Score (x 2)!!

We're still having pretty decent weather here for the time of year. Oh we've had a couple of days of heavy rain (which is only to be expected), but other than that it's been glorious - sunny and not too cold - and I'm happy to say I'm still getting loads done. I'm keeping up with the Italian lessons which are still pretty easy as it's early days yet. Then the other day a recipe popped up on my feed from a site called Ptitchef and I'm finding quite a few recipes I'd like to try out. They send an email every day with a starter, main course and dessert and if I see anything that interests me I drop it into my online recipe folder. The only complaint I have about the site though is the advertising. Well obviously they have adverts but the one that seems to pop up most often is a diagram of an enlarged prostate and showing the recommended treatment!!! That one doesn't actually inspire me to dash off to the kitchen somehow!

I was chatting with my friend the other day saying how I'd like to get my old BBQ down to the tip but it was proving difficult since it wouldn't fit in my car. Then she said she wanted to get rid of her BBQ because she just never used it and was I interested? It's a good quality, gas bottle BBQ that has been covered and stored in her garage and while I was initially tempted I know I wouldn't use it so asked her if she would like me to mention it to my neighbours - who use theirs a lot. Well they weren't interested but as their daughter jumped at it I set up with my neighbour for us to go over to her place and pick it up. He told me that he'd tried taking my BBQ apart some more but I already knew that was impossible as it was so rusted, so in the end he said to just help him load it up into his car and we took it down to the tip. So score 1 - one less BBQ to deal with!

Then last Saturday the tiler showed up with his young son as he was on school break. He's a nice guy and very hard working as he works a full-time job and does tiling in the evenings and weekends. He originally came to France as a refugee after the war in Kosovo and I am dead impressed how well he speaks French and how hard working he is! More power to him! I mentioned that I'd be gone for about 30 minutes as I had to pop out to pick up an Amazon package from a delivery centre. It was the first time I'd used this gas station and I had to scan a QR code on my phone and out of one of the lockers popped my new mini chainsaw! After I got home I had it on the table while I was charging the battery and when he asked about it I told him that I was not comfortable using my big chainsaw to cut the wood downstairs but was hoping to be able to at least cut up the smaller logs. So at this point he says that next time he comes over he'll stay an extra hour and cut up the bigger logs for me!!! I wasn't expecting that at all, but since he volunteered and if he wants to make some money I'm absolutely thrilled - so score 2 for me!

Since then I've cut up a fair supply of smaller logs and this afternoon I cut back (massacred) the buddleia in my front garden as my gardener forgot to do it the other day. It took me all of 15 minutes and I am dead impressed, so much so that my neighbour asked me about it and has ordered one for herself. I tell ya, at the moment anything that's not on wheels I'm attacking with that saw! Which reminds me oddly enough of a story from years ago when my parents bought a new washing machine. My brother-in-law's parents were maybe 15 years older than my parents and as they were very rural she was still doing their laundry in the old washtub and wringer, so when my parents offered them their old "automatic" washer they jumped at it. BIL's dad said he thought he'd gotten lucky because every day when he came home from work his wife told him to "take his clothes off" but poor him, she only wanted to do another load of washing, she was so thrilled with her new machine! And I'm a bit like that with my chainsaw. I seriously love it, although I managed to lose my safety goggles the first day (probably threw them out with the hibiscus branches). But you know what, forget all the hoopla about the "find my iphone" app, I reckon if someone could invent a "find my glasses" app they'd make a fortune. Not from me though as I have reading glasses dotted all over the place so as long as I can still find my house I reckon I'm good!

I'm still seeing an awful lot of job vacancies advertised (does no-one want to work anymore???) so who knows, maybe I could get myself a little part-time job as a lumberjack. Now there's a thought!

Start 'em young I say!

At least I didn't burn the house down!

While it's definitely a lot cooler here - obviously, it's nearly November - it's still pretty mild for the time of year. We've had a couple of days where it rained but other than that it has been pretty nice (to my weird taste I suppose) and with that I've gotten my energy back and quite a lot done! On Monday Jen was caught short for baby-sitting again as the daycare has this weird (rip-off, in my opinion) thing where eight days of the year parents are expected to find alternative arrangements for their children or they will pay double for the day! Say what??? You've paid for it but eight days a year you have to make other arrangements??? Sounds like a money-spinning exercise to me! Anyway, after yoga in the morning I drove straight over there to keep Charlie for the afternoon while Jen went to work. He was much better after his rotten weekend the week before but the reverse side of that coin is that he was full of beans. Not that I'm complaining, but all of a sudden I was really feeling my age!! He kept playing his favourite songs and played Allez croco, allez croco, allez crocodile over and over again ad nauseum, all the while we had to jump around like crocodiles! After about the 20th time he said "nanny watch, I think I'm going to jump now" - and here's me thinking "mate, I was ready to jump half an hour ago"!!! Still he was good and I had him nicely wound up by the time Jordan and Jen got home around six!

