Well here we are, we've arrived in France and house in the UK is due to sell
any day now (the point of no return, so to speak). It’s all a bit chaotic, and flying by, so far so
just a few bits and pieces here, possibly a better written and more cohesive
entry will follow shortly!
The big house (there are 2 on the property, the other one we imaginatively call
the little house) is coming along well, totally unrecognisable from two years
ago when we first saw it. It fights us tooth and nail to remain as it is with every simple DIY
task taking 2 or 3 times longer than you would expect due to years of abuse
from previous owners, I mean why use the supplied fixings to put blinds on
windows when a blob of super glue does the job so quickly? Changing
things like blinds then becomes a far trickier job than advertised.
I seem to remember referring to our 18 month old as having premature
terrible twos in my first post, well perhaps she thinks she should be living up
to it. I had no idea how prophetic those words would turn out to be. If
anything fails to go her way at the moment she has decided that spitting on the
floor will get her the reaction she is after. Where exactly this new fad
came from, neither Competitive Wife nor I are able to fathom.
Last week one of the local British imports of Prop Forward physique, asked
me if I could help him unload a lorry bringing his sheds from the UK over
here. I said I'd be delighted but had little idea (nor, I think, did he)
that it would take six men a full (and full on) 3 hours to unload. At
time of writing I'm rather sore. Myself, Prop Forward, Local Service,
Grumpy Welshman, the driver and a local plumber/electrician with 40 cats (40
cat man) managed to shift the equivalent of a small copse of trees from the
back of the lorry and in doing so consumed (between us) 1 cup of tea, 2
Oranginas, 12 cans of strong lager, 5 shots of whiskey and a Pastis.
Apparently nothing can be done around here without offering an alcoholic drink
afterwards or in this case during. Grumpy Welshman was on particularly good form,
turning up in a hi-vis vest and making sure the traffic got past the lorry
safely, I'm sure both cyclists made it home all the more safely as a result.
That's all for now.
Showing posts with label Grumpy Welshman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grumpy Welshman. Show all posts
Monday, 21 May 2012
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
The long way home.
This could be a lengthy one so brace yourself. Well in fact, if this
bit hasn't been edited out, it is.
One of our trips to the house last year saw one of my wife's longest serving friends (Penniless solicitor: PS) come over to visit us for the last 4 days (Thursday to Sunday) of a 2 week stay.
Our aim for the 2 weeks was integration with the local community and to this end we had arranged a little "Apero" evening, inviting our neighbours by knocking on doors and speaking at them in our best French.
The Apero was to be held on the Friday and we were as scared as kittens. We had no idea how many would turn up, each invitee had been asked to "invite anyone you think of who might want to come". This led to a bit of panic buying in the wine and glasses departments and at the time of writing we still have far too many glasses.
The evening was pretty much a success, about 25 locals turned up (Including about 10 ex-pats but the rest were French locals) and we managed to communicate fairly well and keep all of the glasses topped up. Other than a small groping incident the night passed off without a hitch but somehow wife (Against her own rule of not entertaining the night before we drive home) managed to invite Grumpy Welshman (GW) and his better half over for dinner the following evening. This was the first link in a chain of events that will be family lore for many years to come.
The following evening, after we had got dinner sorted, we received an invitation from GW to come over to his for a pre-dinner drink. It was a bit close to little one's bedtime to take advantage of it so, very graciously, wife offered to let PS and I go as long as we were sure to be home by 7.30 given our impending early start and 12 hour drive.
Armed with 45 minutes, we set off on foot for GW's house and had barely managed 60 yards when a van parked in front of us pulled away turned left and removed a large chunk of trim from it's side cutting a corner a bit too fine. The driver, either unaware or unbothered simply drove away! Several neighbours came out to see what the noise was so we smiled, practiced our best Gallic shrugs at the little bit of van on the side of the road and headed off once more.
