Major news. It does appear that our internet is really and actually about to arrive. I ordered it on the 24th of June, so it's only taken 5½ weeks. Almost instant! My delayed appointment with the "what is my telephone number" man started well with a call to say he'd be there at 2pm. Of course 2pm came and went, as did 3pm. At 3:30 I happened to see a man wandering around looking lost in the square and asked him if he was a telecom man. Oui! He had a 2 minute look, then disappeared for an hour. We thought that's about par for the course, and we'd get another time on another day. But no, he did reappear and finally came upstairs with a bit of paper containing our number.
The daft thing is that physically installing and connecting a new line costs 39€, but simply finding the number of an existing line is 69€. No real surprise though. The next trick was to let Free know the number, so they could arrange for the connection and the FreeBox to be sent. You might expect there would be an email address to send a note to. No. How about a web page with a box to fill in. No. Perhaps you could talk to somebody. No. You can send a fax though they charge you for the connection time. I suppose a registered letter would do it too. The only real option is "Eve", a horrible automated phone-in system. My French does OK with people, but a scratchy high-speed automated voice was too much for me. So we waited overnight, hoping that the number would be fed back through the system. About mid-morning the "follow your progress" page changed, our new (old) number was there, and our box was getting ready to be sent. Awesome! By now, the line is active, the box is on its way to the courier, and all in the garden is looking rosy. I wonder what the next glitch will be.
We won't know ourselves when it is all in and working. I have a decent amount of work on, all of which needs connection from time to time to NZ, and Karen is spending a lot of time on the internet doing research for her book. Both have been very tricky. We've also missed being able to Skype family and friends in NZ, Oz and the US.
Other than that, we are settling in to life here now we are back to just the two of us. We shop far more often than in NZ, fruit maybe three times a week, bread every day, main groceries perhaps weekly, with a top-up midweek. Part of the difference is that French produce is sold ready to eat right then and there, and you can't buy a week's worth and expect it to be in good condition at week's end. How's this for a gorgeous fish display in Carrefour...I'll have half a shark please, and four tentacles.
Almost every night here, one or other of the bars has a band outside. Last night it was a French Irish one which sounded rather fun, so we headed on out to find it and spend half an hour or so listening.
Karen had a bit of a shock today. We'd bought a cheap set of scales and tried them out for the first time, expecting some increase. Karen went a bit quiet (actually a stunned silence would be more accurate), finding she was some 5 or 6 kg up on her normal. What she had failed to notice was the large male foot that had snuck in, under cover below her skirt, and was adding 5 or 6 kg! The good news is that all is well and we can continue to eat pastries.
