Captain Tom celebrates his 100th birthday!

The other day I finally realized that I couldn't think of a single good excuse to put off painting the kitchen any more so decided there was nothing for it but to just get on and do it. Now I don't mind the idea of painting as such but I absolutely hate having to move everything so that I can get into all the nooks and crannies. I tell ya, the temptation to just paint round that bottle of ketchup where it stood was extremely strong, but then that would mean I would have to keep buying the same brand for ever and a day. So in the end there was nothing for it but to just move stuff and get started. I've never been one to work all day like a navvy and get it all done in one go. I've always done a bit here and there and quit when I get fed up of it. My ex used to go nuts as he wanted everything over and done in one fell swoop but then when it was finished he would toddle off to sit in front of the TV while I still had to clean up and make dinner and so on, so now I always stop before I get to the point of being knackered. Anyway I started out painting the ceiling, then one of the walls the next day and so on. To be honest I did such a cack-handed job the first day it felt more like flinging paint at myself and hoping some of it would stick to the walls, but each day I've done a little more and tried not to make so much mess as it just means more cleaning up. I'm not totally sure of the colour though. I had wanted just plain white but this seems to have somewhat of a bluish-greyish tinge to it which looks a bit cold so I'm wondering what exactly the colour "blanc bec" really is in paint terms. Whatever, it's up there now and it's not going anywhere so I'll have to jazz it up a bit if I think it looks too cold. I realized pretty quickly that I don't like using a roller so went to the DIY store and bought a new paintbrush, but would you believe there were hardly any in stock!!! I guess everyone is using lock down to get some DIY done because the shelves were pretty bare. Then despite what it would seem to indicate on the paint pot, I realized last night that I might not have enough to get it all done, so today I played the daring young thing and drove into town for the second time in a week to get another pot of paint. And miracle of miracles they had the exact paint I needed - I got the last pot. Crikey, can you imagine if they didn't have any and I ended up left with one odd coloured wall!

Anyway since I was in town I decided to stop in at the health food shop again as my friend told me she had bought cottage cheese there the other day. Now cottage cheese is not exactly the in thing in France and most people have never heard of it, so it's not easy to find. But I got a couple of tubs of that and a bottle of kombucha and lo and behold, as I went to pay I saw that they were selling hand sanitizer at the cash register, so I got a bottle of that too. You know, I'm beginning to think that if I decided to have another shot at internet dating, just mentioning the fact that I can wield a paintbrush and have a bottle of hand sanitizer I think my stock would trade high, don't you!

As I drove out I looked at the price of petrol and man has it dropped - so far this lock down I reckon I'm getting six weeks to the gallon and counting. So tomorrow I'll go and check my heating fuel and get that ordered while they're virtually giving it away. Every little helps doesn't it. Then I got an email from the tax people to say that "your tax statement is online" and when I checked it it looks like my tax guy has already set up the automatic deduction with my calculations being bang on. I'm so pleased because as I've said before when you've given up a good job based on a set of calculations it would come as a helluva shock to find out you'd totally screwed up and were basically now broke. Phew!

I was watching TV the other night while still trying to get on with my jigsaw puzzle (never again) and I see that they've got a new series of Kirstie Allsopp's crafting programmes on, specifically designed around lock down I guess. I like Kirstie as she's very tongue-in-cheek, but you know how every Christmas you're going to have a totally "hand-crafted Christmas" and it never works out that way - well that's how I feel about this stuff. She's entertaining anyway, even if I never do get round to doing a complete découpage project using an old map of France for the design, although that has actually given me a couple of ideas, truth be told!