After another 20 yards a rotund Frenchman (with a nickname derived from his father's job at the water board, we'll call him WB) we recognised from the Apero evening came running out of his garage and insisted we came in to see the work he was doing on his house. We explained we that we needed to get to GW's house but he simply explained: GW, "he's my brother" as if that settled any and all argument! "And so it begins" were PS's prophetic words at just that moment. A full tour ensued complete with much appreciation of wall finishings, window trim, flooring, electrical installation and understanding of the costs involved, not to mention a considerable amount of boasting that it had all been done outside of the tax system!
We finally got back down to his garage and were about to bid our farewells when he produced a half bottle of whisky with a hairy Scotsman on the front and 3 disposable plastic cups. Something of a movie style dream sequence followed with WB, who spoke no English, teaching me (A Welshman from the valleys) words in Welsh while we all downed neat whiskey. GW had clearly been coaching him for this moment for years. By the time we got underway, WB in tow, it must have been 7.20 and we had managed 80 yards. Further drinks at GW's meant we didn't arrive home until 8.15.
This didn't go down well with wife who had been dealing with the little one who didn't want to go to bed and trying to keep dinner edible. This was entirely fair on her part however I still couldn't see any way around the delay without being rude to our new acquaintances! Much drinking was done for the next few hours and I think we staggered to bed well past midnight with a 6am start and 12 hour drive home the next day.
To say we were in poor condition to commence the drive home would have been an understatement, three hangovers and a loud baby in a car at 7am on the autoroute, mixed in with a bit of leftover tension from the night before was not ideal. We had to give up and stop at the first services for coffee and a bit of a group hug (Or the British equivalent, a sensible chat around a table). This cleared the air and our heads somewhat and we got back underway having wasted about an hour. Now behind schedule and struggling to catch our ferry from Calais, we pushed on as fast as we dared for 6 hours and with the port just 20km away were squeaking in on time to catch our boat.
At this point the petrol light in the car came on along with a warning that we had just 45km of fuel left. Wife was asleep in the back of the car and after confirming the remaining distance with PS who had the map I said "Let’s risk it". These are the words that wife woke up to asking "risk WHAT?". I started to explain but before I could finish we had run out of petrol. So now we are on a service road near the autoroute with a baby, it's foggy, cold and occasionally drizzling. Having jogged the half km to the nearest SOS phone to find that it didn't work I came back and following the instructions on the SOS booth dialled 112 on our mobile. My mistake was to ask if anyone spoke English because they just hung up! Another 10 attempts later we finally managed to explain our situation to someone and get a rescue vehicle on it's way to us, perhaps from Paris as it only took 2 hours to arrive.
On arrival he tipped 2 litres of petrol in the car, stuck out his hand and said 185 Euros please, when questioned about this he shrugged, said "c'est Dimanche" and threatened to call the police. We paid the man leaving us a combined wealth of 1 Euro, and headed off once more.
Arriving at the port we were told that we needed to go to the ticket office to pay to change our ferry crossing, a mere 87 Euros. When I explained that this was more than the original return crossing cost the lady behind the counter cheerily said "I know", she followed this up by saying we were now too late for the next crossing and would have to wait another 2 and a half hours. "Merci" I said with as little real meaning as I could manage.
The waiting hall consists of a huge room filled with 5 or six vending machines. Having not eaten since breakfast we decided to spend our Euro a single packet of crisps to share between 3 of us. Never has a crisp tasted so good and collectively we were almost weeping with joy when I held up the little one to look into the packet and said "look crisps!". Showing a previously undiscovered talent for comic timing she promptly threw up straight into the packet. We really did cry with laughter.
One of our trips to the house last year saw one of my wife's longest serving friends (Penniless solicitor: PS) come over to visit us for the last 4 days (Thursday to Sunday) of a 2 week stay.
Our aim for the 2 weeks was integration with the local community and to this end we had arranged a little "Apero" evening, inviting our neighbours by knocking on doors and speaking at them in our best French.
The Apero was to be held on the Friday and we were as scared as kittens. We had no idea how many would turn up, each invitee had been asked to "invite anyone you think of who might want to come". This led to a bit of panic buying in the wine and glasses departments and at the time of writing we still have far too many glasses.
