Not much of a heatwave here - 15C at the moment and tipped to reach the giddy heights of 23C on Monday.
About two years ago, a careless man with his mobile hedge cutter removed the sign directing people to our hamlet from the main road. A traditional sign that had large letters on a beige background, and a pale blue border has been replaced with a tiny sign that often appears when the road only leads to a farm. The final letter, an S, of our name is also missing. That perhaps seems weird when, as you arrive at the entrance to the hamlet, the S is there on the nameplate. All the utility services send bills to us include the S, but the tax man mindful of the cost omits it. Some maps show it one way, and others differently. It seems I am living in two places at the same time.
11.00 pm and the dustmen have just arrived to empty my bins. With temperatures of 36°C this afternoon, I guess they didn't start until it cooled a bit.
I have been reading the views of fans from other Championship teams, and the theme running through them, is we need a striker. This made me remember George Kirby bringing one to Watford, who seemed so bad you wondered why the club had spent £30,000 on him. Two managers later, and a bust up with GT, suddenly the goals started to come. 118 in total, as he found the net each season during that remarkable rise through the divisions. I wonder how many clubs already have their own Ross Jenkins, who just hasn't started to become a hero yet?
What a change! Yesterday it was 35°C and climbing. Today it is 22°C, which is far easier to live with. I can return to the bramble attack that has been on hold for the past week.
A public holiday, so the large supermarkets closed around midday, giving the people who needed bread the chance to buy it. Our town council has been dealing with the fact that bakers have stopped visiting as it is no longer a viable option for them. This has left some elderly folk, without transport, having a problem obtaining their daily half baguette. Neighbours are very good in these parts, but do not shop every day, also at this time of year go on holiday. So the message has gone out; if you need bread, phone one of your local councillors, and they will go and buy some for you, and organize supplies for the coming week.
We still get the bread van here..and they came this morning as a huddle of villagers debated whether they would. . That led to us looking at what today's holiday, assumption day, means in France
The temperature has dropped to a good working outside one, but all the plans have been set aside as the rain has come. Mme says it will help to lay the dust, which is true, but it will also reinvigorate the brambles that I had just started to make some headway with. I will have to content myself with a trip to the recycling centre, followed by some football.
Alongside our bread machine, a much larger machine appeared with 24/7 pizza, hot or cold. It seemed to be popular with lorry drivers, who would pull up at the crossroads for some midday lunch. A large screen showed the different versions of the available food, and if you wanted one of them hot, it would be delivered in 3 minutes. Today it has been taped up, as it looks as though someone took a hammer to the glass screen. I cannot imagine why anyone would do such a thing, unless the pizza was dreadful, and nothing like the tempting display. There is a little sign that says it is guarded by CCTV, but that could be just a bluff. I think it will take time to repair it.
It is that time of year here, when you go to park in the market square while Mme conducts business with her hairdresser, only to find that half of the square has disappeared. A mobile stage has arrived, along with a marquee covering long trestle tables and benches. The tables and benches tell you that food and drink will be on offer, and it did look as though La Bisquet bar was preparing for a busy evening. On Mme's return from her chat and hairdo, I found out that there is to be a carnival tomorrow evening, with the hairdresser having to decorate her car for the procession. Who says that nothing ever happens in rural France?
Being a Sunday, many young, and far from young people, will don the Lycra, pump the tyres up, and go for a fifty-mile spin to work up a good appetite for their midday meal. Some take it seriously and enjoy pitting their speed against others, and will enter races over longer distances. A barrier has arrived outside the house with a sign to say there will be a race today, which we could foresee when bright red arrows appeared on the road telling the riders that a bend was coming up. It is always advisable to leave a little bit of extra time if travelling on a Sunday, as a cycle race can result in a lengthy detour.
Today, the eldest of my three granddaughters is 21 years old. She came to live here when she was nine, with only a smattering of French that she had picked up from the BBC website. The small school gave her an amazing degree of help, and within six months she was speaking the language like a native. About four years ago, being a student in need of money, she answered an advert, where an anxious parent was looking for a coach to help her son with his English lessons. My granddaughter got the job, and it has been so successful she is still doing it once a week. Today is one of those days , and it means I will have to wait for my lunch. Her sister meanwhile is off to Châteauroux again for the Paralympics, where she will be at the shooting event. This time, along with a friend she made when there before, they decided to hire a flat for a week, rather than being in tents at the campsite. I think it is safe to say they have integrated well.
Finally grandchild free after 4 weeks of visitors here.... The france have a saying to describe grandchild visits. "Chic..oof". It's great ( chic ) when they arrive..but by the time they go you are exhausted ( oof).....
Listened to a phone-in discussion on the radio this morning - about Ticketmaster and Oasis - and was really bemused by some of the comments. The fact that what sounded like some very sane people chose to spend a day in an online queue with over 300,000 others, and then part with hundreds of pounds to watch a couple of common or garden singers was just...unfathomable to me. If they had ears, Ticketmaster's would have been burning as no-one had a good word to say - but they all paid the inflated prices. One silly woman was happy to have obtained tickets for herself and her husband for £650 - and thought she had been smart by buying them for their concert in Dublin. She was spitting chips when, after booking her flights to Dublin, she found that the cheapest hotel accommodation she could get cost £850 for a night. So much for common sense - and so much for Austerity...
It was MOT day for my car today - and, sadly, it failed for two reasons. Firstly, the fuel cap was apparently broken - strangely it was working fine yesterday when I filled it up with fuel - but the second reason was a new one on me - there was some "sticky stuff" on the headlights. The lady in the office wasn't exactly sure what that meant, and she left me further confused by telling me that the "patterning on the headlights was wrong" - any mechanics on here who could explain that? Even more confusing is the fact that the same garage did the last two MOTs - and the car passed both with the same headlights.
