The good, the bad, and the very, very sad!

I saw Sam's post today (at A New Frame of Reference blog) where she posted pictures of her autumn decorations on the mantelpiece, and seeing the word "mantel" took me back to a funny incident when Jordan was pretty young. I commented on Sam's blog that while it's great for kids to be bilingual, when they're young they don't often have the more extensive vocabulary of non-bilingual children because they're obviously dealing with more than one language. Anyway, one time Jordan asked me where my car keys were, and I told him "on the mantel". So he went inside, only to come out a few minutes later and say "mommy, what's a mantel"? And it kinda brought home to me how much we take for granted in our daily language! I mean, with my friends, if I can't think of an English word I just throw in the French word and (most) everyone gets it. For instance, "the basement" is never "the basement", it's pretty much always "la cave". I suppose you get lazy but I remember hearing my sister and her family doing the same thing once when they came over from Denmark - it was very much bastardized English! Anyway, I was talking to my Welsh friend about this one time and she recalled an occasion when her girls were quite young and one of them wanted to go to the toilet in the restaurant. R called out to her to "remember to pull the chain" - and her daughter had no idea what she was talking about! I mean, seriously, how long have flush toilets been around? I think she might have been showing her age there, don't you! Anyway, all that nonsense is just to say it's odd what pops into your brain sometimes, isn't it!

On the "good" side, Switzerland held a referendum on same-sex marriage on Sunday and voted overwhelmingly in favour! Way to go Switzerland - a tad late perhaps, but better late than never eh!

Then yesterday as I was taking my rubbish down to the local bins I bumped into Stan's wife, Martine. She had her four-year old grandson with her and it was the first time I'd ever met him. By golly he's a handsome lad, just like his dad, Samuel (who hopefully will be representing Nigeria in the cross-country skiing in the next winter Olympics)! When I asked how Stan was she told me that he was here in France but not doing too well as "his leukemia isn't going well"!!!! Say what, Stan has leukemia????? Damn! Apparently he'd been hospitalized in Nigeria but was now back home in France with his family but not doing too well. He's an absolute ox of a man and the thought of him struggling to deal with leukemia is, frankly, unthinkable! But then I remembered about 15 years ago where he had regularly-programmed 24-hour stints in hospital for them to give him blood transfusions "to help his white blood cell count". When I asked him what it was for he was very vague, but damn, I never saw him being this ill! So I told her while I'll obviously not go anywhere near him, if and when he's feeling a little better and wants to have a natter, maybe I could come up to their garden gate and have a chat if he's up for it - or maybe I could Facetime him, even though he only lives about 100 metres from me. We'll see how it goes, but fingers crossed for my mate Stan!

And then today I received the bloody awful news about sweet C! I had known C since the day she was recruited maybe 25 years ago because of working in HR, of course, and while she wasn't a friend we would often chat if we happened to be walking down from the parking lot together. I also knew - as did most people - that she was mentally fragile! Anyway, when I left HR and moved to the same division as her, C was very kind and helpful to me because I hadn't got a clue what I was doing. Oh she could be a bit "dippy" sometimes, in a fun way, but I swear she never had a mean bone in her body!

Anyway, a friend sent me a message the other day to say that her children and the gendarmerie had sent out a communication asking if people had seen her because she had disappeared from home on 18 September having left both her handbag and phone behind (according to her children)! Then today there was an article in the newspaper to say that her car had gone over a ravine "as the result of an accident which occurred on 25 September" and C was dead!!! Thankfully no-one else was involved, but I can't get my mind round the fact that if she disappeared on 18 September and the accident happened on 25 September where on earth was she during the intervening week? My hope was that she had been taken ill and ended up in hospital, and with no ID on her they hadn't been able to trace her family. Or I guess the accident could have happened on the day she disappeared and had only been discovered on 25th! Will her family ever get to know? She was 57 years old but I picture her in my mind at around 45 because that's about the age she looked to me. She was sweet and kind and I wish so much she hadn't gone like that. Her poor family - and poor sweet C! RIP hon!

Well that worked out well!

I got a slip in my mail box the other day for me to go to the Post Office to pick up a parcel and yay, the two sets of The Complete Far Side that I'd ordered over a month ago finally showed up! Jordan had mentioned to me how much he likes my Gary Larsen set so that pinged an idea into my head to buy both the boys a set for Christmas! Turns out they're pretty hard to get hold of (and pretty darn expensive - over €200 each!!!) but at least they got here eventually. I was a bit ticked off when the lady told me that there was a tax to pay on them though because I'd ordered them through Amazon, France, and didn't see where it indicated that the sender was located in the U.S., so I thought damn, this is gonna be expensive! One time I ordered $110 worth of patchwork stuff from the States and ended up paying €60 in import duty, so never again. Likewise I no longer order anything from the U.K. because I'd now be liable to pay taxes on that too as we're no longer part of the E.U. Still, I thought I'd just have to suck it up, buttercup, and pay whatever it took. Turns out it was ok in the end as it only cost me €15 but phew, I was expecting a helluva lot more than that!

