Stressy day

Thursday 16 April 2015

Cloudy with light rain
16 degrees
Delightfully fresh after the storm in the night.

I am downstairs and writing when, to my shock, OH appears.  I cant remember last time I saw him at 7.30 am.  He is agitated about the situation with the aggressive seller and makes many cups of tea and paces about and writes completely illegible notes for me to use when I speak to the agency.  By 9 am he is looking haggard, poor lamb.  At 9.30 I manage to speak to the head of the agency and she says her legal expert is looking through things and not to panic and lets take things step by step. OH heads unhappily down to the rental units and I go and look around the market.  The phone rings and it is the seller of the Villa.  Her mother has died during the night so she is very upset and has a million things on her mind. I give my condolences and say I will ring in a couple of days time.  This is good news in a way as the head of the agency said not to get her to sign the offer letter until we have sorted out the mess with the other house owner.

The market is unusually quiet and I have a chat to the delightful lady who runs the main bar in town. It has recently been renovated and is starkly modern inside.  I am not a fan. People perch uneasily on the slight tabourets, their bottoms sagging over the edges.  At only 10.30 am there are British 'builders' supping their first lagers of the day.  RH is there and I manage to avoid his clammy embrace by claiming to still have bronchitis. He is wearing a large white plastic mac and is shouting in the ear of a wincing Geordie builder, who is nowhere as near as deaf as RH.  

My hair resembles a poodle on a bad day so I go for a cut and colour and, by magic, am transformed into a new woman.  The lady darkens the colour, bleached almost white by the sun, and gives me red highlights. She takes off virtually all the layers and leaves the length just at collar bone level and flicking out in a stylish lick.  I am thrilled and leave a large tip. OH is suitably impressed and offers to show his appreciation but I say we have things to do and the attentions he was proposing are not good for one's coiffure.

In the afternoon I take the car to have a new wing mirror.  I am ignored by many men and have to adopt my normal way of attracting attention in a French garage, which is to get into a showroom car and start pressing the buttons. The men are so involved in looking at diagrams that I actually have to start opening and closing a sun roof before one of them comes over and deigns to take my details and start work on the car.  Another one then comes over and offers to make me coffee and no one seems to be doing any work at all. I ring up the head of the agency and she is out on a visit and cant find the house keys and is very stressed.  I tell her that the aggressive house owner is waiting for her call and she says to get our legal lady to ring him up and say bugger off.  Speak to the legal lady and she says the form I completed is incomplete and cant be used to enforce a compromis.  She attempts to pass the buck back to me and I successfully resist.

The wing mirror is finally fitted and I have drunk so much thick black coffee that I can feel my pupils involuntarily jerking.  Apparently there is an electrical fault and it cannot be adjusted from inside the car so I will have to bring it back when we come back from holiday. Buy some fish flakes from an almost deserted garden centre.  Two very glum looking staff behind the counter.

Back to our town and pick up two sales contracts and arrive back home to find OH has made lovely dinner.  

Make 11 appointments for Sunday.  It is going to be intense. OH watches football.  The dog snores.  At long last, we don't need fires at nighttime.