Kirstie Allsopp

And finally, today is the 100th birthday of the amazing Captain Tom and the country celebrated with him. At last count his fund has raised over £31 million for the NHS and he has received 150,000 birthday cards from around the world. An eagle-eyed boffin at the Ministry of Defence noticed that he was missing a WWII medal that he was entitled to so they made a special presentation of that medal to him this morning, along with a beautiful cake, a message from the Queen and news that he has been made an honorary Colonel! But the icing on the cake was when the RAF did a fly past of a WWII hurricane and spitfire over his home! Absolutely stunning. I think in difficult times it's lovely for people to get behind a figurehead and he seems to have fulfilled that role. But more importantly, he seems such a humble and decent man and when, at the end of the interview he simply said "it'll be all right again soon you know, it always is", it was just so so special and heartwarming. Warms the cockles of your heart doesn't it!

More this and that!

While this whole pandemic situation is obviously dreadful with such terrible loss of life and many people's livelihoods going to pot, there are some people who seem to be thriving as a result of it - and I don't mean the TP and hand sanitizer hoarders (who will, hopefully, get the consequences they deserve). No, I was watching the news the other day when they ran a clip about a company using robots in Milton Keynes to deliver groceries and the point of it being on the news was that they were currently delivering free of charge to NHS workers. This scheme has, apparently, been around for a couple of years, but given the current crisis they were working on building more robots and expanding the scheme sooner rather than later - and good luck to them. I hadn't heard of them before but what a neat idea and it's nice to see a company like this benefitting from their ingenuity!

Another positive is that the village shop would also seem to be making a come-back in some more rural areas, given people's difficulty in getting to larger stores, or just their reluctance to go to them. These shops were being slowly squeezed out by the big stores but the presenter of this particular clip was saying that hopefully the village shop will be able to survive and even thrive after the pandemic as not only shops but also the important community hub that they used to represent.

In other news, it started raining on Sunday night for the first time in - oh, I don't know - six weeks maybe. It has been so gloriously warm and sunny that it has been a pleasure to take time out and just potter. That being said, we actually needed the rain so while it's quite a bit cooler it's not unwelcome. The weird thing is, though, that without the rain we have had such a large build up of pollen everywhere and when I was sitting watching TV on Sunday night I looked up and it actually looked like it was raining custard down my window!!! Still, getting some of that washed off should be good for allergy sufferers I guess!

I finally took a trip out today for non-food shopping since I had heard that the Botanic garden centre was now open. I figured that since I hadn't been spending any "fun" money the last six weeks I could afford to treat myself at my favourite garden centre - plus I needed more soil anyway. But oh what a treat it is to walk around that place - I just want to buy everything and even the non-garden/plant stuff is just so pretty - if a little expensive. I bought myself a few veggie seedlings which are further ahead than my own so I'm looking forward to getting those out into the garden as soon as I can. My own tomato, cucumber and courgette plants are doing well this year, probably because I've kept them inside my little greenhouses and not planted them out at the first sign of warm weather, but I added in some chili peppers, aubergines (my word for 2020) and cantaloup melon to the mix to have a shot at growing them too. I just have to remember to properly label them this year as I often have no idea what I'm actually growing by the time it's in the ground! I also made two wigwam trellises using branches that my neighbour had cut off his hazelnut tree. Once they are all bound together they seem to be fairly stable, but it remains to be seen how they hold up under pressure. I've also been following a French site called Rustica, where they give gardening tips relevant to France and our climate and every time I think "oh I must …" they seem to have an article pop up on just that subject. The latest one answered my question on why my lemon bush's leaves were starting to turn brown (answer: it doesn't like to be in direct sunlight when you first put it outside and - get this, a lemon bush doesn't particularly appreciate temperatures of over 10° round here so not to let it get too hot). My next foray into the world of gardening is to attempt to make nettle liquid manure which is apparently very good for a veggie garden. No wonder my neighbours just shake their heads when they see my latest experiments, what with my home-made wigwams and the vision of my backside sticking out from the hedge trying to get at the nettles they must think I'm mad. One year I actually created a vertical garden growing up my cherry tree using plastic bottles and very satisfying (and productive) it was too, but like I say, my neighbours think I'm nuts sometimes!