Then last week Amazon finally reimbursed me the €700 I paid for the phone that went AWOL so I decided to take a look at what kinds of deals SFR - my phone carrier - had on their site. My two-year contract with them ended in May and I always allow it to run out because they are usually willing to make some kind of concession to get you to sign back up with them. Well lo and behold they were offering an iPhone 11 for €1 if I signed back up for a two year contract!!! That's a big saving over €700 isn't it! So I went online to fill in all the required info, stating that I wanted to keep the same number. Trouble was, when I tried to input another required code it wouldn't go through, so I ended up calling them. And wouldn't you know it, that offer was only available to new customers! Damn! The young woman told me she could indeed get me an iPhone 11 but not at that price, so I thought "oh here we go, how much do they want now"? Well it turns out they wanted the grand sum of €9, plus having me sign up for a two year contract at €40/month. Well that's pretty much what I pay anyway so I told her I was happy to go for it - and then she said "oh it's your birthday soon, how about I knock €5/month off that amount and throw in a free phone case at the same time"? Ha, so now I'm the proud owner of a much better phone than my old one, which is on its last legs anyway. Not that I really need a fancy phone because basically all I do is call, text and take photos, but at that price I'm not going to argue with them. So yay me!

In other news Jen's mom called me recently asking about my Monday morning yoga class, which is just round the corner from the new apartment she will be moving to in December. I told her how much I liked the teacher, what the cost was and that I was pretty sure she could have a couple of free lessons to see if she liked it - but she should be sure to tell the teacher that she has back problems, just in case. Anyway, she came with me a couple of times and is going to sign up as she felt it did her back the world of good. I mentioned to her the first week that I wanted to stop over at Jordan and Jen's to see Charlie as he doesn't go to day care on Mondays so we called Jen and the two grandmas got to play with the babe for a couple of hours. Jen suggested we get take-out from the little restaurant in town so now we've made a date to stop over every Monday/most Mondays to see the babe and eat together. Sounds good to me!

Then on Thursday I drove down to Annecy to meet up with my friend, M, who I haven't seen in about three years. She's American (and also French, through her late husband) and after her husband died about five years ago she moved to Ireland with her son when he got a job there. She's a fairly reserved person so ended up not liking Ireland at all, although goodness knows the Irish are a friendly bunch and easy to get to know! They lived in Cork and she never bought a car so I think her world kinda shrunk once they moved there. Anyway, since her son, his new wife and step-daughter wanted to move back to France (as did M), they set the wheels in motion to transfer back here and she's been in Annecy since July of this year. It's sad really because she and her husband bought an apartment in the most perfect spot in Annecy so that they could retire to it - and then her husband died at 59 and they never got to live out their dream retirement together! Just her, although since her husband was the love of her life I'm not so sure she now sees herself as living the dream!

And to be honest I found her sad, still grieving for her husband and since she's so terrified of this virus she's isolating herself even more. She asked me if I would agree to take a lateral flow test when I got to her place so I said "sure, no problem, let's both do them". Apparently they are available for free in the U.K. (or at least in England) and her daughter bought a whole bunch with her when she came over from London not so long ago. Well, you've never seen anything like it! I had to laugh in the end because M had on a big, industrial-strength mask and rubber gloves - I told her she looked like she was preparing for a moon landing - and she burst out laughing, which was good to see. When I handed her my swab she made such a pig's ear out of it, mistakenly trying to get two drops of solution onto the kit from the swab rather than from the solution bottle. I reckon she contaminated my test with all that fiddling around because absolutely nothing happened. Not positive, not negative, nada! I swear we both had a better chance of showing up pregnant than getting a covid result from that! With her own test the colours lit up immediately and then just left one line - thus proving she was negative. So I told her to give me another test and I'd do it myself this time and of course it came back negative because I don't really mix any more either. So after that she took off the astronaut's mask and we ordered in Moroccan food, and sat on her balcony with a couple of glasses of wine yacking away - as you do when you haven't seen someone in years! And it was great, although like I say, I found her to be "fragile" - for want of a better word. I guess losing her husband and then withdrawing into herself during the pandemic really did a number on her! She's also got hip problems so I told her we'd go out cruising and I knew loads of walks we could do on the flat because, as she said, when they lived around here they never went out exploring like we did. It's odd but my other neighbour said the same thing and yet my ex and I were constantly out looking for new places to explore - that is until the marriage blew up, but that's a whole other story. So I told her that I can either pick her up or she can catch the train up to me and we'll go out exploring together before the bad weather kicks in. I'll even get myself some lateral flow tests each time if she would be more comfortable doing that, so it looks like we have a date! She also lent me her copy of Thoreau's Walden, which I've wanted to read for ages. She said it's pretty heavy going and looking at the miniscule print I'll have to see how I get on, but it's one more book to add to the growing pile waiting for my attention!

Oh and I just finished watching Clickbait on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it, after giving up on The Queen's Gambit. Of course it was pretty far-fetched but very watchable and more-ish and I was convinced I'd figured out who the bad guy was by the last episode. But guess what, I was wrong, just like all those years ago when I would read Agatha Christie as a kid and feel sure I knew who the villain was - and then get it wrong every time. In my defence, Agatha Christie was a clever writer and I was a kid - but yeah, that's the best I could come up with!

