Busy again, but damn I'm tired!

Damn, I was tired last week, I guess things started catching up to me. I know so much of it was to do with getting over the birthday party I had here and putting everything back to rights, but I guess I also have to admit that I am 63 and have to start realizing that I don't have the energy I had when I was younger, right? That doesn't stop me half the time but ...! For instance, the day before the party when I was trying to get everything set up, I took one look at the back lawn and thought "oh no, I can't let it go like that"! My gardener usually stops by approximately every two weeks - it very much depends on his schedule and the weather, of course. But my lawn looked terrible so I took a deep breath and wandered over to my neighbour's to ask if I could borrow the new, battery-operated lawnmower that their son had bought them for Christmas. I still have a very good lawnmower in my garage but I haven't used it for a couple of years and that thing is heavy! Well their lawnmower was a delight, pretty lightweight and I got the lawn cut in about 45 minutes. The downside was that the battery only lasts about 15 minutes so I had to use three batteries just to get my piddly little lawn cut! I think if I ever had to go back to cutting my own grass for some ungodly reason I'd get one of those things, though I really have no intention of ever going there! And then, of course, I noticed that the peonies - while beautiful when in full bloom - were making a real mess now that they were wilting, so out came the secateurs and I got those and the rose bushes done too! So I guess there's a reason I was tired, right?

What I hadn't really given much thought to last week was that this Saturday I had volunteered to host our monthly boardgame evening, so here we go again. This time it was easier, of course, because we were only 10 and we've now gotten it down to a pretty fine art, but still, while it was a lovely evening I was really tired today too. I had set up Charlie's birthday present (twin tents with an interconnecting tunnel filled with 100 plastic balls!), but when we went to let him get into it we discovered that there were wasps and creepy-crawlies inside, making that an absolute no-go. So then I had the fun task of picking up 100 plastic balls (seriously, why does any kid need one hundred of those things?) and realized he'd probably be just as happy with about 10 balls in a plastic tub - and he was. Well no, in fact, he was even happier, singing to himself and then turning round to make sure we were all watching as he "made his cake"! He really was enjoying himself!

Someone noticed the veggie plants on my balcony and pointed out that there was now a rather nice looking courgette hanging from the balcony where the plant had wound itself back round the railings, so I ran upstairs and "harvested" my first courgette. But seriously, can you imagine sitting on someone's terrace having a nice glass of wine and getting hit on the bonce by a courgette???? We started off having an apéro and eating outside, but by around 9 p.m. some were getting chilly so we moved indoors where we played a few games, with the intention of having Charlie sleep until it was time to go home - but he was having none of it! He slept maybe 30 minutes and that was it - he wanted to be with us! So I spent most of the evening quite happily playing with him while they played their games but I don't quite know how he managed to stay up till 1 a.m. on so little sleep. He's got me beat, I can tell you!

Everyone helped clean up before they left, but of course there's always stuff to do the next day, isn't there. I paced myself better today and worked a bit, then sat and read for a while, then worked a bit, and so on, and in the end it got done. In fact, Isabelle (my neighbour) sat on my tatty old sunbed yesterday and said she could absolutely see why I spend so much time sitting on the terrace as it's just perfect. It has the house's best view and sitting on the sunbed under the balcony out of the sun is just heaven. I swear if we'd gone quiet for a few minutes she would have fallen asleep! I mentioned to her that if she would like a couple of lettuces I had growing on my terrace in my plant pots to come over and get them because I couldn't eat them all, even taking into account that the slugs and snails had had their fill. When she said she'd be over in about 15 minutes I thought "right, that's it, let's get those bloody mattresses into the car before she comes"! You see I'd been to IKEA the week before and bought two new mattresses for my bed and still had the old ones to get rid of. They weren't terrible but every so often I like to get new ones to freshen everything up. Having wandered round (been trapped in?) IKEA for a couple of hours I was amazed at the price of some of that stuff. I don't have any problem sleeping (except when my mind is whirring) so don't need special mattresses or pillows, but crikey, the price of some of that stuff!!!!! My bed takes two 80cm x 200 cm mattresses so that's what I needed to get into my car in 15 minutes to take to the recycling tomorrow. So being nothing if not innovative, I decided to throw the buggers out my bathroom window rather than try to lug them down the stairs! Worked a treat and I now have them both in my car ready for tomorrow - and about a six inch nose space between my seat and the windscreen!

Jordan and Jen mentioned that they were going out with their neighbours today, either to Les Lindarets (the goat village I've written about before), or to the Parc de Merlet (which I don't know), so I might take myself off this week to visit the Merlet in the hopes of discovering somewhere new!

