Date days, Dips and a few Disappointments

My plea for rain was not heeded by the weather gods and so we started July where June had left off…hot and a bit grumpy! Again, this month we have seen record breaking high temperatures, even here in Chabanol and the nights which are usually nice and cool here, have been very hot and sticky. Our garden was beginning to resemble an arid wasteland and we were getting mighty fed up with the relentless heat by now. I was extremely pleased to escape this weather by flying to Manchester, where one can usually depend on it raining…only to arrive on a warm (not quite as hot as at home, thank goodness) sunny day! I spent a lovely weekend with my son & his family doing Grandma stuff, playing in various parks with Ethan and Hadley, going to a great craft/foodie market in Urmston, where I could have spent a fortune and finally having a great family BBQ in the garden on the Sunday with Hazel, who had driven down from Carlisle so we could all be together and also to take me back with her. My week in Carlisle was also great and I learned how to use buses again - Hazel was working so I had to get around by myself. It has been a very long time since I was on a bus, but I soon found myself feeling at home with all the other “elderly” folk who use them regularly. It was fun and good practice for when we retire! I really enjoyed going into Carlisle under my own steam and found all the fellow travellers very helpful too :blush:. During the course of the week I also manged to meet up with our friends Linda & Mike who are settling in nicely to the beautiful little cottage they have bought in the Lakes. Linda & I soon got back into our coffee, cake and gossip routines and I enjoyed the trip we took to Cockermouth very much. I took the train to Hexham one day too to meet up with my old nursing chums. Again, I had a lovely day catching up with all their news and swapping photos of all our respective grandchildren! Once upon a time it was photos of likely young guys, then children and now grandchildren, but the friendship remains solid and we really enjoy these meet ups. In between all these outings it was great to spend some time with my daughter (who I miss very much) and also to watch a lot of wonderful tennis from Wimbledon. Such a treat for me :blush:

I was disappointed to miss the mens final though as I travelled back home. I was following the score on my phone and imagining all the great tennis which was going on. It was just as well I had that distraction as the journey home was a bit of a nightmare & a very long day. Firstly, my plane sat on the tarmac at Manchester for nearly an hour as all the air space was closed around Paris – it was Bastille Day. Then on arrival at Orly airport, after a slow bus ride there due to horrendous traffic in Paris, the departures board was showing an hours delay on the expected time for the flight from Clermont Ferrand. Bliss, oh joy. It went from bad to worse after that as it turned out the plane was poorly and the delay got longer and longer. Eventually, we were loaded onto a bus and taken out to the plane, which had obviously been put in the naughty corner miles away from the terminal and after having sat on the said bus for about 30 mins in the baking sun, the pilot got on and told us we all had to go back to the terminal, where we would be given a voucher for some food and await further news. Unfortunately, I had phoned Geoff when we boarded the bus so he was well on his way to CF airport by then! We did eventually take off 2 hours and 55mins late. Clever that by Air France…after 3 hours they have to refund your flight cost! I eventually got home about 9 pm having started the day at 6am. Funnily enough, Air France have not sent me the satisfaction survey they usually send! Can`t think why, can you?

The heatwave was still with us when I got back & that made actually working so much harder. We have had a steady stream of B and B guests since then and also a lovely returner couple in the gite too. Most of our guests are nice folk and we have no bother with them, however, a couple we had staying last weekend really annoyed me by arriving in a huge van (the size of a motorhome) without telling us in advance. It took up all our carpark which was really annoying as we had 2 other sets of guests staying that weekend too. Then they asked us to find them somewhere to eat and so we booked them into Vivianes along with another couple who were staying. This annoying couple then went up to La Margalou, decided they didnt want to eat there, cancelled the booking and went off to the rival restaurant in Chameane. And finally, after paying by Cheque Vacances (again, never mentioned that when they booked) they wrote something derogatory about the bed in my guest book…which is not the place to do that really. Needless to say, they won`t be staying here again! It is people like that that make me happy to be giving all this up soon.

