Hot sunny day
Awoke late but I got going quickly because I wanted to catch the internet before it closed for lunch. Like everything else it has a long lunch and it doesn’t appear at all on Monday afternoon and Sundays, so I have to make the most of it while it’s there.
The internet shop was busy for once, but there was a free bit of bandwidth for me between the printer and a woman who was completely computer illiterate and also having language problems speaking to the shop owner in a sort of english-french cross with a thick east european accent. He doesn’t speak english but she didn’t seem to realise.
Quickly sent + receieved all my emails then went back home for brunch. Then I started on the kitchen area again and did all the measuring/cutting/filing/chiselling/drilling/re-measuring/re-sawing/re-fitting/drilling/banging/screwing/swearing etc that one needs to do to fit a few bits of wood together. Things slow down in the heat of course, and I need plenty of breaks for water and/or beer when normally they would be tea-breaks in England I suppose.
The top of the stairs outside by the front door make an idea work area though. I’ve got my workbench out underneath the canopy and the sun doesn’t really get round there ’til about 4pm so it’s cooler for sawing stuff. And I can have all my wood and tools to hand there as well so it makes the job easier and quite pleasant. Well, I enjoy woodwork anyway.
Finished the skeleton of the first cupboard by about 6pm, and it’s already in use as a draining board and a place to hide away the cool boxes.
Decided not to start on the next worktop because I wanted to rake-up all the grass that I’d cut the other day while the garden was in the shade. However, at that moment there was some sort of commotion outside and Madame Tronche was shouting at Monsieur Tronche about something. This isn’t unusual, as she tends to do a lot of shouting. At first I thought it was just to me because I’m an idiot foreigner, but no – that’s just the way she speaks to everybody, hubby, children, dogs, but this time there was an air of panic in her voice.
I looked over and Monsieur Tronche was dealing with some sort of snake in the middle of the road. I shouted over “is everything alright?” and she explained that the snake was sitting on her wall her husband had just dealt with it by hitting it on the head with a rock. It looked very dead from a distance, but also very big. He left it in the middle of the road, maybe for a car to finish it off.
A few minutes later there was some more screaming and then a loud bang. This time I went over to investigate. Monsieur T had found another snake in the garden and this time he’d fetched his shotgun to dispatch it. By the time I got there he had both snakes on the prong of his pitchfork and was proudly showing them off – or more probably trying to scare his wife.
Now I know that people tend to exaggerate the size of snakes – a bit like a fisherman’s tale – but I have never seen snakes this size out in the wild. They were well over a metre long each and had heads that you could easily make out a facial expression or two – except in this case of course the facial expression was the snake equivalent of “aarrgghhh”.
Mr T asked if I had a camera, so I went and fetched it and took a photo of him proudly holding aloft the two dead snakes on the end of his pitchfork. I’ve printed it out tonight which will give me an excuse to go round there tomorrow and present it to him as a souvenir.
Anyway after all this excitement, and half-an-hours chat about other snake encounters round these parts, I decided not to rake-up the long grass afterall. I was feeling a bit tired, and anyway the grass would always be there to rake up another day, or maybe November.
Instead I tidied-up and had a shower and cooked something wholesome – making sure to make maximum use of my new worktop in the process of course. It didn’t flinch a bit when I cut the vegetables on there!
Tonight is very humid. I can only hope there’s one humungous thunderstorm on the way to clear the air. I’ve decided to skip this evening’s rat news for once. There’s another episode to recount there as well, but tonight the snakes got top billing.
