This time I took the camera!

This is the Rue du Chateau d'Eau, the place Peter found a while ago. We didn't see any chateau, but it's a lovely walk, with nice houses and spectacular views.

Yesterday I was in the middle of a post...

... when the power was cut off. The weather was absolutely atrocious yesterday, very, very windy, with 90km/hour gusts. The power came back in time for cooking lunch, but the internet stayed down until today. We went grocery shopping this afternoon and saw many trees down, and some were uprooted!

We didn't go out at all yesterday and we now know it was a wise decision. We just hope nobody was injured during the storm...

The post I lost will go up tomorrow.

 

Our village under snow

These photos were taken by a friend who has a house in the neighbouring village, same as our friend Hilary.

Trying to do our bit

Tomorrow we're going to be very busy helping to sort donations to a Facebook group that helps refugees. A refugee camp nicknamed "The Jungle" is being dismantled as I write this. Thousands of families that lived there were fleeing war zones, hoping to get to England (not a welcoming place). They are being dispersed around the whole of France. Two families from Afghanistan were housed about two hours away from here, in very precarious conditions, with only the clothes on their backs.

This woman and her wife started the Facebook group and now have a hub to receive and deliver donations they store in their barn. They also coordinate mini hubs throughout the region. We had some surplus items and were just going to drop them, but ended up volunteering to do more stuff. It will be good to meet these Facebook people in person, have lunch together and have a laugh, all for a good cause.

The situation in Calais has been going on for many years. Conditions in The Jungle were far from ideal and the area around Calais was becoming very unsafe. The locals were unhappy with it and some bright spark in the UK came up with an original idea: build a 14ft wall to keep the refugees in! The French government decided to address the problem by dispersing the families throughout France.

There are immigration officers from the UK on this side of the channel, but the number of refugees concentrated in the area poses a problem for the French. Brexit didn't help at all, because the UK government is being very arrogant and the French have had enough of it.

The Jungle:

   We all have to learn to live together like brothers, otherwise we'll all die together like idiots

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I mentioned Brexit, which is my latest bugbear. Thanks for the "likes" and comments on my two Facebook posts. I've been contacted by some people to help coordinate a media strategy. We need to get the message across to the people who regret voting to leave the EU and also reach put to the elected officials who will ultimately decide the fate of some 65 million people. I love the internet!

What time is o'clock-ish

This is a quick post because a cousin from Spain has messaged me to say he's in the region, could we meet, etc. So we're heading to Café de Paris to meet him and his wife in a while. Last time I saw him was in 1982! 

In other news, last night we went to a fabulous birthday party at the bar/café/restaurant on the beach. It was the owner's son's 25th. They had a free bar, loads of food, and a great band. Fortunately, the rain held back and only fell this morning. We had a great time.

The kids leave tomorrow at noon. The house is going to be very quiet...

Bad day chez Regina

I'm fuming today! We ordered a cooker online on August 30th. Estimated delivery September 9th. I received an email on the 7th to advise me that the cooker had been dispatched. So far, so good. Having spent three days as prisoners in our own home waiting for the delivery guy, we got precisely nothing.

Yesterday I contacted the sellers, asking for a proper time of delivery, because I have other things to do besides sitting here like an idiot for days on end. This morning an email arrived, with a telephone number and also a reference number, so I could take it up directly with the delivery people. I rang them and they gave me another number for my region, where they never heard my name, and informed me that my order number was wrong, it should start with "99" not "81."

Many phone calls later, to various customer services departments, I was none the wiser regarding the whereabouts of my cooker. While all this stuff was going on, we were busy washing floors and other general cleaning, getting ready for our son Paul's arrival with girlfriend next Saturday. Already in a charming mood, I then managed to tip a bucket of dirty water all over the kitchen floor. I left the room crying and left Peter to deal with spill.

After lunch I made another phone call to the merchants and insisted the guy should ring the delivery company himself, as they kept saying they didn't know anything about me or my order. He came back to say that of course they had dispatched my cooker and would ring me on my cell to arrange a firm date for the delivery.

Could you please light candles, send vibes, do some voo-doo or whatever, so that my cooker arrives before Friday (Peter has an appointment for an ultrasound on Friday) and that I don't go completely crazy? Please? Pretty please?

Or is it too late?

Hi! Yes, I'm still here

I had a very long, very tiring journey home. Just about all my chosen modes of transport were delayed. I'm still getting myself back together. It's as hot here as it was on Miami, but we don't have A/C here... We've been spending a lot of our time on the lake.

Here's a picture of my farewell lunch and Dora's smily face. I miss her already.

Bonjour!

These photos of a sunrise through the Arc de Triomphe are truly spectacular! Bonjour à tous!

Real life is so different from what we see on YouTube...

The heating element in our oven went puff the other day, so I searched the internet to find out how to replace it. I found a video on YouTube where this lovely English guy changed the thing in less than five minutes... "Sooooo easy," we thought. Ordered the part from Amazon, it was very cheap, free delivery, yadda yadda. 

Today we decided we had five minutes to spare, so we embarked on the "very simple" task after lunch. It's 6pm and we're about to replace the cover. The YouTube chap was working on a brand new oven, all the screws came out in seconds, whereas ours took a mixture of brute force, a lot of WD-40, a rubber band and buckets of sweat.

The best I can do is post a picture of the view from our kitchen window, with its lovely autumn colours:

First meal I cooked after getting back home

I'll post photos I took in Miami after I've recovered from the jetlag. In the meantime, here's our first lunch together since I arrived back home: 

A chateau being restored to its former glory

The Chateau de Gudanes in the department of Ariège, Midi-Pyrenées, was abandoned and unloved for many years, until a brave Australian couple bought it and started restoring its 94 rooms!

It's a very ambitious project, but there are many original features worth preserving, plus the setting and the views are simply spectacular.