Charlie at Les Lindarets. He wasn't the least
bit scared (which was good, as they can be
quite aggressive)!

Then today the Critérium du Dauphiné (bike race) came through this area, cycling up to the Plâteau de Solaison and my only thought was "oh my God"! I've written about hiking at the Plâteau de Solaison before and that climb is nasty! I don't know how they do it (but then I guess they're not 63 either, are they)?

So all in all, it's been nice having a quieter day today. As I was sat in the back garden I heard a birthday party at the neighbours, with lots of kids squealing and playing in an above-ground pool. That's a real treat and will never bother me - it's what kids do!

Oh, and the big news is ... Jordan's been having a hard time with Max (but more particularly his brother, Arnaud) for some time. The other day Arnaud complained that a radiator Jordan had installed under a window was off by one centimetre. Jordan explained to him that he'd had to follow the plans rather than the positioning of the window because that's where the relevant piping was. Then an electrician who was also working on the site walked over and pointed out to Arnaud that the last four radiators he (Arnaud) had installed were the same because he, also, had had to follow the plans, and in any case, who could spot a 1 cm difference? Basically Arnaud told the electrician to f..... off because "Jordan was just a waste of money"! I've been hearing some of the stuff that has been going on over the months and it has really been getting to Jordan, so this week was the last straw. Even more disgusting though are the so-called "jokes" about Charlie's parentage!!!! and Jordan has had enough. So he's drafted his letter and when he gets to work tomorrow he'll be giving them the requisite two weeks' notice and handing in his resignation! Let's see how many "squared up" radiators you get done all on your own then, shall we Arnaud? He's got nothing to go to but there should be plenty of temporary work (have you ever met an unemployed plumber? Plumbers are like hen's teeth!) and since's André's neighbour came back to him again to say to get Jordan to give him his cv (done) as he's got people asking in Switzerland, it looks like things could be all change in the next few weeks! I'll let you know more as and when!

Brilliant!

I didn't get to watch all of the platinum jubilee celebrations but what I did see was wonderful - and even the ubiquitous British weather cooperated. I can only think Adam Lambert has nerves of steel to pull off a performance in front of that crowd (and the guy didn't even win American Idol????)! Still, it's a once in a lifetime event - or not even that since she was only 26 when she ascended to the throne. Not likely to happen again is it. Queen Victoria reigned for 63 years so now they've got 70 years to beat. Just a shame Freddy M didn't live to see it!

I'm so lucky, lucky, lucky!

So we had Jordan's surprise 30th birthday at my house yesterday, but damn were we lucky! The weather this week has been so up and down and on Friday it rained and right now it's pouring down hail storms!!! But yesterday the gods smiled on us and it was wonderful. No rain and about 30°C all day! What more could I ask for?

At a guess I think we were 30 to eat and maybe 50 dropping in for a drink. I'd done all my shopping by Thursday and Jen and her mom came over the day before to help set up, with Jen lying to Jordan about going to work, and four hours later we'd pretty much got it all done. I have to admit I stress over this stuff but everyone showed up and hid behind my neighbours' hedges until he arrived (said neighbours who had been wonderful about lending me chairs/tables etc.) and it all worked out great!

Max showed up with his girlfriend, Elise, who is quadraplegic (following an accident with wild boars), and then had a problem with the wheelchair ramp on his van. I sent André out to help but seriously??? You send out a guy who doesn't know the top end of a screwdriver from the bottom? But we got it sorted and everyone was hidden out behind the neighbours' hedges when Jordan arrived. He thought we were heading out to the village restaurant but nope, we had about 30 people à table and maybe another 20 stopping by for an apéro! And yes I'm knackered but dammit, I'm so so happy that I have all the people that I love so close to me!

A busy week!

Sunday was Mother's Day here in France and Jordan and Jen had both us grandmas over for lunch followed by board games, which was a really nice way to spend a couple of hours together. Then Tuesday was Jordan's 30th birthday so Jen invited a few friends round for a suprise get together and then he thinks we're all going to lunch in the restaurant in my village on Saturday as my birthday gift. Well that's not quite true because Saturday is the day I'm hosting about 30 of his friends at my place for a surprise get together. I think we're on track to have everything ready so all I can do at this point is pray for good weather. Earlier this week they were forecasting a 90% chance of rain on Saturday but as the week is going on that percentage is going down and down so I'm desperately hoping it drops right down to zero rain because with those kinds of numbers we really need to be outside. Still, if it rains, it rains and I guess we'll just have to make the best of it. At least it's forecast to be warm, so that's a positive!

