Grey start to the day, Cool then becoming much warmer by evening.
Woke up at 8.30, so perhaps I’m at last moving towards french time. I decided to make the most of the day by getting-up and try to meet CET sometime soon. Went into town to go tresorie and internet. It was market day so a bit hectic (note: Vendredi is market day – must try and remember). So I went to tresorie except it wasn’t the tresorie but the town hall which is, apparently, not the same thing. But the staff there were sufficiently empowered to tell me that the tresorie was in the place de la republic, but today it was shut. I asked why and they replied – which was unexpected so I wasn’t concentrating for the reply – but it was shut because it was the day after the jour-de-fete, or a gap day, or something similar.
So as I couldn’t register with the tresorie I went and looked round the market. It’s a bit naff. Shouldn’t really say that, the french would be devastated if they knew that their market’s can be a bit crap. But aside from fashion crimes and dodgy jewellry there are still some decent food stalls. So I bought some essentials (i.e. leeks) but ventured into asparagus tips and cheese options as well.
Then I went to the internet shop and bought some internet. They had loads, although the bloke wasn’t expecting any customers so had to turn on a bank of computers especially for me. Not bad to have the cream of Beaulieu’s information technology at my fingertips.
Anyway, aside from essential “paperwork” I couldn’t think of any other reason why I should drain bandwidth on trivial matters – like emailing everyone I know to let them know I’m very well. So after much soul searching (and realising that it 6 euro’s an hour) I left. In any case I’d forgotten to bring my phone and I needed that to a) phone Ilka to tell her I was at the internet shop and b) register my phone online so I could pay my mobile bills. Whoops! Why do I always have to forget something everytime I drive to the town? Three days here and I forget essential paperwork, then next day my wallet, then rubbish, now the phone. Why do alway forget? Where will it end? Who said that? What? Why do alway forget? etc etc.
Met Madame Tronche at the market. Well I say met, but wasn’t in the mood for idle chit chat in awkward French (well her french is as awkward as mine!) so I side-stepped her and headed for the cheese stall. But having sen her there I’ll mark that one down as a met in my book. I suppose I should be glad to meet someone I know in town. I mean, IN TOWN, that’s practically a country of it’s own with a population in excess of 5,000! I’m happy to have a one in five thousand chance happen, even if it does mean having a conversation of two or more meanings with my neighbour who is also looking for superiour cheeses from that same town market.
Tomorrow I’ll go down the PMU (betting shop) and ask if I can bet on me meeting 2 people I know at next week’s market. I wonder what odds they’ll give me? 50:1 ? Might be worth a few foreign coins?
Went home and realised that opening the front door had been such an aggravation that it was time to remove that aggravation – by mending it if necessary! So I took off the hinges and planed the bottom and re-drilled the keyhole so that it would a) not scrape the floor and b) not scrape my fingers everytime I pulled the key out and c) not aggravate my (severe) tennis elbow when putting it in the lock, and d) I must stop writing these lists and e) ok?
The door was very heavy. Very heavy. Heavier than anything I have ever lifted, ever. So I levered it off it’s hinges using igenuity and planed the bottom using my electric planer (useless fucking thing that is, waste of 50 euros in Super-U), and then re-planed it almost effortlessly with my manual planer (Spear & Jackson No. 12, the mini-marvel). But at least I got the door fixed and so I floated it effortlessly back on it’s hinges and, my how it glides open and shut now. I realised then that I could actually improve my world by removing the aggravations that are in it. And the doors.
When I washed my hands the taps were dripping- the washers were fucked and I couldn’t live with the leakage so I thought it was time for some more aggravation removal. Went and got some pipe-joints and washers from a Bricolage that has never existed before today. Near thank goodness. Got some bits to fix the upstairs taps & sink at the same time. Turned off the water and fixed the washers downstairs. Did all the pipework upstairs so that the tap hangs over the sink properly and the water goes in the basin. It took all afternoon and every tool in my toolkit, but I was finished by 7pm and by then the sun was shining idealically into the living room. So I sat idealically and rested for a while thinking over my bad spelling.
The van has turned into a perfect toolshed. Not my van van, of course, but my old knacked Vauxhall van which sits in the driveway and I transferred all my tools to. I was going to take it to the scrap but now I think I might paint it rustic and put a felt roof on it and make it a toolshed proper.
My fiance then phoned me and we chatted for a few moments in the sun under the canopy of my new friction-free doorway entrance with it’s glide-open doors. She’s lovely – and no I DON’T mean the door!
Decibel FM are still pumping out some amazing music all day -today we had some crazed French nirvana-esque mind-fuck music followed by a 20-minute bongo session, followed by Vivaldi, followed by some chanting followed by some All Bowley followed by reggae followed by trance, followed by some hip-hop.. they are all over the place it’s brilliant. Okay, so they did play 2 Elton John tracks in row, but it was during a technical fault and they still haven’t played any Michael Jackson yet. And he has a few decent songs in him, that Elton John fellow. They made up for it by playing some Placebo and Smiths and two tracks from Bjork, then a cracking cover of Nights in White Satin (although that might have been another one of Bjork sqauwking away at some extreeme jazz).
want to write to Ilka but I’m spending all my spare time writing this load of account. I’m enjoying the frivolities of wordplay once more in this diary and this covers most of the ‘news’. And of course I feel I’m writing with her in mind when I write this because she’s always in my mind. So I want to write to Ilka to say the things I can’t say here and not just the wordliness of foreplay.
And of course, she supplied me with writing paper and stamps.
After cooking a lovely meal of pasta (late change of mind from rice), I went downstairs and there was a bat batting around in the hall downstairs. Bugger! It had batted in because I left the door open and it was obviously a bat-friendly hallway and a place where some prime batting could be done. How do you get a bat out of a hallway? Especially one hid in the heating duct and refusing to come out. I tried tempting it by giving it a really good echo-sound off the door held 45% open and by making ultra-sonic shrill noises through various orifices. I thought I’d said “Get the bat out of here” in shrillish, but my shrillish clearly isn’t up to it. “Go and hide and don’t fly out and wait til he goes to bed and flap around manically when he’s asleep and then try to find any way out and then get all distressed and then have a fright with a rat and then …. WAKE HIM UP IN A BLIND FURY” That’s what it seems to have been misinterpreted as.
Oh well, bat’s life, or as we say in france “C’est la vie d’une pipistrelle”.
12 o’ clock. Massive Attack on Decibel. Time for bed. . . .. . …..