The evening was pretty much a success, about 25 locals turned up (Including about 10 ex-pats but the rest were French locals) and we managed to communicate fairly well and keep all of the glasses topped up. Other than a small groping incident the night passed off without a hitch but somehow wife (Against her own rule of not entertaining the night before we drive home) managed to invite Grumpy Welshman (GW) and his better half over for dinner the following evening. This was the first link in a chain of events that will be family lore for many years to come.
The following evening, after we had got dinner sorted, we received an invitation from GW to come over to his for a pre-dinner drink. It was a bit close to little one's bedtime to take advantage of it so, very graciously, wife offered to let PS and I go as long as we were sure to be home by 7.30 given our impending early start and 12 hour drive.
Armed with 45 minutes, we set off on foot for GW's house and had barely managed 60 yards when a van parked in front of us pulled away turned left and removed a large chunk of trim from it's side cutting a corner a bit too fine. The driver, either unaware or unbothered simply drove away! Several neighbours came out to see what the noise was so we smiled, practiced our best Gallic shrugs at the little bit of van on the side of the road and headed off once more.
After another 20 yards a rotund Frenchman (with a nickname derived from his father's job at the water board, we'll call him WB) we recognised from the Apero evening came running out of his garage and insisted we came in to see the work he was doing on his house. We explained we that we needed to get to GW's house but he simply explained: GW, "he's my brother" as if that settled any and all argument! "And so it begins" were PS's prophetic words at just that moment. A full tour ensued complete with much appreciation of wall finishings, window trim, flooring, electrical installation and understanding of the costs involved, not to mention a considerable amount of boasting that it had all been done outside of the tax system!
We finally got back down to his garage and were about to bid our farewells when he produced a half bottle of whisky with a hairy Scotsman on the front and 3 disposable plastic cups. Something of a movie style dream sequence followed with WB, who spoke no English, teaching me (A Welshman from the valleys) words in Welsh while we all downed neat whiskey. GW had clearly been coaching him for this moment for years. By the time we got underway, WB in tow, it must have been 7.20 and we had managed 80 yards. Further drinks at GW's meant we didn't arrive home until 8.15.
This didn't go down well with wife who had been dealing with the little one who didn't want to go to bed and trying to keep dinner edible. This was entirely fair on her part however I still couldn't see any way around the delay without being rude to our new acquaintances! Much drinking was done for the next few hours and I think we staggered to bed well past midnight with a 6am start and 12 hour drive home the next day.
To say we were in poor condition to commence the drive home would have been an understatement, three hangovers and a loud baby in a car at 7am on the autoroute, mixed in with a bit of leftover tension from the night before was not ideal. We had to give up and stop at the first services for coffee and a bit of a group hug (Or the British equivalent, a sensible chat around a table). This cleared the air and our heads somewhat and we got back underway having wasted about an hour. Now behind schedule and struggling to catch our ferry from Calais, we pushed on as fast as we dared for 6 hours and with the port just 20km away were squeaking in on time to catch our boat.
At this point the petrol light in the car came on along with a warning that we had just 45km of fuel left. Wife was asleep in the back of the car and after confirming the remaining distance with PS who had the map I said "Let’s risk it". These are the words that wife woke up to asking "risk WHAT?". I started to explain but before I could finish we had run out of petrol. So now we are on a service road near the autoroute with a baby, it's foggy, cold and occasionally drizzling. Having jogged the half km to the nearest SOS phone to find that it didn't work I came back and following the instructions on the SOS booth dialled 112 on our mobile. My mistake was to ask if anyone spoke English because they just hung up! Another 10 attempts later we finally managed to explain our situation to someone and get a rescue vehicle on it's way to us, perhaps from Paris as it only took 2 hours to arrive.
On arrival he tipped 2 litres of petrol in the car, stuck out his hand and said 185 Euros please, when questioned about this he shrugged, said "c'est Dimanche" and threatened to call the police. We paid the man leaving us a combined wealth of 1 Euro, and headed off once more.
Arriving at the port we were told that we needed to go to the ticket office to pay to change our ferry crossing, a mere 87 Euros. When I explained that this was more than the original return crossing cost the lady behind the counter cheerily said "I know", she followed this up by saying we were now too late for the next crossing and would have to wait another 2 and a half hours. "Merci" I said with as little real meaning as I could manage.