And finally, just a quick shout out to Tania in Essex. I see that your blog is currently unavailable so I hope everything is ok with you and yours! Take care hon!

Reconnecting!

Life continues as normal as it can here in my little corner of France. Nothing exciting, but nothing dramatic either! I think I've totally thrown Facebook algorithms off by blocking them from my phone because I'm now getting bombarded by adverts to "reverse my bunions"! I guess it makes a change from trying to improve my status as a male bodybuilder, but since I don't have bunions I am at a bit of a loss!

I managed to get out in the garden to put my garden "to bed" these past few days and it has been lovely. The weather is glorious (25°C - just my kind of temperature), and cutting back the tomato plants and all the other foliage has really opened up space around here (does anyone else love the smell of tomato plants on their fingers or am I just weird?)! Last autumn I threw a bunch of stringy potatoes into one of my raised beds and believe it or not they have actually grown and seem to be harvesting themselves because every time I go out there, the soil is just glorious and I have a few - admittedly very small - potatoes sitting on top of the bed! Ah, simple joys. I wonder though if it was because I dumped all the mouldy grass clippings onto the raised beds that it made such a big difference to the quality of the soil! One of life's simple pleasures I guess!

Talking of gardening, my gardener showed up the other day to cut my lawn and I ended up chatting with him about cutting the hedges as and when it suited him. I also mentioned that I needed my damson bush cut back and the mirabel plum tree was looking very sad, so he is going to take the plum tree out (a shame as it was glorious) as it is really sick and he will do the necessary for the rest. So I'm thinking I'll have to get looking for some more trees to plant to replace the plum and the cherry trees he's taken out - as I hate an "empty" back garden! My neighbour asked me yesterday if I was responsible for cutting the island in front of our houses so I told him I had asked my gardener to cut it one day when he came with his ride-on mower and I would pay him! There's nothing like paying "the hired help" to get something done is there, but hey, I have no intention of doing it myself, so I feel like I'm doing my bit to keep the place tidy and my gardener sure as heck is glad of the money. Actually I sat with him after I offered him a coffee (my gardener, not my neighbour) and we ended up getting into French politics and boy was that an interesting discussion! 

Next May we have the French presidential elections and I talked to both my neighbour and my gardener about what was going on there. While I know the pandemic will have been hard on any government to handle, Macron's authoritarianism has rubbed so many noses the wrong way - and yet I had so much hope for him when he was elected! So I was talking to my neighbour the other day about which way she thought the election might go and she was saying that while nobody wants to see Macron re-elected, the problem was that there seemed to be no viable opposition - and my gardener said the same thing! Macron basically ran against right wing Marine Le Pen last time and won but this time who knows. Not me, certainly. Oh I've seen the various politicians and understand their views as regards the pandemic, the vax passport and so on, but as to their general politics, I have no idea. We have François Asselineau, who I have appreciated very much during the pandemic. He has promised a vote on withdrawal from the EU (but for god's sake take a look at what a pig's ear that made of Britain) and NATO - but I liked him (not that I get a vote anywhere right now). Jean-Luc Melenchon - I have no idea but my neighbour says he is a nasty piece of work but talks a good talk (don't they all). But the most frightening to me is Eric Zemmour, who is more far right than Marine Le Pen! I had heard of him but only got to listen to him for the first time the other day - the racism just drips out of him like autumn rain on an oak tree. The problem is - he is very, very eloquent so damn! God knows we don't want any more Macron and his (former) relationship as Pfizer's banker, but who the hell do we have to replace him? (Try googling "qui est le banquier de Pfizer en France" - who is Pfizer's banker in France? - and see what pops up)!

Anyway, that's enough drama for today 'cos it's my birthday. Yeah, 63 and still raring to go! I went over to Jordan and Jen's today as Jordan works a half day on Fridays so I got to see my son as well as my sweetheart grandson on my birthday. I swear if that baby smiles any wider he will tear his lips! I can see that the Munchkin is about ready to try crawling - that bum goes up in the air but then he falls flat on his nose! So I got down on the floor opposite him and the two of us grunted our way towards crawling but he isn't there yet. As Jen said, at least she got her floor cleaned because grandma and babe covered most of the kitchen area on their bellies! While I was there Jordan showed me a bathroom sink that he was given from work to replace the one in their bathroom and a tap unit that would cost €400 if sold to the public that his boss told him to take if he wanted it for their bathroom renovation!!! I had mentioned to him about working on my bathrooms little by little because god knows they need it and he said that he had a couple of new sinks that I could use in my bathroom if I just went out and bought the tap units. So job done. I can wait for the rest, he can instal the sinks and taps as and when, I can pay him good money to do that, then repaint the units under them and have half a decent bathroom started! Yay me and yay him, because I feel I really need to push him to gain confidence and get started on doing plumbing on the side!

So that's about it for today at least. I met up yesterday with my dear American friend who I haven't seen for maybe four years because she was living in Ireland (more on that tomorrow). It was hard going because I find her so "broken", probably more mentally than physically, but I feel that somehow she's living her reality that is the US right now, despite the fact that she doesn't live there any more! I love her to bits and hate to see how fragile she has become. But, as I say, more on that tomorrow!

