This and that!

As always (or so it seems to me) it's been a while between posts yet again but as there's nothing particularly scintilating going on and the plumber has now started work I'm just so tired. I realized how difficult it was having the electrician in my house for almost six weeks and now there'll be another two or so with the plumber. He's very nice and seems to be doing a good job, but man will I be glad when it's all done. Of course there are a million other things round here that could do with being updated/replaced but (a) I don't think my bank account can take it for the time being and (b) I know my nerves certainly can't!

He found a large nest of "mason
ants" when he ripped out the cladding!!!!

The old shower - can't wait for the new units
to be put in and retiled!

I can't believe we're almost half way through May already - I mean, where has the year gone??? May 1st and May 8th are generally public holidays in France and I remember when I was still working (in Switzerland, so no holiday) my then boss used to bring all the ladies in our unit lily of the valley, which is traditional here. He was a "bit of a lothario" to say the least but he was nice to me, and when he died the death announcement was posted from "A - his partner and M his wife"! Still, I suppose they had their reasons, the main one, I would imagine being that M would remain his beneficiary after his death and A had her own pension!

The other day there was a knock at my door and two young men asking for donations to "Action Against Hunger". I told them I already donated to the local food bank so sorry, but then a couple of days later on a local FB page I saw that they had also been knocking on doors in the local town so someone had called up Action Against Hunger and they were told that they were not collecting in our area! Damn they'll try anything to find out if homes are occupied won't they!

The other week we had our latest board game evening over at Jordan and Jen's and it was so lovely to see Valérie (my previous neighbour) and her daughter there for once. They have a lovely relationship and Mary-Anne is such a hoot - a real tearaway. She and André were great friends growing up and are still very close so when he was asking her about all her tattoos, she told him she'd had six sessions of four hours over an 18 month period at a cost of €3,000! Now that's not how I'd want to be spending my money but they do look very nice and each to his (her?) own, as they say!

After being thwarted the other day, I trudged back down to the local gym to enrol and bugger me if they weren't closed again. Well actually they were open but the office staff were on a lunch break so no QR code, no entry! I finally made it on the third attempt and rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly) I've signed up for a year's contract. And now of course the plumber is here so I won't be going for the next couple of weeks at least! So to make up for it, I started following a few yoga lessons on the "Yoga with Adrienne" Youtube channel and I discovered I had muscles in places I never even knew I had places!!!

I finally got an official contract from EDF for my solar panels asking me to compete the online set up for my contract. When I got on the site my email and my telephone number were still wrong so it would seem that the left hand still doesn't know what the right hand is doing! I got that corrected and hopefully I can now start generating electricity to sell back to them but man what a palaver it's all been. Then, as luck would have it, I got an email from my telephone carrier asking for my opinion on their new fibre service - so I told them. Ha, that was fun for once!

At the end of April they held the London marathon and while I obviously didn't watch all of it, I got a real kick out of seeing the great sportsmanship and good nature of the competitors. To be honest I couldn't tell you who won (but well done to them in any case of course) but the ones that got me were the people helping those who couldn't take any more over the finishing line, or the little boy running in calipers, or the person running in a rhino suit in aid of the Save the Rhino Fund! Brilliant!

And then of course there were the VE Day celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe - those celebrations always get me too, particularly as so many of the veterans probably won't be around much longer to be celebrated!

And finally, I see that Clarkson's Farm's next series should be out soon and I can't wait! I don't know, maybe May wasn't so bad after all!