French Delivery Schedules, Big Beds and Creamy Cheese - Saturday 2 June, 2018


I hadn’t set the alarm, as I planned to treat myself to a lie-in after the previous days travails. But I was awake at 06:45 (05:45 UK time).

First order of the day was a shower, shave and get those teeth cleaned – would there be hot water There was! 20-minutes later I was feeling human again.

Plan for the day:
  •         Unpack
  •         Go shopping at the local Intermarche
  •         Make up a couple of extension cables
  •        Vacuum the house top to bottom (literally, the ceiling and walls would get vacuumed to to get rid of cobwebs)
  •         See how I felt (I was going to take it steady after yesterday’s adventures).

As I was unpacking, the doorbell went.

It was our new queen size bed from Amazon – strange as only yesterday I had had an email notification that it would arrive next Wednesday. Later in the day an RCD device I’d ordered from Amazon was pushed through the door – they had told me that would come on Monday (BTW, today is Saturday).

We had decided to ‘treat’ ourselves to a big bed. Having the blank canvas that the French home provides, it gives us the opportunity to do things with this house that are hard to justify with our fully furnished home back in the UK.

With the bed here, the plans for the day change before thaey have barely started. Now they were:
  •          Unpack
  •          Go shopping at the local Intermarche
  •          Make up a couple of extension cables
  • ·        Vacuum the first floor
  •         Build the bed
  •  Vacuum the rest of the house top to bottom if I feel up to it (as I sit here typing at 18:45, I can tell you this didn’t happen).

With the exception of the last item, things went pretty much to plan.

I stocked up with enough food for around 4-days and bought a couple of tampons (snigger – that’s French for plug) and a few other items.

Back home I met Pirette our neighbour and we had a nice chat (despite her having no English and me little French). I greeted her with an air-kiss – I hope that was OK and that I did it right, being a 57-year-old Englishman, it’s not something I’m comfortable with – which cheek do you go for first? Does it matter??

Next it was time to put the French tampons on my English extension cables. This was a genius idea of my neighbours. I had bought a belt-sander with an English plug but, on reading the instructions, it said do not use an adaptor (my first plan) and not to tamper with the plug (that was 'Plan  B' blown out of the water – I was going to cut the original plug off and add a French one. When I asked my electrician neighbour which of those plans was the lesser of two evils, he suggested fitting a French plug to an English extension cable – the perfect solution (and flexible too – so I made two).

After this it was out with the vacuum and cleaning the rooms on the first floor – with a break mid-way for lunch. Once the floors (and walls and ceilings) were clean (relatively speaking). It was time to build the flat-pack bed. Whilst somewhat back breaking and time consuming that was straightforward (even all the screws were there 😊).

Our new bed


A quick Skype call to Sally to show off my handiwork and that was it. Not quite hungry enough for dinner yet, I got out the laptop out to finish yesterday’s blog and write up today's.

Now I am hungry enough, so off to the microwave and my Tajine de Boeuf ready-meal.

Oh. before I sign-off, I tried a new cheese at lunch today. It is very creamy with a consistency not that far from clotted cream. At first, I was a little disappointed as it was fairly bland – but, with each mouthful, the taste seemed to intensify and I found myself actually really liking it – if you fancy trying it, it is called  Saint-Félicien.


Saint-Felicien
Not the exact cheese i bought but you can see how creamy it is

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Receipt of Compromise & Diagnostics Reports (Feb 2018)

I'm still building this blog, setting up the 'Retrospective' pages which describe our activities between first embarking on this adventure  and finally deciding to create this blog. However, I've decided to create the first blog post as we've hit the first major milestone to occur since I started blogging - the receipt of the Compromise and the Diagnostic Reports. The Compromise is the first of two contractual documents and commits both parties to the sale of the property. The other contract is the main contract at the end of the process. Rather than travel to France we had decided to give the notaire (similar to a solicitor but working for the State rather than the two parties) power of attorney  to sign the Compromise on our behalf. This seemed seemed sensible as it involved no additional fees and saved us the journey. We would still have a 10-day cooling off period and, even if we had traveled there, the chances of understanding even a small part of what we w
Read more

A Night at the Chateau. 4-5 July

Image
 Up at 05:30 and on the road, as planned, shortly after 06:00. Nice clear run to the Eurotunnel terminal, as a result of which we were offered the 10:20 crossing (we were booked on the 11:50). Great result! Except we then queued and queued as traffic crawled through the customs and security checks. Eventually we found ourselves on the 11:20 crossing - still 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Anecdotally, the return delays are currently even worse. Isn't Brexit bliss 😒. We had booked a night at the Chateau de la Bucherie, just to the west of Paris. And French leg of the journey from the terminal was a s smooth as the journey to the terminal. I can highly recommend the chateau. The price was very reasonable, the room spacious (all be it in the roof with only a moderate sized Velux window).  The staff were delightful and friendly and the grounds (with impressive flora and fauna) were exceptional.  The kitchen garden was well stocked and we weren't surprised to see its produce feature
Read more

Baking Bread without an Oven & Accosting Strangers - 28 & 29 June.

Image
  On Sunday we tried, unsuccessfully, to find the workshop of the bicycle repairman that had a stall on the market the previous year. He'd told us he was opening a shop but we failed to find it  – perhaps it didn’t survive the pandemic; perhaps we simply were looking in the wrong place. We more groceries (we can only buy a few provisions each visit due to transport being limited to the push bikes) and ordered a full size fridge-freezer. Sally reckoned it was a good price and we’ve been managing with a small fridge for long enough – especially as we’ll be visiting for longer periods now (hopefully). Delivery was only €10 so we arranged for it to be delivered the next day. In the evening we looked for hotels in Paris and, having booked three-nights there, changed our return train ticket; a surprisingly simple process. Up at a more reasonable time (07:45) on Monday – thanks to setting the alarm. We needed to be sure to be up in time for the fridge-freezer delivery (scheduled for s
Read more