And again I see the terrible covid stats in north America and have a hard time comprehending it from over here. But just for comparison, I took this screen shot of official stats the other day to show just how different things are here!

These are the official stats from the State of Haute Savoie as at 20 September. 

Taux d'incidence - incidence - 71.6/100,000 - (I'm guessing that's positive tests).

Taux de positivité - positivity - 1.4% (down 0.1 points)

23 September

Hospitalisations - 50 (+5)

Patients in ICU - 16 (stable - that includes all ICU patients, not just covid)

Total deaths - 1,066 (stable) - since the beginning of the pandemic. The last four months have shown maybe 10 deaths.

Discharged from hospital (since the beginning of the pandemic) - 5,335 (+3)

Regional statistics:

R number (at 12 August) - 1.08  

Taux d'occupation en réa (ICU bed occupancy) - 24.5% (today I just saw 12% but that hasn't been posted yet).

So of course I don't understand what's going on in north America and I can't relate. I hope you will see now why my reality is so very different from so many of yours. Either way, stay safe!

In praise of small businesses!

So I finally gave in and ordered a new iPhone from Amazon on 24 August. When it hadn't arrived after about 10 days I  just put it down to ... well, whatever the excuse is at the moment, really. Not to worry, though, as my current phone still works, albeit in a somewhat temperamental manner when I'm out and about. But the other day I thought it really was taking a long time so I looked up my order on Amazon France and saw that it had been "delivered on 26 August"! Well not a bit of it! I haven't seen hide nor hair of that thing and since it was being transported by Chronopost (meaning it had to be signed for), I contacted Amazon by email to ask what gives. To be fair, they have always been very efficient, and they got back to me immediately saying they would put a trace on it, even though they "expected it to be delivered in the next 48 hours, but in any case they would get back to me by 3 September at the latest". When that didn't happen I waited a bit longer and contacted them again, but this time by phone. After a few goes back and forth with the young woman I asked why it was so difficult to trace something that had to be signed for and she couldn't answer me. Anyway, she told me she would have to contact her supervisor and we made arrangements for someone to call me at 10 a.m. last Monday - and you guessed it, nobody called! Again I have to say that this is most unusual for Amazon as on the rare occasion I have had a problem, they have always resolved it very quickly!

So yesterday I got p...ssed off and sent yet another email giving a résumé of the situation and asking when I was going to get my money back (€700 if you're interested). Well I finally got an email from the young woman I spoke to on the phone and she said she had issued a reimbursement order and to give it between five and seven days! Just on the off-chance I tried checking my credit card on my phone but so far, nothing yet. Trouble is, checking my credit card on my phone only works once every couple of times at the moment. Ditto trying to update my French banking app to incorporate a new security code that they are insisting on. Every time I try to do this I get a message telling me "this service is currently unavailable", so today I received a letter from them giving me a second code that I will have to input any time I want to make a purchase online. On a side note, I would be absolutely delighted if Amazon reimbursed me and then my phone finally showed up because on the couple of occasions I've had this happen and contacted them to find out how to return the item when it subsequently showed up, they've told me to keep it!!! Somehow I don't see that happening though, do you! I also have another large package which is waaayyy delayed too (two compendiums of the complete works of Gary Larsen. I have one myself and wanted to get one each for my sons for Christmas since they love mine). Well these haven't turned up yet either (although order tracking confirms "the plane has landed" - though where, I have no idea!). So now I'm wondering if these delays are due to the pandemic, a labour shortage or the global economic situation - who knows!

Then last week I received my new wifi box since my old one must be about 15 years old and is also on its last legs. Well I messed around with that thing for ages and couldn't get it to work, which again is odd because I had no problem setting the first one up. So in the end I asked my neighbour for help and he realized that the sim card codes I was trying to input were for my telephone and not for the wifi box. Just FYI, if you are ever told to insert a sim card into a wifi box (or into anything really) where you have to push it out of its plastic support, for goodness sakes don't throw that little piece of plastic away because that is where your codes and passwords are, in tiny, tiny letters on the back! I didn't know that but thankfully hadn't thrown it away and he was able to get it up and running! Just as a test, he called his wife using my home phone (which was now running off the new wifi) and everything seemed hunky dory - well that is until about 30 minutes later when I realized that my home phone no longer worked!

Well I've tried everything to get it to work and even ran down to a little shop in town (where André bought a whole bunch of stuff for his apartment) and explained my problem to them. The guy took his time and explained to me exactly where the cables should be hooked up and when I asked to buy a specific cable to do the hook up he just handed one over and told me to take it home and try it out - and come back tomorrow to pay for it if it worked! And he doesn't even know me (even though I've shopped there a few times). I have to admit I was a bit surprised at that. I mean, why should they trust me to come back and pay the next day? Oddly enough, about 15 years ago my husband and I were looking at furniture in a town about 30 minutes from here when we spotted a couple of paintings that we liked that were done by art students, but couldn't decide which one we preferred - so the guy told us to take them both home to get a better look at them and then come back later and settle up with him!!! Seriously, how great is it that there are still such trusting people around!