We have been enjoying our date days again. We had a very nice trip up to Lac Aydat before I went away, where we had a lovely lunch and a nice swim in the lake. It was before all the schools here broke up and so the plan deau was still relatively quiet, which was good. When I got back, we went to La Chaise Dieu and ate fabulous Thai food there before swimming in the nearby plan deau. Again, it wasnt too busy and the water was great. Last week it was so hot again that we decided we couldnt face being out in the heat all day, so we went for lunch at one of our favourite local auberges, La Reine Margot at Usson, and then when it had cooled down a bit in the afternoon we went up to our lake at Vernet la Varenne and swam there. We have been back swimming there all month now as the bacteria problem has disappeared. We have noticed though, how quiet it is there this year. There are hardly any tourists at all. Very worrying, especially after the commune has spent so much money up grading the parking and access to the lake. Today, being Wednesday we are off again probably towards the mountains. I love these days out. Its so nice to get away from the daily chores and the computer for a bit.

We like the rest of France have spent a lot of July hiding inside to keep out of the ferocious heat. Luckily, we have had coverage of the Tour de France to help keep us sane! I haven`t found it quite so exciting this year as I missed Chris Froome…and the French commentators’ hatred of him! However, the last couple of days of the tour were quite dramatic and showed how strange the weather has been here this year. We now have much more palatable temperatures …and no nasty hail storms here, thank goodness.

On the house sale front we had a big disappointment just after I got back from the UK. Our agent came to see us to inform us that she was unable to sell our house at the price she had originally put it on the market for, a price we always had thought was a bit high mind you, but one she was sure she could get. She said all the feedback from the visits had pointed out that there was a lot of work to do on the house and the price was too high. We were a bit annoyed about this, as we felt we have now wasted 6 months, not to mention having spent a lot of time messing about with visits. We told her to stop advertising for the rest of the summer, as fitting visits in around our guests was not going to be easy and then we will restart in September at a much lower price. We feel a bit let down by all this and will probably engage another agent too in September to work along side Aurelia. She wasn’t happy about that but too bad. Meanwhile it is back to the drawing board for me researching what we can afford in Frejus with much less of a budget :frowning:

Another disappointment was the rejection of our Carte de Sejour application. We submitted the dossier to the prefecture in Clermont Ferrand in January and they have only now sent it back asking for more documents, mainly because we both have businesses. We have now re-submitted the dossier and are keeping our fingers crossed that it is right now. All very annoying though and now we are a bit concerned that when they see how little money we actually earn from these businesses, they might reject us again. At one point, just after all this, we began to wonder if we really wanted to stay in France…something I never thought Id ever say. All this faffing about with this paperwork is beginning to get us down. However, a very welcome refund from Geoffs pension provider following a mistake he`d made in the calculations and a lot of grovelling on his part to put it right, finally cheered us up so all is back to normal again!

One of the things which has made us smile a bit this month was the coverage of the anniversary of the moon landings. Although I have limited interest in anything to do with space really, we were amused because our son was trying to explain this event to our grandson Ethan. In doing this he asked us to tell Ethan what we were doing at the time of the landings. Geoff then got into a bit of a pickle trying to explain to Ethan, that he had watched the event on a very small black and white TV…a concept which was very difficult for a 5-year-old who is surrounded by colour TV, screens and images all the time! We then got into the fact that there were no mobile phones at that time…another difficult concept for him to grasp! By the end of this discussion we felt totally ancient!

OK my friends, I think that Im done for this month. After all the disappointments I am ending on a high though, as I went with my friend Bernadette to visit an exhibition my art group is involved in yesterday and discovered Ive sold two paintings. Youpi! So, on that happy note we will now slide into August where I see from my diary, I am going to be a bit busy with guests both in the gite and chambres d`hotes. Happy days…I think!

A bientot mes amis…

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Funny that, Christine, we have just had some rather inept people staying with us. One lady broke her ankle when cycling and the other one messed up on the pool.
I don’t think they were used to staying in gites as they left both seat and lounger covers out on the one evening we had rain.
It was a good job as the ‘pool boy’ spotted them.
We will be full if they try to come again.
Sorry about your lack of a sale, very annoying.

You always get some dont you?? Fortunately we dont get many but they still annoy me at times! Re the house sale…we have always known it would be difficult to sell here. Not many people want 2 houses do they unless they want to do the same as us. We are not pressed as yet but it is annoying to have wasted all these months.