The storm that nearly ruined everything!

I already had a few ideas for meals while my family were here staying with me but knew I wanted to get myself really organized food-wise so that I would have one less thing to think about during the week. So the weekend before the wedding I wrote down what I planned to cook every day (or most days), plus an idea of what site-seeing we could do. Then on the Monday before everyone arrived I took my detailed shopping list and bought everything I needed, storing it in the fridge and two freezers in my basement. A storm had been predicted for that evening and while I love storms I (and, as it turns out, everyone in the village) got the shock my life when an absolute doozy hit around 9.30 p.m. It was absolutely awful! At one point I thought I should try and close the shutters on my bathroom window "just in case" and the wind nearly ripped my arm off! Seriously, if I hadn't managed to get my hand out of the way it would have been touch and go for my arm! I live at the end of a valley and the storms usually bang around overhead for a while and then rumble on back up the valley, but not this time. I have lived in France for 30 years and I have never seen anything like it. It howled and banged for a good 90 minutes, at which point the electricity went off. Not that that is unusual though, so taking my flashlight and kindle I decided to go to bed and "wait it out".

In the morning I had a look round and most things chez moi were where they were supposed to be buuut trees had been bought down in the village, apparently a few rooves had been blown off and a large tree had bought down an electric pylon (hence the power outage). My neighbour is on the village council and he had been told that the electricity should be back on "around 10 a.m.". Then it was pushed back to "maybe noon" and then ….. who knew! After a few hours I was starting to worry about all the food I had in my freezers and a couple of things I had left in the fridge to prep for Tuesday, so I decided to at least pre-cook the stuff I had in the fridge and pack it into the cooler. But just as I got the gas going under the frying pan the bloody gas ran out!!!! We don't have mains gas in the village so use gas bottles which, in my case, last easily over a year - and the bottle chose this moment to run out!!!! Luckily I always keep a spare bottle in the garage so I ran round to change it but couldn't find the spanner that allows me to loosen the nut and change the bottle. The bloody garage is so full of junk brought about by my "decluttering phase" that I couldn't find anything!

So I ran round to my neighbour's and she came back with me, wrench in hand, to help change the bottle. After much cussing and sweating we got it changed, at which point I picked up the cooler I intended to use to keep the cooked food cold - and the bloody handle broke off, meaning I couldn't get the lid to close properly. Now at this point you either laugh or cry - luckily my neighbour and I just sat down and laughed. It was hot, I was tired and stressed and we just collapsed into fits of giggles! The obvious solution was to run into town and buy a new cooler, along with a few kilos of ice. I guess at least one thing got accomplished that day, although the idea of making a cake for my soon-to-arrive visitors went straight out the window, what with having an electric oven and all and still no electricity! Thankfully my neighbour has a generator and was able to hook up both my and my other neighbour's freezers to his generator so at least the contents were saved thank goodness!

At 4 p.m. I had to drive in to Geneva to pick up my nephew and his partner from the airport and I got stuck in traffic!!! Again, now I know why I gave up work. I bought them back to town, dropped them off and then dashed back to Geneva a couple of hours later to pick up my sister, brother and brother-in-law. Trouble was, their flight was delayed and they had no way of contacting me because my mobile phone charge had run out and I had no way to re-charge it!!  Bloody hell! There was another storm advisory posted on the motorway so I was pretty nervous driving back with black, black clouds hanging over the mountains but we made it back just in time for the next big storm which, thankfully, was nowhere near as bad as the previous one. The electricity finally came back on around 9 p.m. (after a 23-hour power cut) so I was able to get everyone settled in without having to resort to flashlights and candles! But methinks it's finally time to go shopping for that generator I keep putting off, since that storm was surely not a one off! I'm just glad it happened a couple of days ahead of the wedding to enable us all to get back on our feet again! You have to be thankful for small mercies I guess!