The waiting hall consists of a huge room filled with 5 or six vending machines. Having not eaten since breakfast we decided to spend our Euro a single packet of crisps to share between 3 of us. Never has a crisp tasted so good and collectively we were almost weeping with joy when I held up the little one to look into the packet and said "look crisps!". Showing a previously undiscovered talent for comic timing she promptly threw up straight into the packet. We really did cry with laughter.
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Mountain bike trials.
It's been quite a while since my last update but frankly nothing's happened!
We’re still waiting for the house to sell and the move to happen. Best guess;
it's still a few weeks away but in the mean time this little tit-bit...
One of our trips to France last year coincided with a mountain bike trial taking place in our village. It's quite a big deal apparently, a national level event where riders race over an insanely dangerous course which passed by the front of our house.
On the day we were visiting Grumpy Welshman (5 mins walk across the village) and, when the little one got tired, we made our way home to put her to bed. Arriving at our house we found the way cordoned off and various neighbours chatting with course marshals in the road. Retired Farmer from next door insisted that we hang on as the riders were due past in 5 minutes.
After 20 minutes of waiting and desperately trying to keep the little one happy we found that the only way she would calm down was to be put down on the road where she could play with stones and in the mud. Wife came up with the genius idea of getting everyone a glass of wine which left us in the bizarre situation of sharing wine in a country road with strange Frenchmen and the baby sitting down playing on the tarmac and occasionally attempting to crawl off into the path of passing mountain bikes!
Standard day in village life I guess! :)
One of our trips to France last year coincided with a mountain bike trial taking place in our village. It's quite a big deal apparently, a national level event where riders race over an insanely dangerous course which passed by the front of our house.
On the day we were visiting Grumpy Welshman (5 mins walk across the village) and, when the little one got tired, we made our way home to put her to bed. Arriving at our house we found the way cordoned off and various neighbours chatting with course marshals in the road. Retired Farmer from next door insisted that we hang on as the riders were due past in 5 minutes.
After 20 minutes of waiting and desperately trying to keep the little one happy we found that the only way she would calm down was to be put down on the road where she could play with stones and in the mud. Wife came up with the genius idea of getting everyone a glass of wine which left us in the bizarre situation of sharing wine in a country road with strange Frenchmen and the baby sitting down playing on the tarmac and occasionally attempting to crawl off into the path of passing mountain bikes!
Standard day in village life I guess! :)
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Bastille Day and Mrs T's Knockers.
We had the great privilege of spending last Bastille Day (or Just "le
quatorze Juillet" as the local French seem to know it, I'm not sure they
worry to much about the storming of the Bastille, it's much more the party
preparations that dominate their thoughts) in France.
The Mayor puts on a party/ lunch in the village park and invites a local restaurant to prepare meals for all of the residents. The first time we met the Mayor, my wife, in a translation horror moment, managed to tell him that she was very aroused rather than excited at the prospect of moving. French speakers will know exactly the error that was made there.
We had come over especially for this event and had already paid for our ticket (to get our meal) but were unprepared for Grumpy Welshman (GW) to tell us, at 7pm on the 13th, that everybody brings plenty of food along to share with their neighbours. Now being a couple of very competitive people, keen to ingratiate ourselves with the locals, we couldn't possibly miss this opportunity so a mad supermarket dash had to be made. What we produced, to be fair, was quite good, 4 individual pastry sheets with savoury toppings of hams, cheeses, balsamic onions, roasted peppers etc in various combinations.
On the day itself we decided, on advice from GW to get to the park early to make sure we'd get seat, He'd assured us that the French were very punctual on such events. We should have known better.
We arrived at the park at 10.45 for an 11 o'clock start and were the first ones there! After wandering among the empty tables for a few minutes wondering if we had the right day, Local Service (LS) caught up with us and insisted that we come back to his house, adjacent to the park, for a drink.
So now we are drinking Pastis in LS's house at 11 in the morning with a varied collection of other old men sitting around his kitchen table, LS's wife scowling at us and all watching Nicolas Sarkozy giving his Bastille Day address in front of the troops. Not so much culture shock as shell shock.