Teaching Charlie to play guitar on his 30th birthday!

On Wednesday night on his way home from work Jordan was passing a truck on the motorway when his car lost all power. Luckily he was just able to pull it over onto the hard shoulder before losing power completely. The upshot of a very long evening saw him getting towed to the Ford garage and me heading out to pick him up at 10 p.m., with a subsequent call from Ford the next day to say that his car was a complete goner - a nice birthday present right! So this week we've been playing musical cars with them either taking my car or me running one or the other of them around, until this coming Monday when Jen's mom will (hopefully) get her new car and they will be buying her old car off her! All good fun, right?

The past week has seen glorious weather here with perfect-ish temperatures (for me at least) in the region of 25-30°C. I had to laugh though because while we've been getting 30°C (86°F) my sister has been getting 40°C (104°F) in Spain (yuck), while my brother in England said he was getting 13°C (55°F) and rain! I reckon that's not "climate change" though - it seems to me to be pretty much par for the course as far as I can see! Still my peonies and roses have come up a treat with this perfect weather!

In other news, last week someone in our retirees' group sent round an email asking people resident in France who had taken a lump sum where they stood for tax purposes in regards to the lump sum. I knew exactly what she was getting at because if you remember I had a big kurfuffle when I retired around whether or not I had to pay an extra 7.5% tax on my lump sum to pay into the French health care system (sécurité sociale). Thankfully in the end it all worked out for me and I didn't have to pay the additional tax because never having worked in France, I'm not covered under the sécurité sociale. But I was just waiting for my former colleague-from-hell to answer the email throwing my name out there as the "expert" on this matter. You may remember that when she was going back and forth with the tax people on this issue a couple of years ago she forwarded my tax information to them by way of example. Anyway, so far so good, but I'm keeping an eagle eye out on that email thread just in case!

With all the noise recently about how many subscribers Netflix have been losing, I have to say I'm still getting my money's worth out of them (Amazon Prime, not so much) and have just finished watching The Lincoln Lawyer, which I enjoyed very much. When I'm watching a particular series I tend to look up the cast to find out who the actors are and I was somewhat surprised to see that Matthew McConaughey played the lead role because the actor looked nothing like him. Now I've never actually seen Matthew McConaughey in anything so just thought I was probably thinking of the wrong person, but as the series went on, while the actor's English was perfect, I realized that he also had a slight Spanish accent. This confused me because I was pretty sure McConaughey is American born and bred, so I looked it up again and found that McConaughey had played the lead role in the movie, whereas Mexican actor, Manuel García-Rulfo played the main role in the series. As I say, I enjoyed it very much, so much so that I've downloaded the book, although I admit García-Rulfo being very easy on the eye may have had a bearing on my enjoyment of the series (I obviously have a type)!

Manuel García-Rulfo

And did anyone see the push-back that the WHO got just last week after the attempt to introduce a Treaty on Pandemic Response? Wow! If not, in a nutshell, in January 2022 the Biden Administration introduced a motion to basically have WHO member states cede their sovereign powers to the WHO in the event of another pandemic (monkeypox, Marburg??). As it currently stands, WHO can only make recommendations in connection with a pandemic, but these amendments would give WHO authority re future pandemics and the way to deal with them, and their instructions would basically be binding on all signatory countries!!! I'm obviously paraphrasing here, but I can't understand why any sovereign nation would want to hand over such powers to unelected bureaucrats? Well there was such strong push back that the U.S. submitted watered down proposals, which should not even be discussed at WHO (yet) because under WHO's own rules, any such proposals have to be tabled at least four months before the meeting. Anyway, Botswana got up and made a statement on behalf of 47 African nations pushing back on these proposals, followed by similar statements by Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran and Malaysia. The upshot is that these countries, in response to huge public pressure, have demanded that negotiations be pushed back to at least 2024, by which time countries will hopefully have had time to adequately debate such proposals! Thank God for public pressure eh!

In other news, earlier this week I got a message from Amazon basically saying my kindle is so old that as from August Amazon will no longer be supporting this version of kindle. I was pissed off because I don't really want to have to buy another kindle just because of planned obsolescence, but nor do I want to start reading on my phone because it wears the battery down. In the end, since I still want to have a kindle available for when I travel, I went online and picked out a cheap kindle, put it in my Amazon basket - and then left it there. Sure enough, two days later I went back online and the price had dropped by €20 (???) so I went ahead and ordered it, although it still sticks in my craw having to replace a perfectly good (in my opinion) kindle!