Since I was a little disappointed in my apple cake the other day I decided to make Mary Berry's lemon drizzle cake yesterday and that was a roaring success. Absolutely delicious. It sank a bit in the middle so I think I'll use a smaller, round pan next time, but having the hole in the middle just gave me the excuse to fill it up with whipped cream and indulge. As you can probably tell, the diet's going great guns (and so easy to follow too)!

And finally, I was talking to my friend the other day and he was complaining about a pain in the left side of his back, under his shoulder blade. The next day he said it was still there so I asked if it was in his arm or in his jaw as I was a little worried, having had a dad who had frequent heart attacks. He said not, but I mentioned he might want to get some aspirin in just in case (I was told to give aspirin to my dad when he had a heart attack when I was 14 and home alone with him. The ambulance came of course but that was when I learned that aspirin can help to bust small clots so I always keep some in the house just in case). Anyway, he said he thought he had just twisted his arm awkwardly and that he thought Voltaren would ease it, the problem being that he had no way of putting it on his own back. So I told him now would seem to be the perfect time to get out and meet the neighbours. "Hallo, you must be my new neighbours. We haven't met. My name's C. Would you think I was awfully forward if I asked if you would mind just rubbing some of this on my back?" I was only trying to help but he didn't think that was very funny for some reason. Can't think why!

Day 40!

There's not much going on here at the OK Corral - like most places I guess, but I'm still doing ok, thank goodness. I couldn't sleep the other night for some reason so got back up again around 12.30 to finish reading a book that had been recommended by a friend. It was called I Know Who You Are and was pretty good, with lots of twists and turns, an easy read, but quite a sting in the tail involving the bad guy getting killed with a pickaxe (don't want to give too much away there right)! After I'd finished it I did manage to drop off but as I'm wont to do on occasion, I had another weird dream. Apparently Prince William had just found out that Kate had been cheating on him and announced that he intended to divorce her. For some even weirder reason I was working there (????) and after a distraught Kate stormed off I went into the study and found an ax (she obviously intended to murder him with it) so the only way I could prevent that was to hide the ax behind the fax machine. I know, I know, I get it's weird to be dreaming about Wills and Kate. The bit about the ax you can probably see where I got that from, but a fax machine????? They went out with wind-up telephones. I used to tell my colleague about my weird dreams and he would "psychoanalyse" me until we roared laughing, but this one really got me stumped - a fax machine? How long ago did they fall off the face of the earth!

At the beginning of the week I had a phone call from the young men who I signed with to get my roof renovated - Technitoit - and they asked if they could come over to finalize some papers and talk about the insulation project that I had also asked them to look into. When they arrived we sat out in the back garden and they commented how lovely my garden is. Not my unmown grass bit, but the beautiful view I guess, so I said I thought there would be a lot of lovely gardens this year, what with people having more time because of the lockdown. They were telling me though that having been off one month it was starting to hurt financially. In fact the one guy was very open and said that he had only picked up €1,000 last month in unemployment and with €800 of basic monthly bills it really hurt so they were more than glad to get back to work. Another thing they mentioned was that quite a few of their clients had had to cancel because many were frontaliers working in Switzerland and when the Swiss started cutting back on staff it was obviously the frontaliers who were the first to be let go! I hadn't thought of it that way and it really brought home to me what a precarious situation so many were now in. Anyway, they were up on my roof taking pictures and, not surprisingly, my insulation is shot to pieces. Well it's 40 years old so probably about as effective as a paper hankie at this point, so I signed up to get it all done - the cleaning and sealing probably starting next week and then 27 cm of new insulation all over, probably in October. It's a lot of money but becoming a necessity. So I was thinking, what with the floor, heating and water heater all done, the roof in the pipelines, as soon as I get the bathrooms done I think I'm good to go. Hopefully the rest will just be cosmetic, as and when. My neighbour did mention that they were having AC put in a couple of rooms as the summers are becoming unbearable here, so I may think about that too. I'll wait to speak to the guy that does theirs before I tackle that one, although I suspect in any case it's already too late for this year!

