The view from my window

The view from my window
The view from my window

Monday 24 April 2017

On the buses!

I have mentioned before that I really dislike having someone eating their breakfast or whatever when sitting next to me on the bus. Maybe it's just me - I guess we all have our little niggles right - but I hate the elbows in the ribs and the smell of someone's breakfast all within 10 inches of my nose that early in the morning. I posted previously that there is a chap who gets on and always has his tuna-mayo sandwich followed by a slice of pizza and coffee, so you get a varied array of smells depending on how far along his route we are. Well on Friday the guy sitting next to me seemed to have a bottomless pit for a bag. First the crackers, then the sandwich, then the banana, followed by more crackers then another banana - in the end I had to smile because it just put me in mind of the scene where Mr. Bean is sitting an exam and has the never-ending bag of supplies, or indeed Mary Poppins' bottomless bag (you see, I really am easily amused)! The only thing missing from this banquet was the flip-down table!




Whinging apart, there are worse places than Geneva to be on a bus, as witnessed by the elderly couple on the bus on Friday evening. The gent didn't seem to be completely with it and it was obviously the lady's job to take care of him. Immediately people jumped up and helped him to a seat while the lady was trying to explain to him that she would be getting off at the Museum as she was going to Paulette's but that he must get off at the next stop and make his way home. He seemed a little confused but I have seen them on the bus before and I guess this is the way it rolls for them - it can't be easy for either of them. Anyway, the lady got off and when the gent went to follow her a couple of young men stopped him and explained that "she was going to see Paulette and that he should get off at the next stop", and then took it upon themselves to make sure he got off safely at the right stop, at which point he seemed to get his bearings. Sad really, but at least there were decent people around to take care of him. I make no judgement on the lady (his wife?) leaving him on the bus as I would guess this is their norm, for the time being at least, until one day it won't be!

I also mentioned in a post in January about a young cyclist (she was 27 I think) who had been killed on my bus route having gone underneath the wheels of a truck as it was turning. Her loved ones put up a tribute which still remains, although the dead flowers have now been replaced by candles. What amazed me though is that a cycling helmet had been left amongst the tributes, and three months later it is still there - no-one has taken it! It warms the heart a little, I must say.

In other matters, I had great plans for the Easter weekend, none of which came to fruition because, apart from being woken up at 4.40 a.m. by a telemarketing company, unbeknownst to me my neighbour had set up with his friend to come over with his digger to dig out the ditch which would re-channel the underground springs in the garden. So I was woken up to that unexpected joy at 8 a.m! This is what my back garden looked like over Easter, and where I spent my time humping stones out of the ditch in order for them to lay the piping. Happy days! Still, to be fair, it ended up costing us less than half what our other neighbours paid!


My sister made some smart-arsed comment about how if I really didn't want them to visit in July I should just tell them rather than digging a moat, but I explained that while the ditch was for the underground springs I thought the anti-tank guns out front would suffice to keep them away!

This is the top end of my garden leading down to the neighbours' where the springs would have ended up if I had gone ahead and started without them. I don't have much land (and for that I am thankful) but am lucky enough to have the field behind which is agricultural land so even better. I think I only have about 350 square metres, but frankly that is more than enough. It's sad really but when we first moved in in 1990 the farmer was selling a riding lawnmower and my ex desperately wanted to buy it! I mean, you have a plot of land about as big as three handkerchiefs and he wants a riding lawnmower!!!! And worse still, I would have given in and let him get it if we had had the money, but having just bought a house and paid for a move from Switzerland to France we were broke! How stupid would he (we) have looked on a riding lawnmower having to do a 350-point turn just to turn around and go in the other direction!!! I don't know if it was just because he was used to that kind of thing in the U.S. where people have bigger gardens but really .........????? He also bought a ruddy great roto-tiller to turn over a patch of ground as big as my underwear so we could grow veggies (my 80-year old neighbour just leaned on his shovel and smiled benignly). And then the lawnmower - everyone else's cost maybe €400 and we had to have one that cost €2,000!!  I never did understand but I sure as heck discovered pretty fast why we never had any money! More importantly, he never took care of anything so it really was money down the drain. When he moved back to the States and left me to empty the farmhouse he had rented, he had three strimmers/weed whackers rusting in the garage and he didn't even have a garden of any description! Nothing. He had, I think, four rose bushes at the side of the house, no grass at all, and that was it!  One day, he came to the house and said he needed to borrow the aforementioned expensive lawnmower. When I asked what for he said he "needed it" but I knew he was just going to give it to one of his buddies so I said his buddy could borrow it when he replaced the hedge trimmer he had lent him last time which he then broke and never replaced! Grrrr, those bloody mates drove me nuts - but at least I don't have to deal with them any more.