After that it was off to Monday night sewing, so all-in-all a busy day for me. As I was driving there I spotted a young woman pushing one of those very high double strollers (for young babies) and saw that she also had another baby strapped to her chest, so triplets!!! Yikes! You've got to be young to do that, but I suppose if they're your children you do get into a routine, even if it's still hard work. When I was still working I remember seeing a young woman getting on the bus with triplet baby girls and watched them grow over the last few years before I retired. She had her act down pat but hats off to anyone that can pull that off!

I mentioned above that I'd been getting quite a lot done round here, but there have been a couple of things that've beaten me, all the same. Some time ago I bought a chainsaw with the intention of chopping up all the wood that has been downstairs in my cellar since goodness knows when. Well I got it assembled but obviously hadn't put the chain on tight enough (I had protective gear on), so after a couple of goes decided to give up on that and have ordered a much smaller saw which should allow me to get through some of the smaller pieces at least. I had an insert installed in my fireplace in June (open fireplaces are illegal here now) and because of the way my chimney is built, I had to have the smallest one they had available - hence the necessity of cutting the logs up. Last night I decided it was time to try it out after I'd been a bit hesitant about it as the interior looked like it was made out of cardboard. It obviously wasn't and I soon had a decent little fire going now I've got the hang of it which, while it wouldn't be enough to heat the whole house, would certainly be quite pleasant on the rare occasions I actually sit downstairs (I'm thinking of everyone opening their presents on Christmas day)! One thing that does have me beaten (for the time being) is my old BBQ. I emptied my entire car out the other day, laid the back seats down and lugged that bloody thing around to the boot - and turns out it's probably an inch short on both sides to get it into the car. Bugger, but I'm still not giving up! When I've got more stuff sorted I'll probably rent a small van and lug the whole lot down to the recycling centre - that is if I can't find anyone going that way beforehand!

I've also made quite a bit of headway on Christmas shopping, believe it or not, because as I think of something I drop into an online basket (not necessarily Amazon) and once I've made my mind up I just send off for it. In fact, I follow Very British Problems on FB and for the second time have ordered stuff from them as I like their sense of humour (last time I ordered their bestseller "Born to be Mild" and the kids and I got a good laugh out of it)! I know stereotypes exist for a reason but when I find myself laughing at some of the daft stuff they post I realize I am actually a stereotype myself. One of the most recent things they posted on FB was "if you've just learned that a meteor the size of Wales is heading for earth right this minute, what would be your first thought"? By the time I saw it there were over 500 comments, but one that really tickled me was "oof, thank god I got the bins put out in time"! I know, I'm a stereotype!

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but Windows update number whatever seems to have permanently uploaded Bing onto my computer, and even though I've gone through all the "how to disable/delete" advice, I can't get rid of the bloody thing. If I go anywhere near the top right-hand side of my computer, Bing jumps out and asks if I would like to chat with AI??? No, actually, I just wish you'd bugger off! Despite that I seem to be having a massive clean up session on my phone and computer, and last night deleted about 400 photos from iCloud, about another 100 off my computer and phone and believe it or not deleted around 650 subscriptions to Youtube channels! I mean how the hell did I ever get subscribed to over 700 Youtube channels, one of which was called something like "Canadian tax planning"???? I've never been to Canada, unless you count changing planes at Toronto airport one time. It took me ages to unsubscribe from so many but boy was it worth it!

And finally, I notice - in the British press at least - that they are singing the praises of the French Interior Minister who has promised on his honour and under his complete responsibility to immediately round up and deport all illegal immigrants on security watch in the wake of the recent stabbing of a high school teacher by a Chechen teenager who, like two of his brothers, was also on the security watch list. He swears "on his honour" that they and their ilk will be deported and the British media are singing the praises of this chest-thumping Tarzan. Trouble is, as is well known already, there is no way it will happen. Indeed they tried to deport this particular young man a few years ago and it was the then Interior Minister who blocked it. And even if it got that far he knows damn well the European Court of Human Rights will prevent it, so the minister (who is also under investigation for whatever, I believe) can stop posturing as he knows this particular young man is going nowhere! Wish there was a button to unsubscribe here as I can't bear him!