In the end I found my own cable to hook up the phone and the wifi box but yet again, my phone worked for one call and then nada! In any case I ran back into town today to take their cable back and the guy said they might well be working on a problem on the line so to give my phone carrier a call back. And that was when I got a text message from my carrier saying they were indeed working on the line and would let me know in a couple of days when everything was up and running again!

So the upshot is that I no longer have a working home phone but you know what - I'm not sure I mind because I'm no longer getting the telemarketing calls! How cool is that! I guess the only downside to doing away with it all together is that I don't like handing out my mobile number to all and sundry so I usually give out my home number and tell people to start leaving a message when the answering machine kicks in! We'll see what happens, I guess, but in the meantime it's really not such a hardship to do without it (again, first world problems right)! That being said, while getting rid of the telemarketers is a definite plus, I'm still getting the occasional email from someone wanting to put millions of $$$$$ into my bank account. Actually I got one yesterday from Dr. Fatima XXXX who had "a bank account with $10 million in it and she didn't know what to do with it" - so I went ahead and told her exactly what to do with it! Do you think that might be why they keep coming back?

But this got me thinking, if my wifi starts playing up (it's very slow in the evenings right now), my mobile phone hasn't arrived, and my home phone isn't working, how vulnerable are we if our access to these things gets completely cut for whatever reason? More and more today they are closing bank branches (they haven't used cheques in Switzerland since 2003) and pretty much everything has to be done online now. So if "they" cut off our access to these things where would that leave us? It's the ultimate control, really, isn't it!

Last year I was reading about the wildfires (in California, I think) and one lady said that she had painted her phone number onto her horses' hooves in nail polish before setting them free to get away, (she knew that if she painted it onto their flanks if they got singed or burned it would disappear), and she was also saying that she was going to get her hands on as much cash as she could in case "everything went down". I must admit I had never thought about this but of course if the banking system went down for whatever reason (hurricane, earthquake, flooding, revolution!) we'd all be screwed for getting cash wouldn't we. I also remember seeing a man in Sicily at the beginning of the pandemic trying to buy food for his family but because he had no access to cash and his card wouldn't work, they refused him! I don't really know where I'm going with all this, but I guess my struggling to get everything back up and running here at the moment brought home to me how much we are at the mercy of the online system and, potentially, the powers-that-be!

And finally, I started watching The Queen's Gambit the other night because I'd heard it was good. Well I'm on episode four (of seven) and yet again, so far, it's just not doing it for me. I've sat through three hours more or less watching people play chess so I'm hoping things improve in the remaining episodes because it's a bit like watching paint dry at the moment. Or maybe it's just me being difficult. I loved Downton Abbey, The Sopranos and Dr. Foster. Grace and Frankie was ok, The Kominsky Method was frankly painful, and here I am again half falling asleep watching a programme about playing chess and fixating on how wide set the main actress's eyes are! Maybe I'm just too hard to please, but if you have any suggestions for something a bit more stimulating feel free to let me know!

All quiet here!

There's not much going on around here to be honest - hence my not posting for a while. But at least not having much planned has given me more time to binge watch a few programmes and read several books (at the same time, usually). I've not long finished reading The Governess (thank you Ms Moon I believe) and I really enjoyed it. While I know it was fiction Marion Crawford was indeed the governess to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and it's written from her perspective as someone who wanted to work teaching poor kids in the slums - and ended up becoming the governess of the future Queen of England! She doesn't write particularly favourably about the "dear old Queen Mum" and, for whatever reason, I always felt that the Queen Mother was calculating, to say the least. How would I know? Well I don't of course, but she was just someone I didn't take to for some reason. Then I started reading Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss, which I'm enjoying too, after finishing All The Things I Never Told You. I suppose I go from wanting to read the "fluffy stuff" for a while and then feel I need something a bit more substantial to get my teeth into, so I started reading The Looming Tower, which is all about the rise of Osama bin Laden and Al-Queda! It's hard going because so many of them have the same name but in the end there really are only a few names that you need to hang on to. It takes you from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt at the time of Nasser and how the different factions fought against each other, with the progressives pitted against those who wanted a return to a more fundamentalist State. It has tended to be a book that I put down and pick up again every so often as I have to be in the right mood for it, but one thing that stands out immediately is what a clever man bin Laden's father was. An illiterate, penniless Yemeni, he made his way to Saudi Arabia as a labourer and worked his way up through the ranks to become head of the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia. Of course he apparently also sired 54 children by 22 wives, with Osama's mother being just 14 when he married her and while that way of life is totally alien to me, of course, there's no denying he was a clever man!

One thing that struck me in the book was that it was not unknown for men to be "offered" the possibility to take a wife during the afternoon and then to divorce her the next day (so State sanctioned prostitution then, or more accurately, State sanctioned sexual abuse!), and when I mentioned this to my friend he told me that he had been offered such an "arrangement" on one of his many work trips if he was ever "at a loss for something to do in the evenings"! Thankfully he turned the offer down!

