Phew. What an
odd time we have had. Yesterday started off brilliantly. We both awoke at
6:30am with an immediate exclamation of ‘oohhhhhhh’. No, it was not what you are
thinking. It was actually the ‘très fort odeur du pain frais (strong aroma of
fresh bread) that was wafting in on the breeze. What a way to wake up!
After a run and
quick breakfast we made a trip to the market (all of 200m away) to buy some
apricots, cherries, a melon, home-made quiches, olives and other necessities of
life here. Next stop was Café de France to watch the All Blacks play Les Bleus
on the big TV. We were too late to see the haka but settled down to have a
coffee or two while waving our flag and generally applauding when the ABs
finally scored some points. There was
one other Kiwi couple watching (from Chch) but mostly it was young French guys,
no doubt rugby players judging by their impressive physiques. We were all sitting outside in the sun, with
the market in full swing not far away. This diluted the ‘rugby atmosphere’ to
almost negligible but it was a very pleasant way to spend the morning.
We rushed home
in time to catch the postie who was delivering a parcel we had ordered from
Perpignan. It contained a signal repeater that John had ordered to try and
overcome our internet issues. I won’t say any more except that the day
deteriorated at a rapid rate after that, with poor old John sitting at the
computer for about 6 hours trying to get things working properly. Thankfully he
didn’t take to pulling his hair out – if he had he would be bald by now. I busied myself by giving the kitchen a good
clean and consider I got the easy job.
A welcome
interlude to the afternoon was a visit by the Parisian family who have bought
the apartment immediately below us. We had bumped into our builder a few days
ago, who had told us they were coming to have a look at the apartment, prior to
commencing renovating it. We offered to show them around ours, as the two
apartments are identical in layout and could show them how we had tackled ours. They are a lovely couple, around the same age
as us, and were accompanied by their son who has recently graduated as an
architect. We spent a bit of time going between the two apartments, and we gave
them a copy of the plans we have done for ours, both before and after
renovation. While the family lives in
Paris, they own a house near Rocamadour and also have part ownership of another
family property elsewhere. The wife comes from Céret originally. They have
already said they are keen for us to visit them at their place near Rocamadour,
so we might see more of them. We visited Rocamadour on our way up to Paris last
year. It is an astonishing place, clinging to a hillside, and is extremely
attractive.
They had some spare tomettes (our floor tiles) in their apartment - here is the rather lovely reverse of one...
By the end of
the day, John fell into bed exhausted by his hours hassling the internet, phone
system and Skype and just about everything else in the IT world that can go
wrong here.
We got up this
morning (Sunday) and visited Bar Pablo at 10am, and not just for a must needed
shot of caffeine. We had fixed this time to Skype with Bella and Nic. ‘Zut alors’, now we couldn’t connect with
Skype. Oh dear (or stronger words to that effect!).
That aside,
life here IS actually very
stress-free and very relaxing. We watched some locals playing boule for a
little while yesterday (5-6pm seems to be the heure de rigueur). They (all elderly bow-legged men) are incredibly
accurate at placing their boules!
The weather
here is still not very hot. It’s been in the early to mid-20s, with some rain,
though apparently they had an entire week around 30 degrees just before we
arrived. We are not complaining however.
From what we hear and read, NZ has been hit by quite a weather bomb, and Nelson
is taking its fair share. Hope you are all well hunkered down and safe.
As I write
this, we are listening to singing in the church below. It’s quite lovely
hearing the organ. Also, in one of the apartments on the other side of the
square, we often hear a man strumming his guitar at around 5pm. We haven’t
watched any TV since we have been here. If (when) we get our IT stuff sorted we
should be able to get some BBC channels, and maybe even SKY from NZ via the internet.
In the meantime we are not missing it at all. I’m keen to get stuck into my
book, and hope to launch into it next week, but it depends partly on having
access to the internet as well. We shall see. Que sera sera.
