SECOND TRIP

We planned to take items over bit by bit and on the first trip we stayed in a local motel and took Helen with us. We hoped to take Christelle (oldest daughter) when the house was finished, as we did not think she would have coped with all the spiders, who had been in situ so long they now regarded the house as their own.  As it was, Helen would not use the toilet until I had checked, and double-checked, that all the spiders had gone. 

We only cleaned up the rooms on this trip, washing floors and dusting ceilings.  I noticed little drips of what appeared to be varnish on the floors of the kitchen, dining room and downstairs toilet.  I started to clean it up then realized that some of the drips had pointed ends – rats?  There was no tell-tale rat smell so I scraped a sample into a container to check to find out what it was. I was currently working with an Environmental Health Officer, Peter, a very clever man, and thought he would know.  It turned out to be a type of field mouse, a moulet, not harmful, just in need of a bit of warmth from time to time.

BOXES DELIVERED – JUST!

On our third trip we took 2 camp beds and also arranged to have our collections of wireless and perfume delivered to the village.

On the second trip after buying the house we had noticed that work was starting on the pipe-laying for the drainage in the village, to take rainwater to the lake.  The lake was just down the road which ran by the side of our house.  We hoped the pipe-laying would be complete by the time our container lorry arrived.  It was not to be.

When we first bought the house, there were no pavements and no street lighting in our village.  It was a nice surprise to see that these were being installed.

There was about a 10 mile detour to get to the village.  We had to go in a huge circle round several other villages to get there.  On arriving, we saw that the road had been dug up all over the place and pipes were still being laid.  The road and pavements were thick with mud, as it had been raining for some time.

I explained to the workmen that we would have a huge lorry arriving the next day and they said they would stop work for it.  They did – only after they had dug a huge trench across the road!  The workmen stood waving and smiling.  Andy had to drive back along the detour and guide the lorry up another route.  It was so silly, we could see and talk to the removal men but they just could not get to the house without the detour.  I think it may have been better if I had explained that the lorry would be coming ‘tomorrow’ and not ‘today’ which I had apparently told them in my best French!  They had actually stopped work for us on the previous day.

The two lads who delivered the boxes of radios and Avon were really helpful.  They carried all the boxes up to the bedrooms where they had to go.  It was amazing just how much they could lift.  We had packed each drawer carefully so that they could be lifted separately and the lads just picked up entire chests full of drawers in one go.

As we were only really in France to see in the delivery in of the boxes, this was a short visit and the next one was anticipated eagerly.

SENT TO PUBLISHER UP TO HERE

FIRST FLOOD

The next trip was done using a ‘visitor’ discount that my boss had given us.  He was in the ferry’s ‘Home Owner’ club and got a few discount tickets for visitors.  This was in late Feb/early March and the weather was really bad.  We decided to carry on regardless as we had logs for the wood-burning stove and a kettle to make coffee, so we could be reasonably comfortable.

Andy turned on the water and electricity and called for me to make some coffee whilst he gathered some logs from the barn.  I put the kettle on and heard a peculiar noise – a bit like a waterfall!  One of the pipes in the old bathroom had come apart, probably in the cold weather, and the water was pouring out of the break.  It ran through the ceilings into the rooms below and rushed through the light fittings, along the edges of the walls and all over the floor.  Quite quickly it spread into two of the other rooms and even though Andy turned the water off as soon as I alerted him, the water continued cascading for some time. 

When the waterfall stopped, we set about clearing up.  We gathered at least four buckets full of water and put down lots of newspapers and cardboard boxes to soak up the remainder.  The only carpet we had was absolutely dripping wet.

We tried our best to mop the water from the carpet without much success, then I had an idea.  I scraped across the carpet with a long piece of wood and Andy used a sponge to soak up as much water as possible as it whooshed out of the edge of the carpet.  We did this several times and got another bucket or two out of the carpet.

Andy put the carpet in the barn to dry until we could return.  We were probably the only home in France to have a carpet in the barn!

SECOND FLOOD

For the trip in April 2003 (Easter) we used the free ticket I had won on the Fun Run.  This was the last time we used this particular ferry company and eventually it stopped running on that particular route altogether.  There was no entertainment on the ship except for fruit machines and a gaming table for six people to play pontoon.  There also appeared to be only one flight of stairs to the car decks, although the ship was twice the size of the other company’s ferry.

On our arrival at the house we saw that the mice had returned.  They had wandered around the kitchen area, up onto the worktop and into the sink.  Luckily all our stock of food had been put away before we left the previous time.