I have also started reading Skint Estate by Cash Carraway, detailing her horrific life in poverty in England. Her mother was violent and her father abandoned them, so she was left to make a living any way she could - with the obvious answer being prostitution and performing in a peep show flop house in London. The story pretty much starts with her finding out she is pregnant by her violent boyfriend and running away to a women's refuge in order to be able to keep her baby. Her story is gross and stomach-churning, but for someone with so little education - except what she received on the streets - she is a clever and talented writer who, I believe, was able to drag herself and her daughter up out of the gutter on the strength of that book deal!

Talking of my friend, I'm pleased to say that after about eight weeks he finally seems to be back to his old self. He came over the other Friday and we walked into Cluses as I had to drop off my old wifi box with my service provider, and we easily walked 12 km that day - and this from a man who couldn't walk 500 metres these past few months! When we got back we started watching The Irishman on Netflix, as he had wanted to see it for sometime (I don't think it ever came out in cinemas here). As it's three-and-a-half hours long we didn't get all the way through it, so something tells me he'll be coming back over to finish watching that soon!

I managed to slog my way through The Kominsky Method (there's another how many hours of my life I'll never get back?) but I wasn't impressed with it. Oh Alan Arkin stole the show and much of the dialogue was very clever but it just seemed to me a showcase for Michael Douglas playing an old lech so it wasn't for me. I should have realized when I started fast-forwarding through the parts where he's teaching in his acting studio that I should have given up right there and then! But I then finally discovered that I could get Doctor Foster on a streaming network called Salto and binge-watched that this past week (I told you I've really done bugger all lately). I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Foster but I do wonder if she was almost as psychopathic as her husband. It was all very gripping, but all that bed-hopping in merry old England - well, whatever next!

Jen started the babe off on "solids" (well mush really) and he's loving it. She gives him his own spoon at the same time as she's feeding him and you just have to keep ducking if you don't want to get puréed broccoli all over your hair and clothes. She's puréeing everything herself from fresh, except for a couple of veggies that she thinks might be a bit stringy for him as yet, so she bought a couple of pots of baby food. When I asked her if they were for the crèche she said no, that the crèche makes all the food for the children themselves - the parents don't have to provide it. I was dead impressed! When I told my sister how little they pay for the crèche (around €180/month for three days a week) she almost fainted. Heck, I was paying 720 Swiss francs a month back in 1989 for André in Switzerland (it'd be over SF 2,000/month now) and when you see what a lovely crèche it is and how well it's run, I guess you have to admit it's one of the benefits of a socialist state!

Anyway, that's about it for today. The only thing that grew in my garden this year was tomatoes so I've got to go downstairs and process some of that lovely produce before it goes off. Other than tomatoes I don't really know why I bother planting a garden really. I'm all gung-ho at the beginning and then just think "sod it" by the end of the summer and leave it to Mother Nature, who gives me a few tomatoes and makes the rest over to the slugs!

Apparently I've been cancelled!

I've been on a bit of a roll this past week, getting stuff sorted and out of here and it's been great! I'd guess it's got more to do with the cooler temperatures than any "come to Jesus" moment on my part, but either way it's felt good to make some progress around here. Last Wednesday I looked after the babe while Jordan and Jen were getting André's stuff out of their garage (now André can deal with it at his own place)! After they'd finished Jen mentioned an old dresser that my ex and I had had in our bedroom (he took the bedroom furniture when he left) so I asked how they were going to get it out of there as it was heavy. She said she was going to put a load of stuff on FB Marketplace for a few €€€€€ to try to get rid of it - unless I wanted it back! Ha, I didn't like it when we bought it so I really didn't want it back 36 years later with water damage to the top! Frankly, I didn't think she would be able to sell it but within about 20 minutes she'd had offers on that, one of the night stands that went with it and a few other things that I would have just dropped off at the recycling centre! Who wudda guessed that people would actually pay money for that stuff. Not me, that's for sure. So then I mentioned that I had a whole bunch of stuff at home that I was planning to take to the charity shop and if she had the time and patience to post it on FB she was welcome to keep the money. For instance, my sister pushed me to buy a sterilizer when the babe was born but new moms don't sterilize bottles these days (true apparently) so I have a brand new sterilizer and bottle warmer that she can try to get rid of. Plus maybe eight copper pans in the basement that my ex bought and I didn't know what to do with. They seem to be quite sought after so anything she can make on the side will be money in their pockets! Which is just as well really because she is working this week, then taking the rest of September off on leave she has to take or she will lose it - and then from 1 October she goes on parental leave for six months to which she is entitled under French law for a first baby under the age of one year! She won't get paid for it (this is where my financial help will kick in) but at least it will get her away from this business of hospital staff having to be vaccinated and will give them six months to decide where to take it from there. I guess Jordan could look for work in Switzerland (and quite easily double his salary), Jen can retrain or she can see where her job situation stands at the end of six months. One thing I had thought though is that she might use these six months to take courses in small business management/accountability since I reckon the way forward for them would be for Jordan to set himself up as a small business owner and easily triple the salary that he is making now. You know, doing the small plumbing jobs that you can't get a bigger business to take on for love nor money around here. To me that's the way it would make sense for them to head - I'll have to bring it up with them next time I see them. And to be honest, I would be happy to take the same course at the Chamber of Commerce too as it wouldn't do any harm would it. Talking of Jen's job (as a psychiatric nurse in an out-patient hospital), I've mentioned before that they are supposed to be 12 nurses when they've only been eight for the past couple of years. Now Jen is taking parental leave and at least one nurse has just resigned so where does that leave the unit? Up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle, I would guess! Jen was telling me that the Director of the hospital where she works has asked all staff to provide information on their vaccination status, and out of around 500 staff, only 125 have so far complied!