In other news I continue to potter around getting things done here as the weather is still lovely. The really weird thing, though, is that I am consistently getting over 10,000 steps a day despite the fact that I never go out walking! I'm making a conscious effort to sort the basement and in and out the garden all the time but I was really surprised at how much I'm now moving as compared to previously. Long may it last, but I suspect it will slow down when the really hot weather gets here as I hate it!

I ended up with both neighbours having a coffee in my back yard again today, which is nice as it gives us a chance to have a chat and them a chance to speak to someone other than their husbands. I was saying to D how much I loved the poppies in her garden and she offered me a root, which I gladly accepted. So then she goes on to say that she offered a root to her other neighbours, the M family, and he refused "because they make opium out of poppies"!! Say what! Now the M family are Jehovah's Witnesses, and while I am not the slightest bit interested in their religion they are very, very nice people. In fact it's their arthritic old dog that dodders down to my back garden for a crap most days but I don't say anything - just shit shovel - because, as I say, they are elderly (80 and 86) and they have been good to me. But even I was surprised at his response to the offer of a poppy root. I think my mouth must have dropped open because D then went on to say that years ago their 14 year old son had been killed when he climbed on a bunch of pallets, which then collapsed and crushed him (this I already knew). But when they got to the hospital the mother ran in and said "no transfusions" and the doctors, apparently, couldn't hide their disgust. Their son was dead on arrival sadly but to rush in to an emergency room and insist on that is more than I could do, religion or no religion. Each to his own I know, but nope, I'd be lining up with my sleeve rolled up!

I also finally managed to get my "pixie door" put up today. I screwed that thing into my plum tree and while it might just kill it, I think it looks rather pretty!

In other news I see that the UK has started clinical trials of a potential vaccine on healthy adults this week. Fingers crossed. And Captain Tom, whose 100th birthday is on 30 April, has apparently received over 40,000 birthday cards already, so much so that the Royal Mail is having to set up a special room just to cope with it.

John over at Going Gently posted a picture of beautiful Conwy castle all lit up the other day and I wanted to repost it here as I have such fond memories of the place. My brother lived about half a mile behind the castle (on Castle View Estate) and my aunt lived about 300 metres down the road, on Castle Street (they're not very imaginative with street names as you can tell). I have such lovely memories of the place where I spent so many summers that I just wanted to have a keepsake here on this blog.

Diolch - thank you!

I think everything that can be said has been said about the Donald's suggestion to think about taking bleach internally hasn't it, but the one positive side effect seems to have been that his self-aggrandizing daily briefings have now been cut short and he's taking no questions from reporters, so that's a plus. I'm just wondering how long it will be before they announce that some idiot gave it a try though as, sadly, while that seems so unthinkable I honestly believe someone will do it!

And finally, Kylie over at Eclectica had been asked by another blogger about "weird" things in your house that you don't even notice. Well I no longer have it in my house but when I was married I used to like to read in bed. My bedside lamp was fine but the one on my husband's side was way too bright, so one night I asked him if he could do something about it - thinking maybe he'd change the light bulb. But nooooo his solution (always the path of least resistance) was to take a pair of underpants out of his drawer and pull them down over the lamp shade. That bloody thing looked like a white faced alien for so long, the "eyes" being where the leg holes were. To be honest I was so beaten down that his bedside lamp/underpants were the last thing on my mind and I never noticed them. But about a year after he had moved out (taking the bed with him - I guess the girlfriend liked it), I was going to get the floor redone before buying a new bedroom suite. Well my neighbour came round to help me take the carpet up and said "Anna, don't you think it's time for the underpants to go?" and then we just roared laughing. It's kinda embarrassing to have your neighbour draw it to your attention though isn't it!

Ha ha!