Took a few days off!

It's been a really busy 10 days or so for me lately so I decided to spend some time offline again and ended up doing pretty much bugger all for a few days! Jen asked me if I could keep Charlie the other Friday so that she and Jordan (and a few others) could go help her mom set up in the village hall she had rented to celebrate her 60th birthday. She told me in advance that Charlie was "a bit cranky", but I don't think either of us realized just how miserable he was. He would be fine for a while - which was when I took him out to the play area opposite - and then all of a sudden his temperature would soar and he would be miserable as hell. I spent my time trying to cool him down and then otherwise distract him but at one point he was so hot he threw up all over the living room, so I had to hose him down in the shower and then sit with him while he, I and Mickey Mouse looked at pictures and videos of himself on my phone, as that seemed to be the only thing that pacified him! He was still awake at 11.30 pm when Jordan and Jen got home (although I had cleaned up the living room by that time) and it had been hard work all round!

Next evening was the party, which also happened to be Jen's birthday, and I think everyone had a good time, although as Charlie was still cranky I and a few others spent a lot of time trying to distract him, yet again with Mickey Mouse in tow! He finally fell asleep around midnight and I left at 2 am after helping to clean up as much as possible. There were quite a few of us helping, to be fair, so it left very little for Jen's mom and her partner to do the next day! While I am a late bird by nature, I've realized that I can't pull these late night stints outside of my own home very often, but I guess that's what getting older does to most of us doesn't it!

My kids and Jen jammin'!

One thing I did realize that weekend though was one of the best ways to distract Charlie was to have Mickey Mouse "be terrified" all the time! At least it made him laugh and gave me the idea of buying glove puppets for him for Christmas. I think I'm going to buy him Punch and Judy puppets and no, I'm not worried about him turning into a thug even though in every Punch and Judy skit someone always gets bashed over the head with a rolling pin. Well I've never done that anyway, and I'm pretty sure rolling pins will probably be extinct by the time Charlie is older, so problem solved!

Punch and Judy!

Jen surprised her mom by booking a night's stay (23rd December) in one of the tree-top cabins at a safari park not too far from here. She's always wanted to stay somewhere overnight around Christmas so we all pitched in and we're all going (Jen, Jordan, Charlie, her mom and partner and André and me). It gives us entry into the park, dinner, an overnight stay and entry into the park again the next day, so I think she is looking forward to it. So am I actually because it's near a village called Peaugres, which is somewhere I've always wanted to visit and yet somehow never got around to it!

Peaugres!

For Jen's birthday we went in together to buy her a Cookeo - which is something she had also really wanted - so I would say the evening was a great success!

Cookeo

I may or may not have picked something up off Charlie (although I doubt it), but that stupid cough I had about a month ago came back, and while it was nothing serious (I knew it hadn't gone down into my lungs), waking up every hour or so was probably the reason I was so lethargic for a few days. Well that is until I remembered my "miracle cure" of the last time (origano oil), took one drop of that in some hot water and about an hour later it was basically gone. Shame I didn't think of it sooner though! Mind you, I saw that they have opened a little Indian store in town right next to the Indian restaurant and when I spotted that they were selling palak paneer (a kind of spicy Indian spinach and tofu dish), I bought some to give to André as he loves it. I wanted to try it beforehand in case it was dreadful so I heated that up tonight and I reckon if the origano oil hadn't worked that would have because it nearly blew my nose off! In any case I reckon's that's André's Christmas present sorted then - a bowl of spinach (and cheap at half the price)!

And finally, when I turn on my computer Microsoft (I'm guessing) sets a new picture as my opening imagine and the other day I thought this one looked familiar. Turns out it was Llanrwst, a small village in North Wales. Many years ago my grandad left my grandma and bought a small cobbler's shop in Llanrwst. I don't know if they ever divorced to be honest, but there was no other woman involved - he just couldn't stand living with my grandma anymore. In fact he tried to commit suicide one time and it was my poor mom, as a young teenager, that found him and saved his life. He continued to send money to my grandma but couldn't live with her and my mom once told me that while she couldn't accept him leaving at the time, as she got older she absolutely understood why he did it. I guess saying my grandma "wasn't easy" would be an understatement! Anyway, it was in Llanrwst that my brother Phil and his new bride finally found him (finding a specific "Jones" in Wales wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing to do) and that was how he got to meet back up with my mom again (and all of us) after goodness knows how many years. Sadly it wasn't to last long as he died of cancer a few years later, but at least he got to be part of our family for what little time he had left!