What a bloody mess! Since firefighters and first responders also face mandatory vaccination or be put on unpaid leave as from 15 September, one of their firefighter friends was telling Jen that all of the volunteer firefighers at the local firehouse have resigned, and since around 75% of the firefighters are volunteers, well they're in a bloody mess there too. Apparently in the small area they cover, they have lost three people to heart attacks in the last few weeks because they didn't have enough first responder teams to get to them in time! He said they are devastated, of course, but I suspect we're going to hear this more and more as time goes on and the stand-off continues. Conversely they were called out to a person taken ill in a residential home the other week and when the crew got there the lady director of the home asked the fireman for his pass (vaccine passport). When he told her he didn't have one and in any case didn't have to provide one until 15 September she refused to let him in!!! So they ended up in a stand-off, with the director calling his supervisor who, thankfully, stood up for the fireman, and who was eventually allowed in and was able to save that person's life!

I also managed to get my backside into gear and go walking with my friend at the lake in Passy last week and it was just beautiful. I was telling her that I'd ordered a new wifi box and phone (both of which are now on their last legs), but that I hated setting this stuff up and activating sim cards and whatnot but needs must, I suppose. And then I laughed because there was a group of young kids walking behind us and I'm sure if they had understood English they would have roared laughing at the two old biddies in front of them who "didn't know how to set up a wifi network and activate a phone"! You know, just the way we laughed at our parents when they couldn't "get the hang of all this new-fangled stuff"! Heck, when my sister married a Dane and they were packing her stuff to move to Denmark, my mom told her to buy a TV in England before she left, and when my sister asked why, my mom told her that then she'd be able to get the BBC in Denmark!

The lake at Passy last week!

We usually do one circuit of the lake and then stop for a drink at the little outdoor cabana there. Well this time we needed the pass, of course, and since my friend has been vaccinated she went up and ordered two take-out drinks. When the girl called us to say that our drinks were ready I went up to pay and she told me to tell my friend that she couldn't sit at that outdoor table if she didn't have the pass (she did, but this young woman didn't know that)! So my friend was sitting at an outdoor table under the trees, with no other table being occupied and about 30 metres away from anyone and she couldn't sit there! Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the restaurant. They have to do what they have to do, but we ended up going from the sublime to the ridiculous, with my friend sitting on the bench and me sitting on the grass next to her!! She came over and sat with me in the grass "in solidarity" but might have regretted it as we both ended up looking like beached whales when we tried to get up!

So this got me to thinking about how this vaccine is so polarizing in, say, the States, and yet not at all over here, and then I realized it's a matter of numbers. From what I see in the States the situation is horrendous but here? Nope, can't see it at all. I've mentioned before that I check the government statistics every day for Haute Savoie (this département - State, if you like) and there have only been 10 deaths attributed to covid in the past 10 weeks! And current bed occupation in ICUs in this State is only at 37%, including all medically sick, not just covid patients. In fact, the hospital statistics are for the State of Haute Savoie and the State of l'Ain, because Ain doesn't have any hospitals and anyone getting sick there either goes into Geneva (if they are covered in Switzerland) or comes into Haute Savoie. In fact, one of the ladies from my sewing club called me yesterday re sewing and when does it start up again and so on. She's a nurse in the second-largest hospital in Haute Savoie and was saying that while they have had a few covid patients on the wards (not in ICU), it's mostly been a case of "a bad cold" (her words, not mine) and they have been able to release them after a few days in hospital. So you see, we're not seeing a pandemic - at least not round here - and so whether or not you're vaccinated is not dividing society and pitting people against each other!

Another thing that is not only not dividing people - in fact it's uniting them, if anything - is this bloody vaccine pass, which I don't think is working out the way the government were hoping. Since it was introduced, all shopping centres larger than 20,000 square metres (so shopping malls, basically) are off limits to anyone without a pass. Except, lawyers have been filing complaints against this (so far four have been overturned), supported by the malls themselves, (of course €€€€ talk), who have seen their revenue go down by between 15 and 40%! Over here, if you want to use a shopping cart you have to insert either a coin or a token and it frees your cart from the storage bay (that ensures that you take your own cart back and they don't have to pay anyone to round up stray carts). Well protesters near Marseilles recently rounded up all the shopping carts in the parking lot and strung them together across the entrance to the mall, thus blocking access to anyone and everyone! Then you have the ridiculous situation where you can get on the Paris metro (the underground train line) without a pass but you can't sit on a café terrace and have a cup of coffee, so in Reims recently, protesters staged a sit-in picnic in the pedestrian area in front of the cafés and restaurants where they would normally be spending their money!