The party did get going in the park and we were introduced to quite a lot of people and our pastries were even given the thumbs up by a local pastry chef. While our new neighbours circulated past bringing a selection of illegally produced forms of alcohol, one in particular went into a long story including a hand gesture (Which I'm fairly sure means "Madonna" in sign language) and, quite clearly "Margret Thatcher"!
Intrigued we sought translation and were told that he used to work security in Brussels and had to deliver Mrs T a message whereupon she answered her hotel room door in a skirt and bra. A further translation revealed he had used words to the effect of "Great knockers".
It would be a shame to write any more than that!
The Mayor puts on a party/ lunch in the village park and invites a local restaurant to prepare meals for all of the residents. The first time we met the Mayor, my wife, in a translation horror moment, managed to tell him that she was very aroused rather than excited at the prospect of moving. French speakers will know exactly the error that was made there.
We had come over especially for this event and had already paid for our ticket (to get our meal) but were unprepared for Grumpy Welshman (GW) to tell us, at 7pm on the 13th, that everybody brings plenty of food along to share with their neighbours. Now being a couple of very competitive people, keen to ingratiate ourselves with the locals, we couldn't possibly miss this opportunity so a mad supermarket dash had to be made. What we produced, to be fair, was quite good, 4 individual pastry sheets with savoury toppings of hams, cheeses, balsamic onions, roasted peppers etc in various combinations.
On the day itself we decided, on advice from GW to get to the park early to make sure we'd get seat, He'd assured us that the French were very punctual on such events. We should have known better.
We arrived at the park at 10.45 for an 11 o'clock start and were the first ones there! After wandering among the empty tables for a few minutes wondering if we had the right day, Local Service (LS) caught up with us and insisted that we come back to his house, adjacent to the park, for a drink.
So now we are drinking Pastis in LS's house at 11 in the morning with a varied collection of other old men sitting around his kitchen table, LS's wife scowling at us and all watching Nicolas Sarkozy giving his Bastille Day address in front of the troops. Not so much culture shock as shell shock.
The party did get going in the park and we were introduced to quite a lot of people and our pastries were even given the thumbs up by a local pastry chef. While our new neighbours circulated past bringing a selection of illegally produced forms of alcohol, one in particular went into a long story including a hand gesture (Which I'm fairly sure means "Madonna" in sign language) and, quite clearly "Margret Thatcher"!
Intrigued we sought translation and were told that he used to work security in Brussels and had to deliver Mrs T a message whereupon she answered her hotel room door in a skirt and bra. A further translation revealed he had used words to the effect of "Great knockers".
It would be a shame to write any more than that!
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Welcome to the village.
One of my early trips to the houses was a week of intensive cleaning and painting of the little house. I came on my own without knowing anyone in the village and with rather a single minded objective that would never withstand events in the village!
On about my third afternoon 3 gentleman approached the house and introduced themselves as the retired farmer from next door, "Local Service" (See below) and a grumpy Welshman (GW) who could do some translating for me (My French is probably better that school boy but not a lot) especially for Local Service (LS) as he speaks a local Patois which is barely French.
It was explained to me that as a welcome to the village I was to be taken into Retired Farmer's (RF) cellar. Once safely ensconced there I was thankfully served alcohol and none of the other things which came to mind. Drinks (Given this was mid-afternoon) included with wine (2 bottles), pineau (Eau de vie and grape juice) and some rocket fuel made from blackthorn shoots.
During my stay I was shown RF's collection of corkscrews and given a crash course on the local patois the LS regularly saying incomprehensible things followed by "Traduction!" as instruction for GW to translate. This game was fine and perfectly normal until he grabbed a topless calendar and proclaimed loudly "titties traduction!". There are after all many similarities between the English and French languages.
After this bewildering afternoon we emerged blinking into the sunshine and all piled into LS's car (Yes I know but still!) and drove about 200 meters to LS's house where he insisted that we start on the Pastis. GW had bailed by this stage and I was left to fend for myself for 40 minutes of stuttering French/Patois and sign language.
After I'd staggered back I have to confess I didn't get any more painting done.
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