A man of many talents!

Well my electricity saga is ongoing - 16 days and counting to get the top two floors of my house re-wired etc. and then he will start on the ground floor next week. I'm really hoping it will all get done by next Friday, but if not, oh well. We can't be far off now! That being said, I was so happy the weather was good today that I took myself off for a walk through the local woods just to get some fresh air. It's supposed to be nice again tomorrow too so I was trying to decide where I should go - further afield - in order to be able to deal with the cabin fever next week! But then my neighbour sent me a message asking if I wanted to go out walking with her tomorrow so I jumped at the chance. She's the one who has lived here about 20 years but since her husband isn't interested in going out exploring she really has little idea what lovely walks there are out there. Just in case we're going to take our snow shoes with us - you know the ones we were desperate to get hold of during lockdown and which we've never used yet!!! We'll see how it goes tomorrow but I actually don't think we'll need them at this point! On my walk today I noticed yet again the house with what looks like loads of antennae all over the place. Probably five on the roof and a massive satellite dish (maybe five feet in diameter) in the front garden! I've often wondered what's up with all that equipment and assuming he's probably not a very indiscreet spy, I reckon E.T. will definitely be able to phone home from his place if he ever comes back to earth somewhere near here!

The other week after yoga class one of the ladies asked me if I would be interested in taking a trip to the Périgord region (south-western France) with their old fogies group in September. I don't have anything planned, what with all the expense of getting this place put right, but in the end I decided to go for it. I know this lady a little as she was on the trip to Corsica with us so I thought "what the hell" and headed off to St. Pierre on Tuesday to sign up. The lady president of the St. Pierre club asked me if I was interested in playing cards with them (there were about 80 people there playing when I showed up), but as we were chatting two older gentlemen came over to her bitching, apparently, that so-and-so wouldn't switch tables and "you know we're all supposed to move around after every game"! Ehhhh, no thanks, I'll pass. I had signed up a couple of years ago for card club in the village where my sewing club is but gave up in the end because it was around this time that Jordan and Jen needed baby-sitting help with Charlie so I dropped out. At our last annual meeting (where each club's financial statements are handed in) I learned that there was a lot of bickering going on in this card club too so the then lady president had resigned and someone else had taken over! Maybe card games bring out the worst in people, I don't know, but the average age seemed to be around 105 so I suppose if they're bitching at least it means they're still breathing! In any case, we'll see what this trip to the Périgord is like and if it's any good I might go on some of the various day trips with them too if they appeal!

Now that I've finished listening to the Ethel Kennedy book, I've switched over to listening to Cheere Denise reading the Andrew Lowney book, Traitor King, about Edward and Mrs. Simpson. It's obviously very very different to the Kennedy book but it could well prove interesting. What is amazing, however, are the similarities between them and Harry and Meghan - they really do seem to have been Harry and Meghan Mark I! Oh I don't mean in the sense that they both married very domineering American divorcées - that's the least of it - but in the apparent similarities between the two men's personalities and their relationships with their wives! Edward was raised never having to think for himself for even one minute. Every day someone decided what he would wear, what he would say, where he would go and so on, and he seems to have been a totally self-absorbed, selfish, entitled and mean man. After his abdication but before he and Wallis could get married (I'm guessing they were waiting for her divorce to come through) he was invited to stay with Kitty Rothschild and her husband in one of their homes. His days seemed to have been spent navel-gazing or shopping - and then having his bills forwarded to Kitty for them to pay!!!!! What is it with these fabulously wealthy people thinking other people are just dying to pay their way for them? On the day Kitty finally left because she'd had enough of him, he couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed to thank her and say goodbye!!! Good grief! What's even weirder is that Wallis Simpson didn't actually want to marry him. Oh he was good enough to have as one of her dalliances - another notch on the bedpost so to speak - but she apparently found him so incredibly boring and "soppy" she really, really did not want to marry him. The book states that the day after the wedding he smiled at her and said "so what do we do now?" and she later confided to Gore Vidal that it was at that moment she knew she was going to have take over where palace staff had left off and become his new mommy!!! Yikes! It's harder going than the Kennedy book but so far (I'm on chapter six) the parallels between them and H and M are amazing! The author actually chipped in in the comment section of chapter two to say that he very much appreciated the way Cheere Denise was presenting his book, so I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of it!

My friend came over the other day to ask if I wanted some apples as she'd over-ordered on her grocery delivery. She'd wanted four apples and ended up with 4 kg of apples (about 20 apples)! She told me that she hadn't been well as she'd strained a ligament in her left shoulder - she thinks lugging bags of firewood around - and ended up at the ER as she was in such pain. They decided to send her for a scan, but by the time the scan appointment came around the pain had greatly diminished so she cancelled it - only to end up in the same situation the following day but this time in her right shoulder. I told her for god's sake call me if she needs me to drive her somewhere but being stubborn (aren't we all) she'd managed on her own. Then I spotted my favourite neighbour trying to hump a 20 kg gas bottle (about 45 lbs) out of her car and into her kitchen, so I went running round to carry it with her before she did herself an injury too. We don't have mains gas here so use gas bottles if we want a gas hob - but changing those bottles is no joke as they are extremely heavy. Again I understand why people don't like to ask for help but ....! And bugger me but didn't my own gas bottle run out the next day, but at least I only have to lug it into the garage from the car so it's easier for me! I told them we should get a bigger place and have some kind of Golden Girls set up! It might not be such a bad idea, come to think of it!

I mentioned before that I've ordered so many different kinds of lightbulbs off Amazon these past couple of weeks that as he was leaving the other night my electrician picked up one of the duds that I was going to take to the recycling centre and asked me what reference this particular bulb was. I invented a reference off the top of my head and he started laughing. So he tried again, and again I got it wrong, and it ended with him patiently explaining to me that any bulb that started with reference letter E was a screw in bulb and the other numbers referred to the different dimensions. He told me he'd test me on it again next time, so as he was on his way out the door I asked him to name the six official languages of the United Nations without looking them up. So he closes the door and comes back in and of course he couldn't do it! As of right now we're one all!

Then yesterday after he'd spent a good 30 minutes on his hands and knees pulling cable through a very low crawl space I told him to give it a break and offered him a cup of coffee. As we were sitting there he commented on my X-box but I said I couldn't use it because last time I turned it on it needed to update settings and I couldn't figure it out! So he told me it was pretty easy and he would do it for me. After about 10 minutes he'd got it up and running and as I told him the only thing I ever played was the tennis he had me standing in front of the camera so that it could adjust itself, then told me to put my right arm up (I'm going to serve you see) and throw the "ball" up in the air with my left arm. While we're doing this I didn't hear my neighbour come round and she was half way up the stairs listening to us roaring laughing and must have wondered what on earth I was paying my electrician to do all day! It genuinely was just a 10 minute thing while he took a break, but I'm sure she now thinks I have money to burn paying an electrician by the hour to play X-box with me! Oh just think of the gossip!