A protest picnic in Reims!

Goodness knows the French could have an argument in an empty room, but it has been surprising even to me how much people are sticking together and boycotting the places that require the pass. Masks are still mandatory in any indoor public places and I have never seen anyone kick off about that, but the pass? It seems to be a big "no thanks" all round!

Then on Monday night I attended an emergency meeting at the Mairie where we have our sewing club, the point of which being to inform all the different associations/clubs about the situation regarding the vaccine pass. One of the ladies had been the President of the entire Association for many, many years, and had taught theatre to adolescents (on a voluntary basis) for over 30 years. Well Catherine let rip a rant which was worthy of a balcony in Buenos Aires, all the while being vaccinated herself. She was so lit up, saying that the whole point of this pass was to divide the nation (it hasn't) and how ridiculous it was that you could go to Sunday services at church without a pass, but you couldn't attend the same church in the afternoon to listen to a recital! She went on and on as she was so angry about the whole thing and when she'd finished I started clapping - and everyone joined in! And she's right! There is no coherence at all to this damn pass and everyone knows it. Like I've said before, firemen have to get vaccinated but not police officers, gendarmes have to get it but not politicians (who can number 500 people when the National Assembly is in full session)! Damn, it makes your head spin! So Catherine's response was that she would not be checking anyone's pass if they want to attend her workshop, the yoga lady said the same thing and that she would suspend activities in solidarity. I told them that I intended to resign rather than check passes for a club that I was not allowed to attend and on and on it went! The MJC (where I used to take pilates classes) has seen its membership drop through the floor, the MJC where I take my Italian lessons is off limits to me without the pass, so Italian has gone out the window, and I've just learned that the Tuesday afternoon yoga class is "mandatory pass" too, so that's off limits to me too (actually I suspect no-one will re-enrol). But you know what, I can live without all of this stuff but how are these associations going to survive if this keeps on? They're probably not, right! In theory the pass is mandated until 15 November and is legal under the Constitution as an "urgent, temporary measure". I guess it remains to be seen if they will try to extend it beyond 15 November and/or if they have the stomach to watch so many of these small businesses go under as a result!

In other news, I managed to get another six bags of stuff out of the garage and dropped off at the charity shop the other day, as well as tearing the top bedroom apart and getting it scrubbed from top to bottom now that André has moved out. While he was here I flicked the vaccuum around on occasion but nothing more than that. Since he's moved out I've managed to pull all the furniture away from the walls and get in every nook and cranny to clean and boy does it look better up there (but eeewww, behind the wardrobe)!

All 12 of the apartments in André's building are apparently sold but so far only six people have moved in, so the other day he had an apéritif and invited all the neighbours as a "get to know you" kinda thing. It seems that they are mostly young people so it could turn out well for him. He'd already met Priscilla, his immediate neighbour, but when he had some friends round last week he invited her also. At around 11 p.m. she said she was leaving as she had to work the next morning but they stayed up until 5 a.m. chatting. So at 5 a.m. she sent him a text message, words to the effect "you dirty stop-out, staying up all night and here's me getting up to start work", so he went round to her apartment with a coffee for her and rang the doorbell - and she burst out laughing! Hmmm, she's single and cute so .... (or is it just me adding two and two together and getting five)?

And finally, on Tuesday night I was invited to dinner at my friend's house in Switzerland. He was the person I worked most closely with during my last five years at work. It was only when I got there, though, that I found out I was the only woman. Oh well, not a problem, I knew everyone, except one new colleague anyway. So we ended up being the new guy (a very nice Bolivian), a Chinese colleague, a Pakistani, my Uruguayan friend and me! They were already on the G &Ts when I got there but I turned that down in favour of a glass of wine. It was all right for them as they all lived in Geneva and were taxiing home but nope, not for me. I had two small glasses of wine over a five-hour period and then switched to water as I had a long drive home! But - and I don't know if it's age or what - the wine seemed to give me a stinking headache almost immediately so maybe I can no longer tolerate the histamines/sulfites(?) in white wine either. Damn, I may well end up teetotal before I know it! In any case, C cooked us a lovely meal and I had great fun meeting back up with these guys. Ali, the Pakistani, is a real hoot and can tell story after story! He was the guy who staggered into my office on my last day bearing wine and snacks because he wasn't letting me go without a party. If you remember I was so pissed off at my director that I decided I was leaving (after 35 years) without giving a drink. Well Ali had other ideas and soon everyone was crowding into my office and I ended up having what I reckon was the best leaving do ever! So yep, I had a great evening and it was so lovely to see them again amid all this doom and gloom. C will be helping his father retire back to Uruguay (from Belgium) soon, helping his Romanian grandma move back to Australia and will have his mom moving in with him as she doesn't want to go to Romania, Australia or Uruguay, so Geneva it is! Not sure when I'll get to meet up with him again but I'm sure it'll be great fun living with his mom (NOT!). He says he's moving in with me when that happens so I guess it's just as well I've managed to clean the skeletons out from behind the wardrobe in André's room. Oh happy days - poor guy! That'll be something for him to look forward to, I guess!