Nous commencons

Les Taupes versus M. Doublavay  

Bonjour tout le monde. By the time you read this we will have been here a wee while. The delay in reporting anything is due to the fact that Le MacDee in Orthez, the only place with wifi within a 60 mile radius, has shut for refurbishment. It didn’t look like it needed doing but maybe the griddles needed replacing because from what we have seen, les Francais give le Big Mac a real bashing.

Since starting this blog we have just taken delivery of a satellite dish; apart from selling your universe for an Orange dongle, Nordnet  is one of the few means of receiving the internet. We have successfully installed it ourselves which involved an infinite act of bravery by me standing on top of the garage toilet (yes we have a toilet for the garage). I can get up things just not down them.

So what have we learned:

Cultural diversity

·         the Basque country is a world apart from the rest of France

 

·         the vast majority of the male population over 50 with a fashion sense wear berets at an assortment of jaunty angles, there is the odd one with ancestors from the home counties who sports it as a pancake

·         Those wearing berets are compelled to drive at breakneck speed in 4’s in beaten up old Renault’s

·         It is acceptable to pee up the church wall, or maybe, that is just in our local town
 

·         Give a shy English man a compost heap or three in his own private estate 50 yards from the nearest view and he will say good bye to his inhibitions and take to treating it like a church wall

·         Animal parts which, despite being totally unrecognisable, are for human consumption and come in both vacuum packaging and jars and often have 2 X’s in their name

·         It is acceptable to dress up in vaguely Victorian funereal garb and partake of breakfast in the square, we presume you need a "larcense"

·         The French use the word pudding and 3 french profiteroles will make you feel very very sick……

Household items

·         Parking the car near an 18^th century house and barns in a force 10 means you will end up with a part of a ridge till dinging your bonnet like the hail from Texas…

·         It takes three goes in a force 10 to recover a swimming pool with its winter coat and if you are VERY careful you can pick the rocks up from the bottom of the pool using a leaf gatherer

·         When a local pompier comes to your house on a Saturday the clue is the calendar. We have yet to learn if our voluntary contribution for a calendar of fully clad pompiers, including one rescuing an owl….., is enough to ensure they will turn up if we have a fire. And then when you get a happy new year slip from the chair of the village fete committee you start worrying as to whether there is a contribution for that!

·         It takes three months for Maison du Monde to deliver kitchen stools but only 6 weeks to deliver 2 sofas.

    

Gardening

·         You can only have your buggered sit on lawn mower collected on a Tuesday lunchtime but it will be fixed by Thursday.  

·         The French for solenoid seems to be…….solenoid and the mower man blanks you when you tell him you had it working with a battery from a Harley Davison

·         Do not give a small woman a large hedge cutter and expect her to top and tail a 6 foot beech hedge without cutting through the plastic covered steel washing line directly behind her …..Philippe

·         Cucumber tastes like it did when you were little (1966 onwards)

·         You can never be too harsh with a wisteria

·         Unless you have the technique, a brier will fight back when you strike it with a machete

·         P is not a violent man except when it comes to a colony of moles threatening the potager. Short of whacking them with a spade if they put their head above the parapet (thanks for that suggestion  Riona) they can be electrocuted, pulsar beamed into leaving or poisoned with pellets though, after my look of horror, the lady in the gardening shop assured me that the “odeur” is enough to repulse them so no mole ever gets harmed in the defending of the potager.

grands bisous