And finally, another group of unelecteds met in Davos last week at the meeting of the World Economic Forum. I watched some of the shorter clips about what was going on there but I find the whole thing more than irritating. Klaus Schwab set up the WEF about 40 years ago and WEF have been training "young global leaders" ever since (Merkel, Gates, Putin, Blair, Macron, Trudeau, Ardern). The clip below was filmed in 2017 but it gives you an idea of the reach that WEF has!

Young Global Leaders - Wikipedia

One clip I did see, although I can't remember who it was and can't be arsed to look it up, was someone talking about how his company was close to perfecting an app that would allow you to "calculate your carbon footprint". So if, say, you drive your car instead of taking the bus it would calculate your foot print, but if you walked instead of taking the bus, it would show a more "acceptable" carbon footprint. There was even talk about how it could track your eating habits and "notify" you of any bad habits and your need to improve them!!!!! It's all very 1984-ish, isn't it! But I wonder how many of the Davos clique were calculating their carbon footprints as they sped away in their motorcades back to the private jets waiting to whisk them back home! Not many, I suspect!

Vegans and snails!

About 18 months ago I was introduced to a new-to-me vegan restaurant just up the road from here. I've always been interested in vegetarianism/veganism so was delighted to find that their food was actually very, very good! Then of course the pandemic intervened and this restaurant chose to no longer do in-house dining because they refused to ask for people's vaccine passports - so it was take-out only! Anyway, everything opened back up for us a couple of months ago and I saw on their website that they were offering cookery courses, so I signed up and went to my first one yesterday and it was wonderful! I'd been to a vegan class in Geneva a couple of years ago and it was a real disappointment, but this one was everything I'd hoped it would be and more! The lady lives and breathes veganism/organic food/holistic medicine and is such an interesting woman. For the first 30 minutes we talked about why we were interested in it. She said that right from a very young age she felt such empathy with animals that she couldn't force herself to eat meat so vegetarianism came naturally, followed by veganism as she got older! It's a lovely place where they give yoga classes, and reiki and massage therapy, in addition to the restaurant side of things. There were four other ladies, all very interesting too. One lady "talks to animals, plants, trees, etc." and was very into all that stuff, and while she's obviously free to believe what she wants I just wished she'd talked a little less! That being said we were all different but all very accepting of those differences too. In fact, the lady I liked the most has a small farm in the mountains where she and her husband raise animals for meat and the "tree hugger lady" didn't bat an eyelid at it!

On the menu were chilled courgette and cucumber soup, carrot and olive cake and the most delicious uncooked lemon tart (made using avocado as the "mousse")! Everything was really good and our teacher told us how and why she used the different flours and vegetable milks/creams, etc. 

Chilled courgette and cucumber soup!

Olive and carrot cake!

No cook lemon tart!
(The photos aren't very good because
I'd already put it all in containers
to take home when I thought to take photos)!

It was such a good time that I was disappointed to learn that they were selling up and moving to Vendée in September!!! When I asked her what they were going to do in Vendée she said she had no idea but as somewhat of a nomad, every few years she felt the need to move on and she knew something would turn up for her when she got there! Apparently her grandmother had been a true gypsy so I guess that is where she got her wanderlust from! Since I'm anything but a gypsy I kind of admire her, but will be very sorry to see her and her little restaurant go! I don't know if you've seen the film Chocolat but she reminds me very much of the main protagonist in that film. That being said, the book is so much better than the film (of course), all the more so because in the film it's the local Mayor that falls under the spell of the travelling gypsy woman, whereas in the book it's the local priest, which makes it that much more "juicy"!

Thankfully there are a few very good health food stores round here but when I asked her where she preferred to shop she mentioned a new Ecoquartier which had been built up the road in Bonneville, on the site of the old hospital. Now I'd never heard of this place so this morning I took a trip out there to check it out. The store was, indeed, lovely and afterwards I stopped in the little coffee shop next door for a drink (and yeah, a meringue cake too), but it did strike me that for an ecoquartier there was an awful lot of concrete! As I was only 10 minutes away from Jordan and Jen's I bought a couple of pastries and stopped over there as I wanted to discuss something with Jen. Since Charlie is only in daycare Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Jen's mom and I take care of him the other two days, with me doing Friday as I want to continue my Monday morning yoga classes. When we were sorting out our schedules though, Jen's mom had a whole list of Mondays where she couldn't take Charlie (she has a boyfriend who lives 90 minutes away and goes to his place, and then they are going on holiday soon for two weeks). Fair enough, I worked my schedule to suit her and cancelled a few yoga classes - except this morning she sent me a message to say she was coming home early from the boyfriend's and could now take Charlie tomorrow instead. While I don't mind accommodating her, I don't want to be forever on the receiving end of moving plans around after they've been agreed, so I wanted to ask Jen what suited her best. I'd planned to miss yoga and have Charlie at my house tomorrow and have set up his little swimming pool, but now that's been changed and we're back to our normal schedule. I don't know, maybe I'm being unreasonable but I don't like making plans and then having them switched at the last minute, especially if I've made my own plans! 