Llanrwst
(courtest of Trip Advisor and my computer screen)!

Talking of Llanrwst, many, many years ago, before I moved to Switzerland, my then boyfriend worked at a car factory in Birmingham, and the company sometimes offered to let employees take cars for the week-end so that they could provide feedback on how they handled. Well they must have liked Mark because he got a Lotus Eclat (????) so we headed off to North Wales for the week-end. While the car was a lovely ride it was really low, and I distinctly remember going over that bridge praying that there wouldn't be another car coming in the opposite direction because we would hit it before we saw it. Thankfully there wasn't, but it had to be one of the best week-ends of a young man's life getting to drive that thing for free!

Well it was the 1970s!

And finally, when I worked the 10 months in England before I got my job in Switzerland, the transport manager asked me if I would go to London with him to pick up the Managing Director's new company car which, as it turned out was - you guessed it - a yellow Lotus Eclat and he let me drive it back. I was 20 at the time but looked about 16, and as I was driving round Birmingham city centre in it, the loathing from the older men was palpable - spoilt rich bitch right? Tee hee, if only they knew! But that car was quite a distinctive car and a couple of months later as I was on the bus coming back from an interview in London I spotted it passing us on the motorway. And sure enough, there was our Managing Director and a rather young woman (he would have been in his 50s I'm guessing). So me being me I mentioned to him that I thought I'd seen him coming up the motorway the other day and the frozen look on his face when he asked me exactly what I'd seen told me pretty much all I needed to know. He was apparently quite the (married) player but I guess you can never be too careful when driving a car that distinctive, can you!

This and that!

The weather continues to be absolutely glorious here and I'm loving it. The high temperatures have disappeared and while it can be a bit nippy in the morning, by the afternoon it's just perfect! Definitely my kind of weather! With that in mind I realize I absolutely have to get out and start walking again before the snows come. I've let myself down pretty miserably this year on the walking front and have no real idea why - just lazy I guess. But the other day I started following a Haute Savoie hiking group on FB and the pictures they post are out of this world. I know I couldn't do most of these hikes because I'm just not fit enough, but the photos are pretty motivating - and to be honest, ain't none of us getting any younger are we, so if not now, then when?

Last Saturday we had our monthly (take "monthly" with a pinch of salt") board game evening at Jordan and Jen's and it was really fun. It was Jen's mom's 60th birthday that day and Jen had bought her a game - I forget the name of it - but it basically involved each of us drawing an image that would attempt to allow the same person to guess the word it represented, all while drawing against the clock. Jordan and I are absolutely useless at it as I try to go into too much detail and my pictures end up getting smaller and smaller and Jordan - well he's just crap! But we had such a great laugh, so if I can find the name of the game I'll have to get it for myself!

I was chatting with V and telling her about my ongoing slow-motion bathroom refit and how the plumber tends to come over after he's done some other small job in the area. I don't mind it going slow at all (unlike Dave) but I mentioned it was good to know a plumber who would take on smaller jobs. So many of them wouldn't be interested but as V pointed out, building work has slowed right down because of price increases and difficulty in obtaining parts (apparently) so maybe that's why the trades are willing to take on the smaller jobs. Good point! My neighbour Isabelle was the only one (out of her family of four) to make it that night. Her husband is a James Bond geek and was in Paris attending a James Bond "thingy" for the weekend (how great is that!), while both her children are studying abroad. Her daughter's in Canada for a year and her son's in New Zealand for six months, so guess who'll be having the holiday(s) of a lifetime shortly! 

Last time the plumber came he was taking a ciggie break, so out of curiosity I asked him how much a carton of cigarettes was now - and nearly fell over when he told me around €115 for 200! Geez, it was around €55 when I used to buy them for my ex (in the vain hope of preventing him from going into town to buy them and then ending up in the sleazy bar opposite), but in any case he used to get through around two cartons a week so the cost would be about the same. Not that he actually smoked them - no, more often than not he used to just light them up, take a couple of drags and leave them to burn in the ashtray, so it truly was a case of money going up in smoke! But could you imagine spending around €800 per month on cigarettes??? I'm pretty sure that'd be a mortgage payment (or at least a car payment) for some. Another reason I'm so glad I never started!

Our retirees' group organized a cocktail last Wednesday but for the first time I wasn't able to make it. I don't remember what I was doing but the photos were lovely and it's amazing how well everyone looks (if a little fatter, but then aren't we all). Retirement definitely seems to suit!