I mentioned in my previous post that I was watching Philadelphia Story and really enjoying it, so Dave asked me which version - the Katherine Hepburn version or the Grace Kelly version - both were funny! I thought "damn, they must have really rewritten that thing to put Tom Hanks in the leading rôle and turn it into such a tearjerker"! Don't get old, as they say!

Where's St. George when you need him?

The last couple of days have been slightly more productive for me, as I was just getting tired of all the things I could/should do and not doing them. But I was thinking about it today and maybe there's nothing wrong if this becomes my new normal. For the most part I don't have to dance to anyone else's tune any more and while I enjoy my courses BC (before coronavirus) I'm doing just fine without them, too. In the six weeks we've been in lockdown I haven't gone out walking even once, only because I can't be arsed to figure out an exact one kilometre circuit near my house (there probably isn't one) and I was afraid of getting a fine 1,100 metres from my front door from some jobsworth having a bad day. So the highlight of my week every week has been grocery shopping - well that and taking the bin out twice! I went shopping on Thursday and was stopped for the first time by the police asking for my attestation and they were very polite, so maybe my "jobsworth" comment is unfair! There were no lines at the supermarket and while the shelves were only about three-quarters full I got everything I wanted. The good news, apparently, is that La Roche's outdoor market is going to slowly start up again, with maybe five or six stands being allowed to set-up out of the usual 40 or so, although how they figure out which stallholders are allowed to sell and when I have no idea!

In other news, I saw on British TV the other day an interview with an American team in New York which had produced one of two studies on the death rates for CO19. It's early days yet of course but they had looked at statistics for over 5,000 deaths in hospital and studied the aggravating factors. I'm not phrasing this very well but basically both studies were coming to the conclusion that age and obesity seemed to be the two most aggravating factors linked to death. Now I would have thought compromised lung function, heart problems etc. were bigger issues than obesity but while they were indeed factors, obesity seemed to be a bigger factor! Then they interviewed a British researcher doing the same kind of study in London and he confirmed that their findings, so far, were agreeing with the statistics coming out of the UK! Wow!

A few years ago I started having an annual check-up with a dermatologist due to a "weird thingy" on my leg when I came back from St. Lucia. It turned out to be nothing but he did remove a couple of other "weird thingies" as they were suspicious and advised me to get checked out every year because of my pale skin. Well Dr. Twinkly Eyes went into semi-retirement, giving up his surgery and moving to a large clinic in Geneva on a part-time basis. I was looking to book an appointment with him recently, but obviously that wasn't possible - until yesterday when I got an email from the clinic to say that as from Monday the clinic would be open for business, "including for cosmetic procedures"! I was stunned. I knew they did cosmetic surgery but I was stunned that they would be opening up for such selective procedures at this time! When I mentioned this to my friend he said he agreed but people/businesses were in dire straits and people didn't know how best to handle it. I'll be darned if I know the answer, but given the two studies mentioned above I wonder how much a bit of liposuction would cost?

Anyway, back to lesser things, today has been really productive because I decided I wanted to knock a few things off my to do list. I spent over an hour getting online bills paid and sorting out paperwork etc. Then I received a posting from Un Jardin au Paradis (A Garden in Paradise), which is an organic farm near here where I wanted to do a one-day course on sustainable agriculture (which I will definitely book as soon as I can). Anyway, they sent me an article on "cardboard potato growing" and I was intrigued. Now I know you can plonk cardboard down over grass/weeds and a few weeks later, hey presto, half the grass/weeds are gone. The way they grow potatoes, you plonk down the cardboard (on top of my grass in my case), layer it up with grass clippings, cut an "X" into the cardboard, poke your sprouting potatoes through it, re-cover with more clippings and wait for a miracle. So I did it - well my form of it. I have to admit I'm pretty slapdash so I will be quite surprised if it works for me (remember my home-made kombucha experiment), but we can only try these things right!