Anyway, it got sorted, and then Jen asked me if I wanted to go to visit a snail farm with her and Charlie as they had an open day and it was only 10 minutes away? A snail farm, ehhhh, no thank you, I'm not shoving those things in my mouth! Well in the end we all went and it was a fun way to spend a few hours (not that Charlie cared that much but he was very interested in everyone around him). Oh, and there was no snail eating either. It was just the owner showing how he "cultivated" 200,000 snails a year for the local market. He was good fun and put on a 50 minute show for the kids all about snails. "How do you wake up a snail"? "You shout at him"! Nope, they're deaf, they're also pretty much blind (unless you get to within a couple mm of them), and so the best way to wake them up is to water them (and of course the kids got a good watering too). Then he asked what snails eat and cracked up when one little boy shouted "ketchup"! The really interesting part was when he showed the kids how strong snails are, capable of moving 100 times their own weight - which he proved by attaching a toy car to a snail's shell and they watched it pull the car up the slope. As I say, it was a good show, and afterwards we had a wander round the other stands set up in his field (selling honey, wine, jewellery, etc.), had a quick beer and then headed back home!

See the toy car "tow truck"!

On the way home I stopped to fill my car up. While I was there a young lad on a scooter asked if I could change a €20 note for two tens as he wanted to put €10 in his scooter. I knew I hadn't got any change so told him I'd fill his scooter up for him. Crikey, you'd think I'd given him the world, he was so grateful!

When I got home I went round the salad plants I've got potted up on my garden wall, picking off slugs and snails before they could do too much damage. Oddly enough it seems that the best deterrent has been the smashed up egg shells I've got scattered round a couple of pots, so I'll be keeping any and all egg shells in future - or at least until this growing season ends. I had to laugh when I went to throw some stuff in my compost bin though, because some time ago I'd dumped a whole bunch of potato peelings in there - and now it looks like I've got a compost bin full of spuds! I'll have to wait till I dig them up but from what I'm seeing right now I needn't have wasted my time planting potato seedlings in my raised beds if all it was going to take was to drop the peel in the compost bin!

Just as I was starting to think about dinner there was a knock at my door and my neighbour walked in with about 10 bottles. Here's me thinking we were in for a good time tonight, so I was disappointed when she asked if she could fill them up with water as their water heater had blown and they were having to empty the tank to fix it! It ended up with her very embarrassed daughter coming over to my place for a shower, although when I offered to give them my spare key they said they'd be ok as they were hoping to fix it by tomorrow. While I wish I'd already gotten my bloody bathrooms done, I was so glad I'd made the effort to clean all the upstairs rooms thoroughly this week. I guess it's just like your mom used to say - always wear clean underpants because you just never know!

And finally, I don't know if I'd mentioned before but I decided to start using my lovely sunny balcony as a place to put my other home grown veg hopefuls since I never use it. So far I've got 11 rather nice looking plants out there (tomatoes, courgettes, hot peppers) and you know what, there's not a single slug/snail on them. So it would seem, that planting them on a first floor balcony is an even better slug deterrent than scattering crushed egg shells round your plants. Beat that ya buggers!

Yikes!

Jen asked me if I could look after Charlie pretty much all day today as she was having to do a split shift to cover for absences. No problem, of course, but getting up at 5.30 a.m. to get there for 7 a.m. was a bit of a shock to the system. Still he was as good as gold and when I sensed he was getting a bit tired, but still too early for a nap (in my opinion), we walked up to the farmers' market in their little town and then stopped off at the park for about 30 minutes afterwards. He loved it as there were loads of kids there today and he got to crawl over (not quite walking yet) to so many of his new best friends and "chat"! After that it was back home for his nap and it was only then that I got to check out what was going on on FB! Crikey, there was a massive explosion right next to Geneva airport today! First I heard was that it was the UPS terminal at the airport, but it was later confirmed to be a building that was being built for asylum seekers right near the airport. No-one was hurt, thankfully, but I have to admit that my first thought was "hmmm, a building for asylum seekers", and then the next thought was simply "I'm glad I won't be sitting in that traffic"! Still, it wouldn't be the first time a building being either built or renovated has gone up in smoke in Geneva! It made me laugh though when I read in the Geneva news that "traffic was only slightly affected"! You've gotta hand it to the Swiss!

