Still

Yup, still not feeling creative with writing or producing articles.
Today the weather has cooled off.
I don't mind on one level but I would like more sunshine for August as mostly work has been indoors.

The kitchen is as done as it can be for now. Needs a splashback and some other treats! I can live with it.  There is such a lot of space as I have kept the laundry room as part larder.  Things will be moved around later.

Pic later.

Last night adding to the stress of Saturday there was a RAVE somewhere.. incessant boom boom base repetitive rhythms and evidently huge beams of light in the sky. It started at 6 and ended at 6!  I eventually slept and emerged at noon today! Day and mood awry!
The stress of Saturday was to do with Thursday and Friday's non stop work of tidying tools away, cleaning dust of renovation from all rooms, being appalled by how many spiders were concealed in corners, and moving stuff out of "atelier" wherever possible has exhausted me and him. FRACTIOUS is an understatement.

CHANGES
UNWELCOME but WELCOME changes are afoot.
Will I cope?
I must!

another year passes by

and I still haven't done that road trip of route 66.  Now the age has progressed to two consecutive digits once again and I shall have to wait for another 11 years before it happens again!
message from my daughter was in emoticoms but I am not sure if it will reproduce here!

🎂🎉🌻😄🍸🍾🎈. Xxxx 😘😘😘 Have a good day.

Only two cards this year.. and then a later one six days later and then another one 14 days later.. 

None from my mother this year or even any reference when I phoned her five days after my special day. Well she will be 90 in September and last year she was in a muddle sending to me as her sister and from my brother ( he has cerebral palsy and she has done everything for him in his lifetime .. he has such terrible shakes that writing is nigh on impossible ) she said I was his niece!!!! 


Much has happened and I don't get or make time to write!

I know

I know, I know my avid list of known readers ... about five... are all waiting to see
pics of the brand new kitchen.. and to read tales of what this mad woman has been doing...
and soon...
soon...
Soon, I shall have time to write and publish my photos.

I shall backdate the news!!

MY EXCUSE -
I have been working. I HAVE BEEN WORKING flat out. even though I have done little to instal the kitchen.  Garden and Domestics had to be controlled to calm the mounting chaos with the kitchen stuff in three rooms in the last 16 months.
A friend has written that my kitchen has been a prison.
YES.  It has been a sentence!
I deviate as usual.

Eventually, I gave up monitoring HIS tools, (the 'friend' who returned for his own sentence!)
Now,  he has a LOT to tidy up and it aint going to be me that does it!
I can see that I shall have to supervise where it all goes because it needs to be tidy ish!

The kitchen and the laundry / larder are all finished apart from the kitchen backsplash and le buanderie credence.
OH MY... dare I cook  in the kitchen?

The kitchen one will have to wait because I cannot choose tiles from a dustance and have no time  nor inclination to travel to tile shops to find something special.

I shall get the chaos sorted here as I have just a few weeks before THE HELPER travels on!!!

It might be good, it might be bad...

BUT despite trying to hear each side of the argument and disagreements
I WANT TO STAY IN EUROPE
and I am seriously upset and disturbed that what is being called a democracy
is what it is suggested to be and methinks it is not TRUE.

How can it be so? When there has not been compulsory voting measures.... nor despite the recent lawsuit by Brian Cave and another meant that British born people who have lived in Europe over 15 years cannot vote..... did not vote and those and the next would have made all the difference!
.. to continue,,,
and then, not related to that lawsuit, British born people who have lived elsewhere in the world cannot vote
and when some British born people who have lived in Europe for less than 15 years have had for one reason or another their right to vote ruined... (postal problems etc)
and when people like me who were born in Britain but who have lived in Europe ( I mean outside of Great Britain) for less than 15 years have voted ... but how can we know our vote was counted!!!!!!!!?

I am sick of Politicians jumping out of the sinking boat... BUT maybe that is a good thing and that those who steady their sails and nerves are staying IN....
( excuse me but I do wish to say to them all F***O**... I can write it FUCK OFF!  Stop using the people of Great Britain to make themselves VICTORIOUS...
NARCISSISM knows no bounds!

I WANT TO BE .... IN EUROPE...

I shall start to shout it... I shall say I WANT like a small child...
BUT I AM a BIG child and I want to feel safe and secure in my pensionable stratum of life!
I paid all my taxes in my working life... never flinched at what was taken ... was told to save in AVCs ... tax free... and now I am up against 40% tax if I wish to take out my lump sum...
BASTARDS! LIARS! ... and that was before this Anarchism!

I wish there to be freedom of movement and peoples within the continent of Europe to choose where they live and work. I would work in France if I could find employment at my age.
BUT I have also a right to have chosen to live here under earlier RULES...
(I pay my taxes in UK and I pay my taxes in France and I am entitled to Social Security... UNDER the old rules .. what next we ask? ...)
and those who live in GREAT BRITAIN have under earlier rules a right to live there...
I am not speaking about those who have violated the correct entry.

I am annoyed because for the last 12 years of living in France whilst RULES HAVE changed over the last 12 years I have been maltreated and treated worse than an immigrant...  it has been shaming when I have done nothing wrong but exercised my free choice!