And on a slightly different note, in connection with a programme on UK TV about people who were living "mortgage free", Jane over at Shoestring Cottage was talking about "saving money" and one of her commentators mentioned the moneysavingexpert.com website where you can calculate how much interest you would save by making overpayments on your mortgage. I started overpaying my mortgage three years ago but couldn't be bothered to work out the back details so I input my info as though I was starting overpaying this month and - just wow! According to their calculation table, I would save myself around €72,000 and almost eight years on the mortgage by doing this. When I did a rough estimate of the three years that I didn't take into count I reckon it will be nearer €100,000! Just wow!

And finally, it's a small world isn't it? I follow Anne's blog at New Happenings at the Table. She is based in Alabama and one of the ladies who commented on her blog (Nathalie) put in a mention to me about how, while she lives in Florida, her dad lives just up the road from me in a place called Thônes! Blogging world really is small isn't it!



9 comments:

  1. It definitely is a small world in blogging. I am so happy we have no mortgage, there is so much freedom in it. We paid it down as fast as possible and downsized in the end. Sounds like you and your ex were definitely not a match. At least you are having the water issues dealt with - nice to not have to worry about that and it will only take a couple of months to look right again.

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  2. As soon as I am mortgage free I will retire (in about three years I think). Lovely thought and well done you!

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  3. I absolutely agree about the smells on a bus or plane. I even understand the necessity of saving time and eating there, but get a bland non smelling order to to. Tuna and pizza are beyond trying to imagine.
    Moving stones and digging trenches is not a fun way to spend time, but dang if we don't get life's little unanticipated bonuses all the time.
    I was laughing about the riding lawnmower for a small yard. We did break down and buy one for the lake place, but there is some acreage there and neither of us want to push a mower up the hill. At home we still have a regular lawnmower and it is fine.

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    1. Seriously, I think my back yard measures about 30 metres by 30 metres (so 90 ft x 90 ft) - we couldn't even have turned the bloody tractor round if we wanted to!!

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  4. That was really sweet of those people to make sure the gentleman got off the right stop.

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    1. I would say they were young men in their 30s - I am still impressed by the good manners here (not always of course, just like anywhere), but courteous and polite all the same!

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  5. Hello Anna! I also thought it was a small world when I first realized you were blogging from an area close to my dad's but had no idea that you were that close to Thônes! And the Polk county line is just 30 minutes away from my house so when you told me you used to have a house in Polk County, that made our world even smaller, didn't it?

    I can't eat anything until about 9 a.m. (unless it's croissants!) so the smell of the food on the bus would make me nauseous too. I'm astounded that the lady left her obviously confused husband on the bus by himself. I guess she was either relying on others' kindness to make sure he got where he was going or she's in serious denial of his mental state.

    Good job prepaying your mortgage! We started doing that a few years ago as soon as we paid off all the credit cards and established an emergency fund. Our goal was to pay off the house by the time our youngest graduates from high school, in 3 years. It now looks like we might be able to pay it off as early as 12 to 18 months from now, depending on what kind of bonus my husband gets this year (and provided that he keeps his job). We'll have paid it off in about 17 years instead of 30, saying us a ton of money as well (I don't have the exact number at hand). I cannot wait to be able to say that it's definitely OUR house and not the bank's!

    As for the lawnmower, I'm always pushing Greg to buy a ride-on mower but he likes our old push mower. Truth is, I want a ride-on mower for ME for when I have to mow the lawn, which is once a year at the most, hahaha.

    I loved your sister's sassy comment about the moat and your equally sassy retort about the anti-tank guns. I don't like having visitors so for me, that would be ideal :)

    I'm still amazed that you did clean out that farmyard for your ex. I know you explained why you did it in a post but I've forgotten the reason. You're a better person than I am, though, I would have left his sorry butt to deal with it. Ugh. Sounds like you're much better off without him.

    Good luck with the new water pipes. My dad has a small creek running in front of his property but thankfully it's deep enough that he doesn't have to worry about being flooded too much. However, I remember him telling me that a few years back when you all got really bad storms, a lot of debris floated down the creek and since it goes under the road right past his house, the debris ended up blocking the underground passage under the road and almost took the road out at the same time! That would have been problematic for the people in the area, as it's been for you with that bridge repair that you mentioned, and his house is very close to the road so it could have been dangerous.

    Have a lovely week (and a piece of Reblochon for me, if you happen to have some!).

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    1. Well done on paying your house down so quickly - do I sense another Dave Ramsey devotee? I think he's great! And yes it's a small world, and while I hope it doesn't happen, if your dad's creek ever gets jammed up again tell him to be kind to the Flottins (we were lucky enough to "meet" them on New Year's Eve). And of course I'll save you a piece of reblochon - tartiflette is my favourite dish in the whole world!

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    2. I had never heard of Les Flottins so I had to look it up. Interesting! Did you go to Evian to see the display, then?

      And no, I'm not a Dave Ramsey devotee at all. Just good old common sense :) Enjoy the tartiflette! I can smell it from here, lol.

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