posted on 23 September 2006 11:10
by
Christine Phillips
23 Sept It's a small world
3/9/06 It’s a small world
The first period of being on my own whilst Geoff was in the UK wasn’t too bad. Brian (the electrician) was here most of the time working away and we now have decent lights in the living room - I can at last see to cook properly! As I had thought he did prove to be a good source of information and the best outcome of all was an introduction to a fellow Geordie lady (Julie) who lives about 1km down the road! She has been here for 20+ years and is married to a farmer. But she comes from Jarrow originally which is 5mls from where I was brought up and I actually went to school in Jarrow! It was really great to hear her accent when she came to call. She couldn’t believe that there was a fellow Geordie here either!
The other startling thing to happen this week is that I got talking to the elderly lady who lives with her husband in the hamlet for 9 months of the year. She turns out to speak fantastic English! Apparently she was a translator in her early working days and spent a year in England. Although she claims not to have spoken English for 20+ years she puts my French to shame!
The gifts of produce continue to arrive. So far this week we have been given a basket full of peaches ( the elderly lady in the village) and jam and a huge marrow(Julie).
Fortunately Matthew and Christine have been here for a few days so we have had help in eating all the goodies! Again we have had a nice time showing them around and getting their opinions on the gite. Christine and I did some exploring of the shops in Issoire and discovered a wedding dress shop! She was amazed to find the fantastic dresses were half the price of those in England. She now has a dilemma as to whether to try and buy The Dress here or not!
The chambres d`hotes and gite marketing continues. We now have the final drafts of the business cards and stationary and the first draft of the web site copy. We have been working on that this week. Both of our offspring have declared the gite ready for renting so we just now need the world to know of our existence!
Geoff has made some progress with his attempts to get people interested in his English lessons. I got talking to a lady in the dress shop who was looking for an English course and gave her our number and Geoff had two responses from his ad in the local free paper. All of these leads are thinking about the lessons and have said they will ring back.
One of our big problems here at the moment is that every time we take one step forward we seem to hit a snag and take two steps back! A classic example of this has been our quest to buy wood for our wood burning stoves. You would think that living within spitting distance of a national forest with thousands of trees in each direction , this would be an easy task. But no – everyone seems to have their own private supplier and no-one can give us a name! However today we made a bit of progress by visiting a sawmill in a local village and persuading the guy there to sell us a huge amount (it seems to me) of off cuts. Then we find we have to ring up another guy to arrange delivery….then we arrive home to find the phone is not working…you see what I mean! Anyway the wood is now ordered and the guy (hopefully) will deliver it next week. Watch this space!!!
One more problem is that Chester (our dog) seems to have become a tic magnet! We have had to perform the delightful task of pulling these lovely (not) creatures our with tweezers twice now. He is having to submit to the indignity of being thoroughly examined every time he goes out for a walk! Not a happy dog!