Lightweight, Lightening & Hangers

It's all happened this week & we're now the proud owners of 3647 PF 12, a Land Rover Lightweight. After waiting for what seems an eternity I finally got to test drive the car on Tuesday. All went well & the owner agreed to throw in a spare set of tyres, assorted parts & several French Land Rover magazines which, if I could read French, would I'm sure be very useful. As you would expect it's not just a case of sending the vehicle registration document off to the French equivalent of Swansea here you have to visit the prefecture and produce the documents listed in last weeks blog. We did this on Thursday the horror stories we've heard & read about French bureaucracy we were in & out in 10 minutes fully registered & €145.00 worse off. There's no annual road fund fee in France as you pay a one of fee, calculated on the car's horsepower & age, at the time you register the vehicle. With the carte gris in place all we needed to sort out was the insurance but as it was 11:55 it would have to wait until Friday. Back at the house on checking the post we found the documents had arrived for the trailer & that we'd need to return to the prefecture tomorrow! Sorting the insurance out went well until we mentioned that we wanted to tow a trailer. If it has a gross weight in excess of 750kgs it needs to be declared on the insurance documents & an additional fee paid. Ah well it has to be done & at least there's no charge or limit on the number of drivers that can drive the car. The Lightweight is going to be a great workhorse and will mean that we'll be able to collect most of the materials we need to move the project on.

Thierry Roussel was as usual indispensable during the negotiations for the car & when we called to arrange the test drive we were welcomed with a smile & taken to see his newly erected hanger. It was the one he'd removed for us & had finally got round to putting it up. As far as these things can, it looked great & he was all ready to fill it with straw for the winter.

We've been trying to move things along with the barn & this week we spoke to the architect to ask his advise on splitting the electric & water supply between the two properties. He offered to write a couple of letters for us & forward them to the appropriate suppliers. We've been told that asking the state owned water & electric companies for anything that's a little different, & splitting the supplies is viewed as 'different', can take some time. We'll keep you informed on the progress. On the building, well demolishing front, I've been swinging the sledge hammer this week & have managed to knock down all the stalls on the ground floor of the barn. It was hard work & I think we'll be dropping in at the tool hire centre next week to see how much they'll charge for a drill & compressor. On Monday builder Thierry turned up to collect his scaffolding. As we were unloading his trailer the heavens opened and we were caught in the middle of yet another spectacular thunderstorm. Unloading metal scaffolding on to a metal trailer didn't seem like a good idea to me but when I suggested we take a break and wait for the storm to pass Thierry gave a typical Gallic shrug & told me to get on with the job. After, we were rewarded with 3 very large Ricard's and I was grateful that Barbara turned up to carry, sorry drive, me home.

Socially it's also been a busy week. Our neighbours arrived on Tuesday to spend two weeks working on their house and as Ikea haven't as yet delivered their kitchen we invited them in for something to eat. They've a lot of painting to do but with the sun continuing to shine it looks like they'll be able to make good progress. P & C are also here with C's mum & husband & G & S have friends visiting and we were invited round for supper on Thursday. On Friday it was Barbara's birthday & we had an easy day, apart from the visit to the prefecture, and visited the shops in VDR & had the obligatory coffee in one of the bars. The cafés & bars are all busy about 3:30 PM as the local students meet for an after college coffee or un citron pressé. They all seem so polite & always greet their friends with either a handshake or three kisses on the cheek depending the norm in L'Averyon. Some things must be the same the world over as this week we've been plagued by telesales calls trying to sell us double glazing & plumbing insurance but as soon as they realise we're English there interest disappears & they hang up. At least we don't have to be rude to get rid of them.