My friend invited me out last Friday for a late birthday lunch. We went to a restaurant not too far from here and it was lovely. Neither of us had been there for a while and I reckon they must be doing a roaring trade as they've done it all up both inside and out!

La Ferme à Elise restaurant

I don't know how we got on the subject but we were talking about how neither of us are particularly creative. Maybe it was me talking about how easy it has been putting together all the paperwork to request French citizenship and how "glad I was that I'm organized". So she pipes up that she's organized too and then we get onto the lack of creativity bit. I'm convinced it's to do with left brain/right brain and while yes, I am glad I'm organized, it's hardly very exciting is it. It's like when someone says to "follow your passion" and you realize you don't have one! My friend laughed and said that hers probably used to be reading or doing word puzzles (again, not very exciting), so I said we could mess with people's heads and engrave her gravestone in the form of a crossword puzzle (two down, begins with a "D") - yeah I know, we both have a dark sense of humour, but it gave the guys sitting next to us a good laugh!

Oh and as for the palaver last week with the Post Office website saying my village didn't exist, well thankfully that got resolved the next day so I guess someone somewhere was just having a bad day! But talking of websites, I heard someone mention the other day that her husband was trying to learn French online with Duolingo "as it was free", so out of curiosity I set up an account and have been "learning" Italian online for the last 10 days. So far I'm enjoying it and finding it pretty easy for the time being because I took a few lessons pre-covid, but I guess we'll see as we get further into it and move on from the basics!

And finally, when taking stuff out to my compost bin the other day I was surprised to find a blue and white croc in the garden.

One of these ...

... not one of these!

Intrigued I happened to mention it to Isabelle on Saturday night and she said she'd found one too, and thought it must be kids messing around at first. Turns out they belonged to our "neighbour-in-the-middle" and she said it was most likely a fox because they'd found another of their crocs chewed up at the bottom of the garden. Still, if anyone spots a rather stylish fox running around in matching blue and white footwear, please do me a favour and drop me a line in the comments!

Getting back to normal!

Life has slowly been getting back to normal at my place - well as normal as it can be with the plumber and tiler trying to work around each other. To be honest it's been fine as the plumber comes for a few hours and then leaves, while waiting for the tiler to do his bit before he can carry on! And I have to say how impressed I am with how clean they leave the place. Of course there's dust but both pick up their mess as they go along and so far it hasn't been half as stressful as I thought it would be! It's gonna be slow getting things finished of course, but I can live with that - heck I ordered the fittings in January so I guess there's no rush is there!

Yoga started back up a few weeks ago but I wasn't able to go because of having workmen in. That is until this Monday and boy was I glad to be back at it. After two months of no yoga I really missed it and even just one lesson a week sets me up for days on end. Sewing also started back up last Monday and it has been good to see everyone again, with two sisters who took a year off now rejoining the club. The last time I saw Marysette she was asking me about my solos trips (although I never really thought she would do anything about it) but lo and behold, she just sent us all a photo of her at Niagara Falls as part of her solos trip to Canada! I'm so pleased for her that she took that leap! There was a bit of a blip with flight delays and possibly missing her internal flight, but in the end it all worked out well, so I really hope she has a good experience. Then I bumped into the young lady manicurist (she of the dinky little pink caravan) at the recycling centre and she was asking me for more info as her mom is my age and very interested in doing something similar, although again with a French-speaking group! And again, I hope she does it. I've only heard one person being really negative about her solos trip but then this lady is negative about pretty much everything so I take that with a pinch of salt!

The weather is a lot cooler but still glorious and as expected my energy started coming back. The summer heat knocks me back every year so I really don't know why it surprises me. Hmmm, maybe I should start spending my summers back in the UK to get away from the heat - now there's an idea! Go back home and visit all the places I've missed over the years! The state of the house has been bugging me again so I've started setting my timer and trying to get in at least a one hour stint of decluttering/putting the garden to bed every day and it really does seem to be a system that works for me. It's amazing how much you can get done in just one hour, even to the point that those annoying little jobs are also getting done when I reach minute 50 and have to find something to fill the next 10 minutes! It's silly really, but as I say, it sure is working! I've taken so many trips to the recycling centre/charity shop that even my cluttered up basement is starting to look a little better. You know, getting rid of all those plastic plant pots I was keeping because obviously every spring I'm going to have a lush exotic garden full of organic fruit and veg! Nah, not gonna happen. I think I'll just buy it at the health food store next year! But, for the second year running I see that a local environmental group has set up a small wood-chipping truck that will come to your home and put all your hedge trimmings etc. through it at no cost to you and leaving you with all the free chippings and/or mulch. They've also set up a scheme whereby for the month of October people can try out battery-assisted bikes for free to try to encourage more people to use them and the local bus service is free to everyone, again for the month of October! Great initiatives all round, but one that really cheered me was a scheme called Pedibus, where for a very small fee children can be signed up as part of accompanied groups from the local villages walking to and from school. Over here walking to school is very feasible for the most part, so I really hope it takes off!

