 50 PENCE a minute to receive the call. Bloody rip-off that is. I knew these mobile phone thingies were expensive, but I didn’t know by how much. You see what a molly-coddled existence I’ve led in the corporate world all these years. Next, someone will be telling me you have to pay tax to keep your car on the road! Outrageous! Anyway, from now on Ilka & I have now resolved to go back to the old ways – which means me waiting outside a public phone box at an arranged time.
I was so knackered after my (9 or 10) hours woodworking today that I couldn’t face cooking. Instead I thought I’d phone for a takeaway. Of course, you can’t really phone for a takeaway round these parts (and in any case it would be an international call for me and that would cost in the region of £100 once I’d tried to explain that I didn’t want the complimentary veal cutlets with the foie gras McNuggets). The only takeaway is a pizza and that is one you have to pick-up yourself and that involves a 10km round-trip and after a few glasses of wine that’s a no-no…..
….So with no takeaway options I opted for baked beans on toast instead. I realise, of course, that I can’t just have baked beans on toast because this is France and if any of my neighbours happened to pop by and see me eating baked beans on toast I would be ostracised and probably not invited to attend the next organ recital at the Chapel de Penitents (my local Church). So I had the beans with a bottle of Cahors 2004, and made sure I had a cheese course. And in any case they were Heinz Baked Beans so that’s practically gourmet isn’t it?
Just for good measure, I slapped a fried egg on top. Delicieux.
Afterwards I went for a walk up the hill as the sun was setting. I also took the opportunity to nose round the grounds of a couple of the holiday homes in the vicinity. Especially the one with the swimming pool – this still looks inviting at this time of year with its crystal-clear water and drop-dead panoramic views of the Dordogne. Perhaps I’ll be tempted to steal a swim in there again one night – champagne and company permitting of course.
For the moment I’ll just make do with a shower and an early night.