All the above pictures by Un Jardin au Paradis

After that I did some more gardening, took a shower and decided I needed give myself a second "lockdown haircut". At this point I'm working on top of my previous lockdown haircut, so while I tried to make it as even as I could on both sides, I have no idea what it looks like at the back. Then again, I don't really care what impression I make on people as I'm leaving anyway!

Then I decided I wanted to try a new recipe so as I had a few apples hanging around I made The Hairy Bikers Spiced Apple Cake. Now I'm very picky about cakes and while it was ok I wouldn't rave about it. Just as I was pulling it out of the oven my other neighbours walked over with a jar of homemade orange jam, and then my favourite neighbours wandered over so we all had a distanced coffee and a good chat. Both the ladies were saying that they were having a tough time, with Mrs. S saying that she thought she was heading into a depression, and my favourite neighbour saying that she had spoken to her mom and then spent the afternoon crying! Crikey, they are both lovely ladies and I felt so bad for them but what can you do in a situation like that except be there to listen? Anyway, after they left I had time to make a couple more masks while the cake was cooling and then took cake over to Mrs. S and to the other neighbours. Her husband was in the garden and when I saw that she wasn't in the kitchen I just left it on her table. Well about 30 minutes later I was in the garden reading when all of a sudden I heard her in the garden saying "oh my God, I think I'm going to be sick"!!! Say what???? About 10 minutes later she came over to thank me for the cake so I told her to just throw it if she hated it. She said "no, I came over to get the recipe", and when I explained to her that I thought I had almost poisoned her she burst out laughing and said she was reading an absolutely gripping, but horrifying book on WWI and that was what made her feel sick. So I guess I cheered her up at least!

Right now I'm actually watching Philadelphia Story for the first time, can you believe, and am loving it, but I couldn't close without saying that today is St. George's Day. In 1350 he was chosen by King Edward III to be the Patron Saint of England because "he was admired for his bravery in the face of terrible suffering". So while I guess he may not have actually slayed a dragon planet earth could sure use some help right now if he's listening!

This and that!

I had another couple of "down" days this weekend. No enthusiasm or energy for anything. Feeling sorry for myself I guess when I have absolutely no right to. Still I now just accept these moments for what they are and decide that if I want to do nothing but read for an entire weekend then that's just fine isn't it. Right now on TV I'm watching A Very British Lockdown and am really enjoying it. Just showing ordinary people and how they are coping with it. One lady has cystic fibrosis so her husband is living outside in their caravan for 12 weeks. Another woman is trying to work from home with two very young children and ready to pull her hair out. Another couple run a small grocery store opposite a huge, but closed campsite their business absolutely depends on for its lifeline. They're arguing a lot of course, but then I suppose that's no surprise. In fact my neighbour was whispering to me in the garden this weekend that her husband is driving her nuts (but then, when doesn't he?). She was on skype to her mom on the west coast of France when her husband walked in from the garden dragging mud all over her newly-washed floor. When she asked him if it was too much effort to kick his shoes off outside he took them off and threw them at her - and all witnessed by her mom and the care home assistant! So maybe it's not so bad being on my own after all! I called my friend too today and he was out for a walk as he was going stir crazy. When I said if we had thought he could have come over to my place he just said we'd be at each other's throats. Not true, I probably would have knifed him already (but at least we can laugh about it)!

What else is new? Oh, in what is obviously a huge disappointment in France, the Tour de France has now been postponed to September. They had been scheduled to spend the night in La Roche on 17 July. Well now that's pushed back to 17 September, assuming France has opened up by then! And in totally unrelated news, what about Trump suspending the US contribution to WHO during a pandemic!!!! That just blows my mind, it's so unbelievable. Every time I keep thinking he can't do anything more outrageous he "excels" himself!! Or how about Bishop Gerald Glen of Virginia who refused to stop holding church services because "God is larger than the virus"! Well guess who just died of it (and I wonder how many more of his congregation are now sick)!