Jordan started his new job a couple of weeks ago, working in a two-man team for the director of his former company (you know, the one that's going bust because the owner has seemingly "disappeared" a lot of money) and who started up his own company in the local area. He enjoys working with Christophe and they pretty much have carte blanche to order any equipment they need - the boss just tells them to go ahead and order it and send him the bill! And talking of career plans, Jen has so much patience with Charlie and spends lots of time reading, playing and working with him and it's really paying off. She routinely has him sitting on her lap while she's cutting up vegetables and just last week bought him a "trainer knife" for children (I know, I was thinking the same thing)! Apparently they cannot cut themselves with it but it allows them to develop knife skills, so now Charlie is mainly responsible for all veggie prep in the evenings. They could be on to something there!

Move over Jamie Oliver!

Finally, thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes. I must admit 65 felt a little weird as this would be the birthday by which I had to retire from work. In fact, tomorrow would have been my last day had I not decided to retire five years early (still no regrets). As I've mentioned before, the fact that I'm now 65 fulfils the final condition for me to request French citizenship via ascendency (i.e. through Charlie), which is pretty much a given, assuming I haven't spent more than six months in prison (I haven't, I got divorced instead). So the other day I printed off a list of all the paperwork I would need and it wasn't too bad actually as I had most of it anyway, and already translated into French. The only two documents that I have to request are (yet another) copy of my divorce paperwork, and a copy of Charlie's birth certificate. I still find it confusing that documents issued by the French authorities have to be less than three months old. I mean nothing changes the fact that I got divorced on 23 December 2011 right? Well Jen was explaining that apparently French administrative papers are actually a "living" document, I guess drawn from a database, so if I were ever to get remarried in France (not gonna happen), my new marriage certificate would state "formerly married and divorced from P on dates X and Y"! She finds it strange that our administrative documents are "static" documents, but in the case of my divorce paperwork I'm guessing a more recent copy would also reflect any subsequent marriage. Confusing isn't it!

So last night I filled out the form to request a more recent copy of my divorce paperwork - which was pretty easy and only took about 10 minutes. In order for them to send it back to me I had to include a pre-paid envelope so then I set to to print a stamp off the French post office site (a system introduced in January of this year) but what a nightmare it was. I had also ordered a bunch of labels suitable to print stamps on (rather than having my stamps split over two labels), but when I went to pay for them and they asked for the delivery address, the web site kept spitting out that my village was "unknown to the post office"! Say what????? I spotted that the next village over was also missing from the list and yet they've been delivering my mail to me at this address for the past 33 years! After about an hour I was pulling my hair out so I'm guessing it was a simple case of "computer sez no", but eventually I got the bloody thing printed and mailed off. On the positive side, they don't charge for it, unlike the Swiss who charged me SF 33 for a copy of Jordan's birth certificate this morning!!!!

So slowly but surely I feel like I'm getting somewhere and who knows, maybe by the time the next General Election takes place in the UK I will have my voting rights reinstated (British in Europe are working on it) and maybe, just maybe, I'll even get to vote in the next French and European elections. A girl can dream, can't she!

More Mallorca!

I figured I'd better get back to journaling about my trip before I forget it all, but I've been a bit busy since I got back. So after our island tour I took the following day as a kind of laze around day, just going for a walk along the beach (although not as far as the nudist beach!!!) and reading by the pool. I can highly recommend it - having absolutely nothing to do, that is. 

Anyway the next day six of us had booked a trip to Palma, Mallorca's capital - me, the three Scottish ladies, and Irene and M (The One)! The trip there was a bit tedious because the guide did his spiel first in Spanish, then in English and finally in German but since people had booked different tours in Palma I guess he had to labour the detail a little! Our ticket basically just gave us a ride there and back, but people getting on at other hotels had different coloured tickets, which indicated maybe the aquarium tour and/or the guided tour of the cathedral. None of that was an option for us, but I was fine with that as I like to do my own thing anyway.