Tomorrow I have a cookery class at the excellent vegan restaurant near here. Their food really is very good and I'm intrigued to see what we will be cooking. Will let you know in my next post!

And, you wouldn't believe it but something that must have been the size of a flying cow has just left me a "gift" on my brand new velux in the TV room. There's just no respect sometimes is there!

Wow!

I took a trip out to our large, local charity shop last week to drop of some stuff (not enough - I need to do better) and have a look around. As I was almost there a cyclist came belting round a bend, down a hill and on the wrong side of the road! He wasn't a lycra fettishist, just an old fart on a bike, but thank God I spotted him before he got to me. The guy behind me wasn't quite so lucky though as he had to swerve like crazy to miss the idiot! Damn, do some people have a death wish or what? This charity store isn't much cop, to be honest, but they don't do too badly for baby items and I was able to pick up a lightweight, collapsible stroller to keep at my house for just €10 - whereas they run anywhere from €80-€100! So score there then!

On the way home I stopped back off at the garden centre to pick up a couple more of the 7' wooden stakes and a couple of tomato plants. The old guy behind me at the check-out made me laugh though when he said "hon, you've got some high hopes for those tomato plants, haven't you"? Although actually no I don't. My "build my own greenhouse" idea is a roaring flop so that will all have to be taken down, I guess. In all honesty, given the amount I've spent on my "organic gardening" idea so far, I'd probably just be better off buying it all from the health food shop and to hell with it! Still, every spring I get this madcap idea how "this year it's going to be better" and then it mostly goes tits up (if you'll forgive the expression)!

Jen had an interview today for the director position at another local crèche (she was upfront with her current employers about it). I don't know how she did as yet, but if she was lucky enough to get it it would basically just mean a transfer from her nursing job at the psychiatric hospital (where she worked before she had Charlie), on the same pay grade and with all her time in grade respected, so fingers crossed!

Then last week I got a reminder email from the people who prepare my French taxes asking where my paperwork was. I told them I'd been waiting for them to send me the link to the Legal Pilot that we used last time but nope, this time they were using Swisstransfer - and what a wonderful system it is. I'd already prepared my paperwork anyway, but using Swisstransfer it literally took me two minutes to upload everything, type in their email and they'd received it. The difference is that once the document is sent, other than my own copy the email/file then disappears permanently. Clever huh! I would guess these people handle some pretty big tax declarations and can't take the risk of having people's personal tax information possibly being hacked!

On another positive note I recently received my latest water bill so I yet again sent André a message saying "thank you for moving out", because my water bill is now only about a third of what it used to be! And then, I got a phone call on my mobile from "Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes" - which is this region - and while I don't normally pick up on numbers I don't recognize, this time I did and it was my bank/insurance company wanting to review my various insurances. My first thought, of course, was "here we go", but nope he suggested that as my car is now 11 years old I probably didn't need fully comp (I had no idea it was still on fully comp), the insurance amount for renewal of home contents was waayyyy overvalued so all in all I've knocked about €60 off my monthly bill for that, in addition to the €40 a month that I was being charged by my telephone provider for a wifi box I no longer owned. The one place I wouldn't go was my accident/sickness insurance because I have excellent worldwide coverage through my former employer, but all in all I did pretty well from that phone call!  Add to that the euro is dropping like crazy at the moment so that gives my Swiss franc denominated pension more bang for my buck, so I'm well pleased!

And finally, the windows guys showed up today to install the three velux windows I'd ordered a couple of months back and man did they work hard. It was scorching hot and they were up and down my stairs and had those babies installed in just five hours. The only thing missing is the blackout screen for the large velux in my TV room, which is on back order, but I'm so pleased with the rest as those rotting windows were starting to get on my nerves. Now if I can just get my bathrooms started .....! But I think I'm going to have to go with someone other than Jordan as he is working all hours God sends at the moment so he's fine with my looking for someone else - although goodness knows I won't be looking forward to the mess when they start that! I think it's time to do some serious decluttering before even thinking about all that!