This and that!

For the past few weeks (months?) I've been having a few problems with some aspects of the old fogies' club accounts. On 24 December I transferred a nearly €13,000 deposit to the travel agent who will be dealing with our trip to Spain in September, and it went through no problem. At the same time I did a bank transfer to the caterer who had catered our Christmas lunch. Again, no problem - or so I thought. About a month later Monique (the president) asked me if I'd made the payment and I confirmed I'd done the two transfers on Christmas Eve, but apparently the caterer hadn't received the money. We tried chasing it up but the bank could find no record of it (even though I'd printed the receipt) so in the end we decided I'd just cut a cheque and mail it to them - which I did! Then about a month later Monique tells me that they still hadn't received the money - and I'm starting to get paranoid that they must think I'm a bloody idiot and I'm also completely flumoxed! In the end we were talking last week about putting a block on the cheque and hand delivering a new one to them, so Monique called them to confirm that was what we were going to do. And then we get a call back to say they'd found the cheque - in their mailbox!!!! Huh??? Turns out that apparently their usual mailman brings the mail into their offices and puts it on the desk, but our cheque had apparently been sitting in their mailbox for about a month! Again, huh????? While I definitely felt relieved to know it wasn't anything to do with me, I do wonder about their "accounting department" somewhat if they don't even check their mailbox every day! Still, no harm, no foul in the end I guess!

In connection with the trip to Spain, people have been giving us cheques pretty much every month as the club well understands that not everyone has a large pension and can afford to pay for the trip in one go. This is all well and good until I realized, when I was going through my file, that while my own cheque for €500 had indeed been deposited in the club's bank account, as treasurer, I had no official paper trail for that and about seven other cheques, which meant that mine and Monique's figures didn't tally! And that's when I found out that the one Tuesday I hadn't gone to club, someone had deposited cheques at the bank but no-one had thought to give me a copy, so now I'm going to have to go through every cheque deposited for this trip so we don't look like a bunch of eejits when it comes time to give everyone their final statements in June! While I think Monique is very good at her job, given a few things that have happened recently (and from what her son said to me at Christmas) she either hasn't realized (or can't accept) that she isn't the same club president as she was when she last did the job 20 years ago! Don't get me wrong she is doing a good job and is very dynamic, but Martine (the secretary) and I have realized we're going to have to be very careful with everything we do and make sure we each have back-up copies of everything "just in case"!

That being said, Monique and I were chatting after helping with clean up the other week and she started telling me more stories about her late husband. By all accounts - and quite apart from the fact that he was a veritable tom cat - he was a very domineering man who thought his word was law. One time (and she had no idea what made her do this) she had a feeling that something was brewing, so took the gun and ammunition (that he legally possessed) and deposited it in a safe deposit box at the local bank. Well that evening he kicked off and "threatened to do something" - whether he meant to her or to himself she didn't know - and went apeshit when he couldn't find his gun. It's very unusual in France for people to own guns if they're not farmers or hunters, and while she had no idea why she got that gun out of the house, she reckons it probably saved either his or her life - or even both. You never know about other people's lives do you because she's had a heck of a life in many respects and yet to look at her you wouldn't think she was anything other than a gentle Miss Marple-type character!

On Friday the club had a lunch for what I would describe as a kind of old people's tupperware party. Apparently once a year a company will contact them and offer them either a free outing or lunch if participants will sit through a sales spiel - i.e. buy some of their stuff. The young man that set this up told us a bit about what they had on offer (special mattresses, lightweight saucepans for arthritic hands, self-raising lazy boy chairs etc.) but he wasn't the one doing the presentation on Friday. I told them I wouldn't be going as we had the kids' baptism the following day but when I asked how it went they said it was a real wash out. The salesman spent most of his time trying to sell mattresses, a set of five saucepans cost over €500 (???), to which Martine pointed out that most of these people were on their own and why would they need five saucepans anyway? One woman bought what they referred to as a "vaporiser" (cleaner?) for €2,500 and I nearly passed out. I'd want a cleaning service for a decade for that kind of money but when they tried to get him onto the subject of the self-raising chairs he seemed to be in a hurry to get out of there and just skipped over it. So all in all it was a flop, the salesman totally misjudged his target audience and their prices were horrendous. I'm so glad I didn't go "to show support" as there really is no such thing as a free lunch!

On Saturday we had the kids' naming ceremony (rather than a baptism). We're not religious so this was done at the Mairie (the town hall) with the acting Maire doing the ceremony. Basically it was a way to recognize the named godparents, the kids received a gift each from the Maire, and then we all went to lunch, where the restaurant was given totally over to our group. The restaurant was small and with seven kids under seven IT WAS VERY NOISY, but we all had a good time and then walked down to the local park so the kids could run off some of that energy. Charlie and Elynn looked lovely in their new clothes - and then like a bag of sh@t after about 10 minutes playing at the park. Still, that's what it was all about, wasn't it!

With all the blossoms floating around at the moment, my allergies are playing up a treat. I didn't start getting hay fever until I was about 40 and then not every year, but this year, while everything is really pretty, it's been playing hell, with me trying not to sneeze and cough at the same time. I've fished out the trusty oregano oil again and it definitely works (for me at least), so I'm hoping that's about it for this year!

Tomorrow morning they are coming to deliver my heating fuel as I'm nearly out. When I called to (timidly) ask if they'd got any and could I please have more than 100 litres, she laughed and said of course I could have what I want (1,700 litres) so phew - and ouch, when I see that the price is up over 80% compared to this time last year! Still, since I also heat my water with fuel I don't really have a choice do I. I'll just have to grin (through gritted teeth) and bear it!

And finally, I went into town to my lovely Thai lady for a facial today. When I had a coughing fit she asked if it was allergies and I told that yes, I'd been working in the garden. She likes to garden too, and given all the beautiful home-made decorations she makes for her salon, I'm sure her garden looks 1,000 per cent better than mine. So she asked me what I'd been doing and I told her that I'd just seen a Youtube video on how to make dandelion "tea" as a fertilizer. I knew you could make it out of stinging nettles but had never heard of using dandelions. Apparently, the principal is the same as both are full of nitrogen and are extremely beneficial to plants but they both stink to high heaven so it's best to put the bucket well away from your home. So then she told me that her husband had made nettle "tea" (it's called purin in French) but had left the bucket by the kitchen door. When she went to move it she realized the handle was broken and the purin went all over her. He yelled at her for wasting his tea and she yelled back at him because she now smelled like a skunk and had to go to work getting "up close and personal" with her clients! I burst out laughing - as did the lady that was waiting for the appointment after mine! I couldn't imagine having to give someone a facial or a massage while smelling like skunk. I bet she didn't get too many repeat customers that day!