In a totally other world, I had a "zoom" appointment with my tax guy today to get my 2019 taxes sorted. This was the guy who told me that the other "expert" that I had consulted last year about taxes on my lump sum basically didn't know his arse from a hole in the ground, although he was somewhat more diplomatic than that of course. The first guy told me that apart from the tax on my pension, I would pay an additional €21,000-ish in a tax called CGI. So my second guy said that was BS since (a) my pension is not derived from France and (b) I'm not entitled to sécurité sociale, which is basically French medical coverage and unemployment, so the CGI tax is not payable!!!! Phew, that took my tax down on just the lump sum from €21,000 to €9,100 - I'll take that any day. And while it obviously still has an ouch factor, I'd put the money away anyway so it is there just waiting to be paid out. On a personal note, I have thought more than once that if I was still married my husband would have found a way to spend that money, that's an absolute certainty!

And I suppose any Brits out there have seen the story of Captain Tom right? The 99 year old WWII veteran who volunteered to attempt 100 circuits of his garden (with his walker) to try to raise £1,000 for the NHS. Well he reached his target and just decided to keep going, and as it stands right now he has so far raised £27 million (and still climbing) and was invited to open the newly-built NHS Nightingale Hospital in Harrogate (from the safety of his own home of course). Well done Captain Tom - I think a knighthood should be in the offing there don't you! The wonderful thing about the NHS is that not one single patient will walk out of any hospital with a bill (so Mr. Trump can shove that where the sun don't shine next time he says the NHS will be on the table in any Anglo-American trade deal). After all that's going on right now any government who even thought of selling out the NHS would be committing political hari kari!

Captain Tom - a real hero!

And finally, I saw the firemen from La Roche decided to pay their own tribute to our local hospital, the CHAL. I thought the sign at the end just said it all!

Consequences!

The other night I decided it was probably about time to turn my heating off. We've been having lovely weather and the heating kicking in first thing in the morning and last thing at night was becoming uncomfortable, so I decided to take the bull by the horns and get the instruction manual out for my new, state-of-the art heating system which was installed just last September. Crikey, that stuff is complicated - which only makes me take my hat off to my youngest son for being able to install and programme the bloody things! It took me a while because the computerized panel kept indicating that the heating was still working, even though I thought I'd turned it off. What was actually happening was the computer thingy showed that yes, it was indeed turned off, but it was still programmed to kick in in the event of the temperature dropping below freezing. I think my fear was trying to make sure it was still programmed to heat my water, so I kept switching from one programme to the other and getting totally confused. I'm pretty sure I've got it figured now though. Max had asked me to let him know what the fuel consumption was like since he had also switched my electric water heater over to the new fuel system. Well I'm pleased to say that it looks like I'm using the same, or maybe even a little less fuel than before, all while additionally heating my water with it rather than by electricity. So I guess Max was right then (he should be, he installed it). My fuel consumption is staying the same and my electricity bill should be all the way down since I am no longer heating 300 litres of water from 11 pm to 6 am. I'll take that!

I spent quite a few hours today potting up seeds and dragging my temporary greenhouses up from the basement to my back terrace. A couple of years ago I had placed the greenhouses along the side of my house in a lovely sunny spot, but what I hadn't thought of was when it's windy the wind howls round that corner and after finding my blossoming greenhouses thrown all over my driveway by the wind one time I kinda gave up after that. But this year I'm going to give them another try on my more sheltered back terrace. I didn't put any of my seedlings in there though as I still feel it might be a bit cold in the mornings for them, so they're still spending their nights in my living room for the time being. Between that and my sewing projects, plus all my books in my TV room I did think I might be starting to look like a hoarder at the moment, but hopefully the seedlings will go outside soon, I'm going to put away a bunch of fabric tomorrow and my books … well what can I say? They're not going anywhere in all honesty! Oh well, thankfully I live alone!

