STALLED and biting the bullet(s)

Blogging has stalled for a while as I have been in the UK for one of our routine visits this week and before that we were very busy with entertaining, gardening and other stuff.

This visit I have done the usual stuff such as cutting the grass, tidying the garden, tidying the house following our earlier exit in July and, importantly, I have been on a mission to buy myself some new clothes and shoes.  I am desperate for new shoes, most of mine being years old and worn out (or no longer comfortable for my poor old abused feet).  I also need new sandals but they will have to wait until next year as by now there are none in the shops.

I dread going shopping for clothes and shoes but dread even more the hassle of buying them online.  The waiting in for the parcel or having to fetch it from the corner shop, the trying on to find the fabric is nothing like I expected and the shoes don't fit, followed by the packing up and returning using the various methods dictated by the supplier.  Then the checking of my account to make sure the refund arrives.

I had been to one of the retail parks a few miles away and bought a couple of dresses and a jumper in the Weird Fish sale, plus a raincoat from Cotton Traders.  The only shoe shop was Pavers but the only shoes that looked suitable were not available in my size.

So, I bit the bullet and went into town.  First stop M&S who have moved from the town centre into a new store in a retail park on the edge of town.  I queued to get into the inadequately small car park and slid into the only inadequately small parking space I could find, a long way from the shop.  At least the parking was free but limited, of course, to two hours otherwise you risk a hefty fine from the people who own the car park.  You can't visit all the shops on the site in two hours - unless you are very focussed and don't enjoy browsing.

I was lucky to find jeans and trousers in my size plus underwear in stock.  I bit the other bullet of trying them on in the shop, which always seems to be a faff but avoids the inevitable return to the shop if they don't fit when trying them on at home.

I also nipped into the food hall (always a joy) and picked up some small chocolate gifts to take back to France.  When we are invited out to lunch we take some chocs for the hosts and M&S chocs are always well received.

Next I went into the town centre and parked in a central car park.  By then I was hungry so I popped into the Post Office.  The building that used to be the Post Office is now a bar restaurant.  I hesitated but thought how bad can it be?  The décor was a cross between Frankie and Benny and an old railway station caff.  This surprised me as I thought that kind of thing had gone out of fashion now.  Having paid £8.60 for a very dismal bacon sandwich (just two small slices of unbuttered toast and two minute rashers of bacon) and a small bottle of mineral water I ventured out to the shops.  I am out of touch with how much eating out costs in the UK.

There used to be two Clarks shoe shops in town, plus others such as Lilley & Skinner and a huge shoe department in the Co-Op.  The Co-Op, our wonderful department store, closed several years ago and there is now just one Clarks shoe shop and two that seem to sell cheap trainers.  I was out of luck.  

However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed wandering around the town.  The weather was fine which always helps but somehow it didn't feel quite so down at heel as it has felt lately.  There are still plenty of empty shops and too many nail bars* and vape shops for my liking but on the whole I thought I could come to like the place again.

The indulgent wandering around town added time to my car parking fee which was £4.60.  So by now I was £13.20 out of pocket and only a very mean bacon sandwich to show for it.  (We rarely have to pay anything at all for car parking in our part of France.)

My plan was to head to yet another retail park way out of town where there was a Hotter shoe shop, a drive which took forty minues.  If I was unlucky there I would have to go to the dreaded Meadow Hall - the massive shopping centre on the outskirts of Sheffield - which would involve at least a forty minute drive up the M1(depending on the time I hit the motorway and if there had been any "incidents").  In Hotter I hit gold and came away with a selection of shoes, boots and trainers that will see me through several winters.  

Changing the subject, I have been trying to eat very healthily while chez nous uk as all that socialising and enjoying life over the summer chez nous fr has taken its toll on the waistline.  I have had huge success with poached eggs.

You may laugh but poaching eggs is, IMHO,  a black art and over the years I have tried a number of methods with mixed success.  I have tried microwaving them (Nancy Birtwhistle's method) often resulting in exploded egg, the silicone egg poaching pods (eggs stuck like glue to the pods), steaming them in a tea strainer over a pan of simmering water (stuck like Gorilla glue to that), and, most successful so far, sliding them into a large shallow pan of barely simmering water from a small cup (Nigella Lawson's method).  This would produce eggs that varied from perfect little balls of deliciousness to something that looked like a strangled jelly fish (but still tasted good).

More recently I have bit the bullet and done it the old fashioned way with HUGE SUCCESS.  Sliding the egg from a cup into a small but deep saucepan of just simmering water containing a splash of white wine vinegar has worked for me.  I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the freshness of the egg but when the white is just no longer transparent the egg seems to have that oh so perfect runny yolk we all aim for.  A thing of joy without a doubt.

Last but not least, I have just finished reading this book.  I started it on the aeroplane (or rather, while waiting for the one and a half hours delayed flight in the dreadfully uncomfortable and greenhouse-like waiting room at Limoges airport which they euphemistically call the "departure lounge").  Once chez nous uk I couldn't wait to carry on reading it.  Set in the era of coach and horses and parlour maids, it was a bit of a slow start but very worth sticking with it to the end.  If you like a tale with unexpected twists and turns you would enjoy it.

