With Barbara still back in the UK visiting her mum it's been very quiet in Lagarrigue this week but it has given me the opportunity to complete the 'to do' list we'd compiled. It's great ticking off the jobs and it's only when you come to that difficult or messy task that you've been putting off to last that the good time feeling begins to diminish. Despite my hopes for rain the weather has continued to be glorious, made it into to 20's yesterday, so it was time to finish digging the holes for the fence & concrete in the posts. Having now completed the job I'm not sure why I had put it off, things went well & it was only the high winds forecast for Saturday night that gave me any worries. I shouldn't have been concerned as the amount of concrete I'd placed in the holes would be enough to support a fence 10 metres high, think I'd got a bit carried away digging! With that out of the way & with quite a bit of gravel left I used it to cover the earth floor in one of the cellars and although I'll need a couple of trailers more gravel to complete the floor it'll be another job done. So with the bedroom heaters wired up & in place, the small bedroom painted & the banister in place I don't think Babs is going to recognise the place when she gets back on Thursday.
I have had the opportunity this week to use my very sketchy French. I'd mentioned last week that EDF & the surveyor had rang to make appointments. I'd already marked out the land so explaining where the division was to go was easy enough & the meeting went without hitch and the land was measured up & staked out in less than an hour. EDF wasn't quiet as easy. I wasn't sure what they were coming to do & although I was hoping they were going to install the new electric supply, deep down I knew I was being a little optimistic. Turns out it was to survey the land and tell me what I had to do prior to them coming to connect the house to the mains. The nearest supply is across the lane at the back of the house and for their €700.00 EDF will dig the road up & run a cable to the edge of our land & install a compteur. It's then up to me to dig a 9 metre trench to the house, knock a hole in the wall & crepe a 60 centimetre square on the cellar wall for them to mount the main trip box. Once I've completed the work I have to ring them & they'll return within a month & connect up the new supply. So given that it was last September when we first contacted EDF things are now moving apace & it's now up to me to get a mini pel hired & the trench dug. That'll be fun. The engineer from EDF was so helpful, he spoke very slowly & when he couldn't make me understand something he drew a picture. He aso suggested we change the electric tariff we're on as our current one is très cher.
I hear that there are concerns in the UK that the days of a bottle of wine costing less than a fiver might be numbered. Click here to see the BBC report. Despite French inflation being the highest in Europe at 3.2% and it being blamed on the rise in price of food & drink, it doesn't seem to have affected the cost of a bottle of wine. You can still pick up a bottle of the local plonk in the supermarket for less than €1.00. Imagine the outcry if your local Tesco had booze on sale at that price? At five times the price in the UK it still seems to be causing problems Click here to see another BBC report. Anyway that's enough comment on the binge drinking culture of the UK, must get back to my second bottle of red.
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