When we got off the bus the guide explained that the aquarium people should be at this spot at 10.30 and the cathedral people at noon, and M was adamant that they were booked on the cathedral tour. I told her she wasn't as that wasn't offered at our hotel but she was having none of it. In the end I've no idea if they showed up for the cathedral tour but Bernie, the little Scottish lady, just laughed and said to let them get on with it! So the four of us set off for a coffee in what looked like the old town and then wandered down the back streets to find a restaurant for lunch off the main drag and in the shade. We found just what we were looking for and were enjoying a meal of tapas when up comes a man who sets up his keyboard and started blasting out very bad music which meant we couldn't hear to speak to each other. I used to get that a lot when I worked in central Geneva, the guy who wandered round the restaurants playing three bars of Rawhide and then came round with the hat and it drove me mad - every single day! Mind you when Karen said "I wish Richard Clayderman would bugger off" we all cracked up - and maybe he heard because he packed up and left not long after that!

After that we spent an hour wandering round the old town and the cathedral but as it was so hot we were only too glad when we got back down to the harbour to wait for the bus in a shaded café!

Palma cathedral!

Later that evening a young man came in who played soul music so for once I sat and listened as I love soul. He wasn't bad but the heat was a killer so I left around 11.30 pm just to get out of it! The next day was another "do nothing" kind of day until later that evening when the guide came over to me and asked if I spoke Spanish (I can get by, but I'm not fluent), because apparently Irene and M were at the police station and the hotel receptionist didn't speak enough English to explain what had happened. Well it turned out that Irene and M had taken a taxi to Alcúdia and sat down in a restaurant when M decided it was too expensive and got up to leave. At this point I think Irene had had enough and offered to pay for her meal but M was already out the door, so Irene grabbed her purse and ran after her. It was only when she got to the next restaurant that Irene realized she'd left her small shoulder bag with her papers, money and phone at the previous restaurant and went running back to get it, only for it to be gone. The people at the next table said that nobody had been at that table since they left except for the wait staff so it was pretty obvious who had taken it! At this point the owner refused to give Irene the restaurant's phone number and virtually threw her out the door and told the people at the other table to stop talking to them!!!!! The big worry, of course, was did Irene have her passport in that bag as we were leaving the next day, but the hotel receptionist told us that even with Irene's permission she could not go into her room and open the safe, so we just had to pray she had left it in her room (she had, as it turned out)! While I was chatting with our guide the receptionist came over to me and said that a gentleman needed her to go with him to his room for some reason, and she was letting me know that she was going up to room 152 - if you get my drift! To be honest I'd never thought about that kind of thing but she just wanted someone to know where she was in case anything happened. I guess they see it all in hotels, don't they!

Later that evening our guide bought me a drink for helping her out and we ended up having a long chat about this and that - and it came out that her first husband had been extremely violent, one time throwing her through a glass door into the garden and that she would have bled to death if the neighbour hadn't seen her through the kitchen window lying on the back patio!!! Crikey, I wasn't expecting that, but she did send me a text message after she got back to England thanking me for allowing her to open up like that!

The trip back was a bloody nightmare, with my flight ending up being delayed six hours and Easyjet changing the gate number from gate C44, to C62 and back to C39 all while making no announcement of the gate change over the tannoy! So I got back around midnight and threw a load of washing in because of course the plumber was coming at 8 am the next morning to start work!!!! Then I got a call from the chimney sweep, who had tried to set up an appointment while I was in Mallorca, and he asked if he could come in an hour's time too. So at one point I had a man running a vacuum upstairs with another man running a vacuum downstairs - that surely must be a Women's Libber's wet dream!

It was only when I got back that I heard about the earthquake in Morocco and realized that my neighbours had been there at the time. They were in Agadir and said they were in bed on the fourth floor of the hotel when it started swaying like crazy! Nobody was killed in Agadir (most of the victims were in the Atlas mountains and Marrakesh), but one man had a heart attack and died from the fright. I can't even begin to imagine how frightening that must have been!

And finally, last Sunday was our "clean up the neighbourhood" day and we lucked out in that we had good weather all day - only for a torrential downpour to hit right after we'd cleaned up. And now life returns to normal - or as normal as it can be with a plumber and tiler traipsing through the house most days. Still, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs can you!