In the spirit of keeping in touch with friends I called an old neighbour up tonight from when we moved back to Switzerland from the States in 1989 and had a good long chat with her. She is Colombian and our kids were both two when we moved in, so we ended up just leaving our front doors open and letting the kids run back and forward between the houses to play together (and eat together pretty often). Like me she is divorced and now retired, and while I don't get to see her very often (she doesn't drive and it's a long drive for me) it was lovely to have a good long catch-up. She was saying that her little grandson tries to "cook" for her when she looks after him, and she laughed when I told her that when I was young - too young to get a Saturday job at least - I used to have my mom's lunch ready for her when she got home from work on a Saturday. I would guess that for 50 out of 52 weeks of the first year that I did that my poor old mom got my home-made cheese soufflé and salad, because that was the only thing I could make! The soufflé was pretty good even at that young age, but she must have got pretty fed up of it after a while!

And did anyone see Trump's meltdown at his last press briefing! Good Lord, it's not going to end well. I sat through the "video of justification of just how wonderful he is", with clips of different people saying how he'd "got everything right" about this pandemic, but when one of the reporters asked what he was doing about the pandemic during the month of February, which had been conveniently missed out of the video clip, he pretty much lost it. I mean, from standing over to the side all puffed up like a turkey cock during the video, to throwing all his toys out the pram when the reporter kept repeating her question it was actually embarrassing. As the figures can only get worse in the States before they get better I can see a full-blown public meltdown on the horizon. If it wasn't so serious it would be funny, but sadly it is so serious!

And talking of "consequences", I just read today that the Dutch threw away 140 million tulips this past month (their biggest earner) since they were not able to sell them during the pandemic. Damn! Something like €25 million worth! How sad, and just another indication of the dire economic consequences of this lockdown!

Again talking about consequences, I read in the local Geneva newspaper this morning that since the beginning of lockdown the French have refused re-entry into our region for 3,400 false frontaliers. A frontalier is someone who lives in France and crosses the border every day to Switzerland for work. The cost of renting or buying property in Geneva is horrendous. For instance my son and his wife pay SF 2,000 ($2,000) to rent a one-bedroomed apartment. My neighbours' son and his wife pay SF 3,000 to rent a two-bedroomed apartment, and to buy a small house you're looking at about a million. So many Swiss buy "secondary residences" in France and actually live in them full-time, while declaring an address in Switzerland as their permanent address. Of course since they "live in Switzerland" they have Swiss licence plates, so the French have been turning them back at the border in the evenings because the borders are closed to all non-residents. Practically speaking, taxes are lower in Switzerland, VAT is lower and inheritance taxes are much, much lower, hence these people don't want to "officially" live in France. So now, those that can't go home to their "secondary residences" in France after work in the evenings are stuck! So far they've had 50 requests to "regularize" their situation but, off the top of my head, that will involve paying around 12% import duty/VAT on their cars in order to import them into France, since the duty in Switzerland is 8% as compared to 20% in France, plus around triple that amount in fines. I don't know what the price of some fancy Mercedes or Audi is but I imagine that will sting. Then of course, if any of them inherited property in Switzerland the French would be looking to come after them for inheritance tax, and there would probably be a hefty fine from the tax man too. Part of the tax that is paid in Switzerland by French residents is passed back to the commune where that person resides to pay for schools and so on, so these people claiming to be non-residents have been getting away with murder for ages. Now the "haters" in Geneva (not all by any means) complain that the French come over the border and "steal our jobs" and the "haters" in France rant about the Swiss doing all this complaining while doing their grocery shopping in France and buying up the real estate, thereby pushing the prices up, so it's either a win-win or a lose-lose situation, depending which way you look at it. I know I would never have tried to get away with something like that because apart from the fact that it's just wrong, I even got antsy the very few times I belted up the bus lane because I was late for work. Either way, I suspect a few people have some stinking non-pandemic-induced headaches right now!