les Davey de France

Stormtime! Yesterday was MEGAWET and MEGAWINDY. I eventually shut the shutters on the westward side of the house where the weather comes from, just in case. I thought of that day in 2009 when one Saturday we sat and listened to the constant wind, hearing occasional roof-tiles move, wondering what we would find when we could emerge from the house. That year one house in our area lost ALL its roof and another had a tree crush half its roof. Our garden fences fell, giving us the rather nice "jardin public" between our houses for a couple of weeks. This weather wasn't nearly as bad. In fact it wasn't even classed as a storm. Just gusts (rafales). This morning all seems OK. No fences down. No trees fallen.

The task before us this year was dawning on me yesterday as I faffed around to get the repaired oven back. Downsizing means : 1) selling the house after April, when the tram come almost to the door. 2) redecorating in probably three rooms. Touching up in others. 3) dramatically reducing our books. Watch for treasures on Amazon! 4) and our furniture. Will this mean I have to sell my fake Brynmawr chair? 5) and the normal spring garden slash-and-dump We need to get shot of: sofas, bunk beds, wardrobes (unless we leave them here), tables, chairs, garden furniture, books, bikes?, LOADS of stuff! So yesterday morning, thinking of our typical week, I wondered when we would actually accomplish these feats! Then I wondered whether anyone would actually fancy buying our house, with all the foibles and drawbacks we have lived with over these years. Then my crazy friend came round. My most unusual and barking mad friend, he is terminally ill with lung cancer (but has been al...

in time for our film and pizza evening on Friday. Remise en état alimentation. Refection connectique. (That means they fixed the power supply.) Hurrah!

I just received an email advising me of the "mise à disposition de votre appareil au comptoir". Oh well, I know what I'm doing first thing tomorrow!

Well faced with the possibility of tottering through the park with a microwave oven balanced on my noggin or booking a citiz car to take it to the repair place in Bègles I'll let you guess what I chose. At 8 am the big car with the flat boot floor was free. I showered and came back to book it. It was taken. So I booked it from 1 till 5. 1:03 found me in the car heading off to the supermarket with Pat's list in my sweaty mitt. 2pm found me en route for Bègles with the oven/microwave combination securely in the boot, along with a bag containing the shelf, turntable, the bizarre steaming contraption, etc. etc. "You must take everything", the lady had said, "together with a written description of the problem and a copy of the receipt." So I printed out a copy of the receipt, wrote on it in big letters "AUCUN SIGNE DE VIE" and popped it in the bag with the shelf, turntable, the bizarre steaming contraption, etc. etc. I found the place with littl...

I don't know if I have blogged about pens in the past, but they're pretty wonderful if you find a good one. I have very bad memories of those blotchy biros we used to have at school - the ones with long ends made to look like old-fashioned ink pens. They left globs of sticky ink that would get on your hands and you couldn't get it off. Nasty. Anyway at present I am a fan of two types of pen. Firstly the PaperMate InkJoy Quatro four colour ballpen. I have found two different kinds of this pen, one with pretty normal colours : black, blue, green and red, and one with rather more girlie colours : violet, magenta, indigo, lime green, etc. To be honest, I am not entirely sure what these other colours are, but they are easily distinguished from the normal ones, so they work for me! This gives me eight colours for mind-mapping and means that I can just take two pens with me and still take notes separating  the different headings with different colours. Very convenient. ...