Oh and get this, tomorrow is my birthday but this morning I had a "happy birthday" text message from the young man that I dated briefly after my husband left. He lives in Berne and the relationship kinda just ran its course but we parted on friendly terms. So today he texts me and we end up chatting off and on all day, It's hard to believe we hadn't spoken in about 14 years and then just picked back up where we left off! How weird is that!

Island tour!

Later in the evening of our first night our group was joined by an Irish man who flew in from Dublin (quite the character) and two older ladies who arrived from Manchester. These two ladies reminded me a little of The Odd Couple. Irene had obviously been quite the looker in her younger years and was indeed still very glamorous and sociable. M - her companion - was the complete opposite, a kinda "quieter than a church mouse" type. I did get to speak to M a few times because she had at one time owned a house in Normandy (and apparently very much regretted selling it) but others said that when they tried chatting to her about the many solo trips she had taken she pretty much blew them off! That kind of thing doesn't bother me much because I just do my own thing anyway, but I heard later in the week that things were somewhat tense between Irene and M because Irene wanted to do more things with the group but ended up "having" to stay with M all the time! Hence I don't travel with anyone on these trips 'cos my days of having a regimented schedule are well and truly over! Anyway, I mention this as it's relevant because of what happened on the last night! More to follow!

There was also another couple of Scottish women travelling together and who also seemed to fit The Odd Couple mold somewhat. They too had slight tensions during the trip but ended up being okay together for the most part. I got along really well with the outgoing Scottish lady but the quieter lady had actually had quite the life too, it turns out. She had been born in India (her father was manager of a tea plantation) but when she was six her grandmother in Scotland had become seriously ill so A (the quiet lady) was shipped off to boarding school in Scotland and she hated it! She said she had never seen anywhere so cold, wet and grey in all her life, but I suppose having been born in India that was a normal reaction. Ultimately she ended up loving Scotland but said it wasn't easy at first. And Mrs. Quiet Lady had also travelled all over - although Asia was her main love, for obvious reasons! There was also another quiet lady who I put in her mid-70s (as did others) but turns out she was only 68 and she had been doing the solo travelling thing for the past 18 years. She seemed to have been everywhere and was such an interesting person to talk to, so I guess it really is true that you should never judge a book by its cover!

Anyway, the next day six of us signed up for the aforementioned island tour and it was wonderful, if a little hectic! Our first stop was in a town called Inca to visit a leather goods outlet. Mallorca is known for its leather goods and cultured pearls and their wares really were lovely and very reasonably priced, but in the end I realized that I actually don't need any more stuff. I really do have everything I need in that department so decided (reluctantly) to pass! After that we ended up crawling over a hair-raising horseshoe pass to get to our first stop where we would pick up the boat. Hats off to the bus driver is all I can say!

This was the "easy" bit. We had crawled
through forests with steep drops over the side
for an hour previous to this!

Our guide said the locals refer to this pass as the Ay Maria pass (or basically the "oh my god" pass) and you can see why! Anyway, we made it out alive in time for a quick lunch and then boarded the boat to circle further down the island, heading for the beautiful port of Soller!

I had to laugh at this one because some time ago I wrote about driving up a hair-raising road to get to the Plâteau de Cenise and nearly laying an egg en route. Well when I got back this picture popped up on Facebook showing just how nasty that road really is! Never again says I!

I had been to Mallorca many, many years ago with my boyfriend and I remember Soller being stunning then, and of course it still is. André told me that he and his then wife took her grandma to Soller for a holiday and she just loved it (I'm not surprised)!

This is a google picture of Soller, as I couldn't get
my head out of the train window quick enough
to take a decent picture!

After a quick lunch in Soller we caught the rickety old tram for a few km up to the town of Soller and from there hopped on the train for a one hour ride back to our bus!

Another google picture I'm afraid!

13th century church!

Town centre!

When we got back to our hotel our guide asked us what we thought of the trip and we all said it was great, if a little rushed because of having to marry up with boat/tram/train timetables. Well all of us, except Irene and M, one of whom had apparently complained that at their ages (mid-70s I would guess) it was disgusting that they had to stand on the 3km tram ride! My eyes almost popped out on stalks because twice I had offered Irene my seat and she waved it away and the younger Scottish girl in front of me had done the same. I'm guessing it was M who was bitching then but we both put the guide very much straight about what really happened. As I say, there's always one isn't there!

That evening it was back to the hotel for a quick shower and dinner in an excellent Argentinian restaurant on the beach where the food (and the margaritas) was wonderful and very reasonably priced. In fact the food throughout Mallorca was consistently good so guess who's gonna have to go on a diet now that she's back!