Saturday, July 4, 2015

Tea on the terrasse


Thursday 2 July 2015
Cloud cover - a delightful 28 degrees


Up early and rang and rang and rang until the owner of the ground floor shop answered her phone.  Her voice was high pitched. Everything is wet and I have no idea where the water has come from!  I try to cut in. I rang Mme M and she said it couldn't possibly be from her flat! Everything is wet! Everything!  My duvets and blankets and coats!  My machines are flooded out.  I manage to get an word in edge ways and ask if the ceiling is still OK and she realises I am ringing to tell her about the water and stops squeaking at me down the phone and she says yes, it is OK but I need to come down immediately.  

I throw on some appropriately thin motley and head down town.  It is market day and absolutely heaving.  Walking from the car to the shop, I organise a visit on the chateau by the roofer of the man I took to see it last week.  Please kindly heavens, the quote is not orgiastically enormous and the guy actually makes an offer.  Offers have been very thin on the ground lately...

I get to the shop and duvets are piled up everywhere.  Fortunately the delicate clothes are stored at the front end of the shop and are, in any event, covered in plastic but the poor woman does have everything to redo.  I apologise many, many times and speak to the owner of the intermediate apartment who has suffered the worst damage as her apartment was first in line for the 34m3 of water (340 litres) which flooded out of mine.  I ring the plumber who did the installation and tell him I need his ten year guarantee document and he says he is retired and says he knows he didn't finish the work and also says I didn't pay him.  I tell him I most certainly did pay him and say which things he had not finished off, which I had just discovered and had had to pay another plumber to put right.  He says what what what and I get annoyed and he hangs up.  Absolute bastard.

I am now running late and so fortunately is my new acquaintance but we finally get together and go into our big town to do a little craft shopping.  She is someone who has lived nearby for the past four years but we have only just met via FB.  A tremendously tall lady - just over 6' tall - and with a burr just like Pam Ayres.  She rattles on happily whilst I drive and it is a wonderful distraction from the pain of things going periodically, and very badly, wrong.  We get to the craft shop, carefully masquerading as an office supplies store, and she is thrilled and buys some stuff and then we go to a lady's house which I happen to have for sale, and who is also a member of the crafting group.  The sun is giving us a respite and it is only high 20's and it is delightful to sit in the shade of the striped awning with small birds running around the branches of the walnut trees and drink tea and eat biscuits and talk about all manner of things.  We have a group photo, I admire the barn for which I do not have a key and don't normally get to see (it is vast and with the most beautiful strut and peg construction) and fully boarded out.  Run my new mate back to our town where she gets back into her car, buy bread and head home.  OH is looking very hot after hauling dog around the lake.  Siesta

Get up and write to furious seller and also am amazed to read a very frosty email from the US woman who is supposed to be buying his house and she says if we are no longer dealing with the sale, because she presumes that we have now been paid, then she will deal with the owner direct.  I tell her that she presumes wrong.  We have not been paid because she has not signed the release document and everything is completely blocked.  She says her future ex husband shouldn't have paid our fees because we were mandated by the seller.  Bitch!!  Am really pissed off and write conciliatory email to seller, telling him the points on which I will be gaining clarification on Monday when our notary returns, and assuring him I am working to achieve a rapid resolution on this sorry affaire.  I think she has been playing us all along and has her own game plan and I wonder what there is that I do not know that I do not know.  Every time I think this dossier is put to bed, it pops up like a bad penny.

Watch Wimbledon - have yet to see a good match and the BBC have put on the most inane review programme which is being savaged by the critics.  Instead of being in a studio, with a presenter who knows what they are talking about, they are in the 'Gatsby Club' with a small crowd of stooges, standing around smiling for the camera and Claire Balding, who drivels on about irrelevant stuff and not enough tennis.  I don't want to see text messages or tweets or FB posts about tennis.  I don't want to see mini videos of people's babies playing tennis.  I want to see tennis players playing tennis.  And so does everyone else.  OH, although not being particularly keen on tennis, is sufficiently moved to spend most of the programme, writing to the BBC to complain.  He seems to be sending it in my name so I insist he removes his comments about Claire Balding is a lesbian and that is why she got the job.  He writes all comments in my name, on all matter of things.  I am accumulating trouble for the future.

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