Andy turned on the hot water system as usual, only to discover there was a tank in the eaves of the second floor which, although water went in, there was nowhere for it to go once the tank was full.  The water cascaded down to the first floor – again!  We mopped up and moved boxes of Avon and radios which we had stored in the third and fourth bedrooms.

We started to strip the wallpaper in the lounge ready to re-paper.  Neither of us could quite reach the top of the old paper and thus obviously couldn’t re-paper either.  We had to buy a step-ladder for the next visit. 

Andy removed the front door and scraped and repainted it.  It was fun re-hanging it.  There were three drop-in hinges.  The door was slightly bowed with age, so we could only connect two of the three each time.  It took ages to get all three aligned.  We put a brush-type draught excluder at the bottom to stop any ingress of animal life, but still had a couple of spaces around the sides of the bottom of the door so we filled these temporarily with tissue and ant spray.

Whilst removing the wallpaper we discovered that the paper around the archway through to the lounge had been covering polystyrene sheeting so we left it as it was, to paper over.  Unfortunately, the original paper was quite dark brown and the new paper was cream.  We were very lucky though, the colour did not show through.

Andy fixed several of the lights in the house.  French electrics leave a lot to be desired.  There were three wires hanging from the ceilings connected to light bulbs.  Andy fitted new ceiling roses and hung the lights properly.

The downstairs toilet had a small leak from the flush handle on to the floor and water continually ran into the bowl as the ball-cock was in need of repair.  We put a bucket under the leak and eventually discovered that each of the toilets could be turned off with tiny taps on the cisterns. 

Andy then connected the TV and video/CD player so we had something to do during the evenings.  Still without street lighting, we did not venture far from the house at night and as we were usually exhausted by the end of the day, we just sat and relaxed until it was time to sleep.

FIRST NIGHT

Just before falling to sleep that night, in our camp beds in the lounge, we heard a terrible noise in front of the house – I thought later it may have been a wild pig or something, charging along the road – it turned out to be a slightly demented donkey in a field along the road, just letting everyone know it was there.

The door of the church next door had been open when we first arrived so we thought it was sure to be open on Easter Sunday.  No sign of it being opened for a Service however.  The next time we saw the door open we popped in for a look round.  The church is small but very lovely inside.  There is quite a bit of damp and the doors are actually left open most days just to let the air circulate.  The local priest is shared by several villages and comes to our village about every four months.  Most Sunday services are held in the nearby ‘head’ village.

The bells in the church tower, which we were told struck twice a day, actually strike every half-hour, but they are not obtrusive and quite nice as we always know what the hour is.  When weddings or funerals are held in the church, the bells are played for quite a while and there is always a ‘practice’ a few days before. 

When we last visited, we had left quite a large spider in the lounge, as he was just out of reach.  ‘He’ turned out to be a ‘she’ and her offspring, although still small, were wandering about everywhere.  We found the daddy in the kitchen and the mummy was hiding under the front window curtains in a hole in the corner of the bay window.  This hole is now no more!

The carpet had dried out since our last visit, and the first flood, and was put back into the lounge.  The pool table and photocopier were still in situ – I had thought by then the previous owners had realised we had found the quirky plumbing and were not too keen to see us again.  I didn’t think they would ever return for their odds and ends.  

The house needed a lot of cleaning and although we could cope with just cold water, we could not make the hot water run, no matter what we tried.  The tap was a swivel type – when pointing to the right, (cold) water came out, when pointing to the left (hot) the water stopped completely.  The heating system was in the side annexe, the pipe work ran throughout the house and we traced it as best we could.  As soon as we tried to run the hot water, the flow stopped dead!  No water at all and we wondered if it was on a different circuit?

The village now had street lights and we had pink pavements!  The curb around our back gate had been replaced with a drop-curb to facilitate entry into the garden, which was nice.   The day we arrived with our very heavy concrete garden statues, there was an 18” gap between the road and our garden, waiting for the curb-stones.  We had to navigate the hole carrying the very heavy garden ornaments.  Now the pavement is in place, the villagers are copying the Brits, and parking on it!

My hands had swelled up quite a bit after removing the wallpaper in the dining room and I think it may have been a reaction to the old paste.  It could also have been a reaction to mouse pee!  The mice may possibly have peed on the towel I had left in the kitchen to dry.  I had not brought any hand-cream with us, but I found an Avon sample of face cream and plastered that on the swelling.  Seemed to work quite well, at least temporarily.

Whilst wandering around the bedrooms I decided to remove all the drawing pins and staples in the walls of the rooms which had belonged to the children, only to find that they were holding up the wallpaper!

There was a patch of damp on the inside of the front walls of the house, probably condensation.  We hoped that once we moved in permanently, a constant air-flow would put an end to it.