Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Dealing with a ham fisted man....


Wednesday 13 May 2015
Overcast 23 degrees

It is 8 am and a tawny owl is still whooohooing in the tall trees.  Wake up OH and he is in a complete fog so drink my tea and read a little of Narrow Dog to Carcassonne which is marvellously funny and a much needed break from Frank McCourt.  I don't know how anyone survived a miserable Catholic Irish childhood in the 1940's.  

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Narrow-Dog-Carcassonne-Terry-Darlington/dp/0553816691

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Angelas-Ashes-Frank-McCourt/dp/0007205236/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431544518&sr=1-1&keywords=angelas+ashes

Both are wonderful storytellers.  I can't imagine anyone wanting to publish the meanderings that I write on here, although I do seem to have a number of regular readers on the other side of the Pond (plus lovely Mrs Noddi) but all are shy of commenting.

OH requires my assistance with 'sorting out' his fishing stuff.  He has what I call a heavy handed approach to things, combined with a natural maladroitété (I made part of that word up).  His extendible landing net has seized up, with the result that you could only land fish that were prepared to jump into it from off the bank.  He instructs me to grasp the net end and he will pull out the extending pole.  It is very firmly wedged.  He expresses surprise and says this has not happened before.  The dog's eyebrows go up, in a very good impression of Gromit. In our experience, this happens all too often.  He then decides to jerk it, to see if he can surprise it into extending.  I cannon into him with some force.  He then gets some WD40 and I say that is not a good idea and it really isn't because neither of us can then get a good grip on it.  The dog goes for a quick drink and then comes back to watch Round Two.

OH then produces a spool of fishing line which has 'mysteriously' wedged itself together. This is far more of a challenge to get two pairs of hands onto it, especially as there is a good 9 inches difference in our height.  If I brace myself, it involves bending my knees, increasing the gap in our heights and OH becomes rather puce and I feel, unreasonably annoyed, with my lack of (a) strength and (b) height.  I refuse to stand on a box.  I have still not recovered from the Alhambra incident.  He jerks it up and down and I go up and down with it.  The spool has not budged a millimetre.

The phone rings and I escape and, to my utter amazement, it is the new buyers of the goat farm and they have upped their offer by ten k.  I leap around in a happy money dance and then email the owners.  They ring me back many hours later and are on top of a very windy mountain and all I can really hear is the wind and somebody Spanish shouting in the background.

OH goes down the flat and I load up some more properties and draw a plan of the lovely Villa where alas, it appears there are termites but in a very localised area, and send lots of emails.  I speak to the lady who came to see our house ages ago and say I have nothing to show her and she says she would really love to come and see ours again so I say yes and then think Oh God how on earth am I going to get it cleaned up in time.

The sellers of the goat farm ring me back and say they want to get the septic tank reports before signing the offer letter because if it turns out that they do need redoing, then they dont want the sale to go back into negotiation.  After telling me they needed to move quickly, they are now delaying things.  I ring their notary who is in pole position for Useless Notary of the year and ask her where is the report.  A clerk tells me that they received an email from the relevant authority but it didn't have an attachment.  Did they ask for the attachment? No,apparently not.  They just deleted the email.  Sodding wonderful.  I ring the septic tank people and get a stroppy woman who says she is the only one in the office and I must ring back on Friday.  I don't know why she bothers answering the phone if she is going to be so offhand.  If she knows sod all, she may as well just get on with her own job and not answer the phone, which is route obviously taken by the sellers local Mairie.  They are only open two mornings a week - today and Friday and today was don't answer the phone morning. Vive la France.

Towards lunchtime I go to doctor's with OH and doctor tells him he needs to drink lots of water to stop gallstone crystals forming.  I try and get the doctor to tell him that he needs to drink less wine.  I am mortified every time we go to the bottle bank and have to tell people that we have just had a party.  

Spend afternoon cleaning up the little flat as we have renters coming in on Saturday.  Back home and OH chickens out of the killer chilli so I finish it off and he has pizza.  Dog licks bowl.  OH books trip to UK next week.  Speak to colleague who is out again with clients who must have seen everything everywhere.  When I worked for the French agency, if I went out more than two or three times with the same client, the boss used to start making snide comments about me being a 'guide touristique'.  These clients are the ones we went out with just before our holiday and told my colleague that they did not want to work with me again.  I certainly wouldn't have wanted to spend three weeks driving them around everything between 50k flats and 500k houses.  What a joke.

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