As a post script, Blogger seems to have thrown a wobbly yet again and no longer updates my reading list or the blog list on my sidebar.  Does anybody have any idea how to fix this?

* As a further post script I recently stumbled across an article which refers to the invasion of nail bars into towns all over the world.  The writer refers to the nails as "acrylic claws".  They definitely would not suit my lifestyle and I often wonder how people manage with them!

THE CATCHER AND THE EARRINGS

Well the tooth is gone.  Our UK dentist is marvellous.  His name is Michael and he's a very grounded, no nonsense kind of person and after a degree of fairly dramatic pushing, shoving and waggling, which seemed to last for ages but was probably only a few seconds, the tooth was out.

"Eee I am good" he exclaimed as he waved it in front of me.  I was pleased about that, as it meant that it had come out in one piece without the need for any digging, which had been my worry.  "Little bugger!" I said, looking at the bloody molar. (Literally.)

"You can faint now!" he said, with a cheeky grin.  He explained that many people get so worked up about having a tooth out that they faint once it's all over.  I can understand that, it's a pretty brutal business.  That's when it occurred to me why there were two dental nurses in the room instead of the usual one.  The taller one was probably there to act as catcher.  

Luckily I'm not the fainting type.  Anyway, I had to stay vertical in order to drive home.  I was back home only half an hour after leaving for the appointment.  Marvellous.

He gave me a leaflet about aftercare and some instructions saying that the socket would heal perfectly well.  "Things go wrong when people mess with it" he said.

However, I did feel a bit fragile and needed some paracetamol once the local anaesthetic had worn off.  Sitting outside in the shade at teatime I was glad for a visit from our robin who kept me company.

When we first moved to our second French house, when it was mainly a second home, I took my vast collection of beads there.  They rarely got used because we were there in summer when there were other things to do.  So we moved them back to the UK where I would happily tinker away with them over the dull winter months.

Now of course we spend the winters in France and my beads are still in the UK.  Having lugged them across the Channel twice, there and back again, and with the complexities of Brexit, I don't feel inclined to take them to France again but I do miss them.  Feeling rather battered and bruised yesterday afternoon I decided it was a good time to tackle one of the sorting jobs that's been on my mind for ages.  When we are only in the UK for a short time I often do little repair and alteration jobs and it inevitably involves rummaging through boxes without the time to tidy things up afterwards.  Hence a box full of random bits and pieces that needed sorting.  I tipped them all out onto the dining table and sorted them.  It was very satisfying in a mindless way that took my mind off the morning's drama.

And so I have been able to do some alterations to a friend's earrings.  She has three pairs that were a gift from someone and she loves them but the ear hooks make her ears sore.  She obviously has an allergy to nickel or whatever metal they are made of.  My idea was to change the gold coloured mounts for sterling silver ear hooks in such a way as to create the same length of drop or dangle.  That way she can still wear them without getting sore ears.  Playing with my beads again has been great fun.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing it.

SPRING IS SPRUNG AND GOOD NEWS

During my busy week in the UK where the weather was cold, grey and wet, Spring arrived chez nous in France.  Whilst I was dodging heavy rain showers to do various errands, Nick was beavering away with the bathroom modifications and taking his breaks outside in 20°C sunshine.  Winter just suddenly ended.

Once back in France I was able to enjoy it all myself, eating lunch outdoors and sitting out in the evenings until the bats had come out to play and to hear the owls, foxes and other nightlife.

The bathroom is coming along.  Demolition of the previous wall, rebuilding of the new wall and the new floor have been completed.  The plumbing was held up by having to do a tour of numerous DIY shops to find the right bits.  Only once the old sink and loo were removed was it clear exactly what bits were needed.  The old loo had been glued to the floor and not screwed down, an interesting DIY approach but not entirely unexpected in this house!  The plumbing part is now done, leaving tiling, woodwork, finishing off and decorating to be done.  

One of the challenges of life in rural France is that although there are plenty of DIY shops around, they are all at least a half hour drive away and they close for two hours minimum at lunchtime.  Hence timing is everything.  The compensation is that it can usually involve lunch somewhere, waiting for the shop to open or on the way home!  

It took us a whole day to find the few tiles that we needed for a splash back for the sink.  A tour of all the local shops ended in disappointment, as none of them actually had anything we liked in stock.  Eventually we went to the posh tile shop in Tours and after a rummage through their "fin de serie carrelage" (discontinued tiles) came away with a box of the perfect tiles at a bargain price.

 

Since my return I've been on dog walking, cooking and housework duty.  The walking has been a joy in the gorgeous spring weather.

In "other news" we were thrilled and relieved to hear from the Préfecture two days ago that our applications to renew our cartes de séjour have been approved.  It seems that this year everything has gone through pretty seamlessly and more or less on time.  With the email came our "decision favourable", the document we can print off and use for travel until we get the actual cards.  (This is the document we used to travel for a whole year in 2024 because we didn’t get the text message summoning us to collect the actual cards.)  This year we should have them only a couple of weeks after the current ones expire, which is today!

We expect to get the text in a week or so, to make the trip to the Tours, queue up at the Préfecture, pay our 450€ and then, with the precious cards safely in our wallets, enjoy a celebratory lunch somewhere.