I was confronted with NHS treatment rules which I managed to duck and dive when I'd had UK treatment and needed after care follow up.   I did not realise at the time the 3 month RULE.
Sadly, I lied because I was one or two weeks outside of the limit!!!!! I had to have the follow up as my bladder did then not work because of the op when I was resident in UK!

I am annoyed that since then when I tried to get a UK mortgage, having had one for 25 years and more in the UK as a single person in UK, I could not even get a foothold back in UK since 2008 without coming back to live there for six months...
NEVER MIND THE EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES and difficulties I was going through!
SO... I took the easier road and got a mortgage in France!

Here we are!!!!!!!  making the most... seeing the glass half full or more or half empty and more!

I am and shall be annoyed, angry, nay furious if UK does not treat their immigrants as I would wish to be treated as an expatriat in France.   We are human beings not pawns!

I am so upset!
I could say so much more but am not always verbally or textually literate.

Of course there has to be democracy but it has been based on insufficient information being disseminated to the people of Great Britain over a period of TIME...
LIES...
BROKEN PROMISES
and POLITICIANS abandoning the ship when they should be walking the bloody gangplank!
TRAITORS - all of them!

There should have been a YEAR of DEBATE and information ... before any vote... THEN it would have been better BALANCED.

I smell a rat. I smell a hunderd thousand rats on the ILLY ALLY O of Great Britain ... and if it were not for my age or family I would tomorrow apply for CITIZENSHIP...
It is still on the cards!

Drains drain

Oh .. poor my dear friend has to down tools on kitchen and pick up tools for drains.

The drain man I have to pay did not come yesterday morning. That was the third date agreed!
When I phoned to see where he was, he said he'd pass by at 14h, which he did. This gave us a chance to verify what has to be done by my friend. We have been cautious!

Tuesday should be the day when the road is dug up.. and a rodding point installed into the road. PLUS overkill perhaps there will be two more "regards" on my side of the road. They have cost about £85 without installation costs of cement, pipes etc...

As I write this my friend is lowering the pipe as agreed so that the descent is correct. It hasn't been!

After the work the road should be repaired, then on another day, Hopefully the day after,  the man will return to install the drainage cover.  We will then have to finish cement work,  reset the gate posts and backfill around the pipes with sand .  I have the tricky task of finding about ten paving slabs that match the existing ones as they had broken with the wear and tear of vehicles going over them in the last 6 years!

Blue meanies ... Drains it has to be! ... we don't get an opportunity to see the Tour de France at any of the nearby villages and towns! 

Almost a month since I thought Summer was here

I was duped!
The weather has been wet, grey, humid, miserable with occasional glimpses of the golden orb!
We have also been working at the kitchen.
Me?   I am the client, the support, the skivvy, the observer, the organiser,  the finder of lost tools,  the person to be consulted about "would you like it like this or this?", the second pair of hands, the person who tries to keep up morale when IKEA kitchen problems arise....
He? He has been the one to use intelligence, skills and expertise on how to put it all together.
We are nearly at the end of the process but not without a few dramas and visits back to IKEA... and still another one is necessary because the second tap also drips very slowly, but it drips and I shall return it and go to a different shop to spen a little more money on a quality tap .. maybe Grohe.

In addition, for the last 4 to 6 weeks the courtyard has been dug up because the mains drains needed attention.  We have installed one Clark drain cover for the existing rodding section which we left below pavement slabs, sand and gravel.  There is another one to instal but we are awaiting delivery of a smaller Clark drain cover.

Today the specialist should arrive on the third date given to make a third rodding drain cover on the public road.  In addition the pipes have to be resited a little so that they have the correct direction of descent!!!!!!!!!!
I really do not need a fourth 'dig up' of the waste system to ensure there is no further backup!  There was enough of that at my previous French residence and it's all very well with strong arms but I don't have those nor the inclination to rod the drains!

Almost a month since I posted on my blog, but I have been disinclined.  It takes time to focus, load photos, type text,  and I just have not been focussed on this form of diary!

Perhaps when I have more of my own time again, or before, I will be able to report on my kitchen progress.

Vide-Grenier Happiness

I looked at a local Emmaus last week for pans for my induction hob.  After I had deliberated about a skillet and a saucepan I returned to the shelf to discover they had been purchased! OH!  Too late! However, they were in nowhere as good a condition as those I found today at a local Brocante / vide grenier.   I am happy.  I need my mood to be lifted!
I like these because they have integral handles.  The largest is black inside. The middle one's inside is a little worn but very ok. The little brown cocotte needed a small clean to get rid of the calcaire on the outside.
The sizes are 23, 20 and 18.  These relate to the quantity of liquid they contain! 
I am happy because they cost 5e, 3e and 2e respectively. They will help strengthen my wrists when I cook! It will demand learning to use new cooking techniques but that's going to  happen anyway with a new induction hob requiring technological understanding.  I have a new Neff techno-wizardry oven with an 'escamotable' door!  It disappears into the body of the oven as it is opened ! Lucky me!
There is no doubt that I shall continue to use my camping gaz cooker in the atelier and the gas / electric oven and hob I bought from friends in March. That is also sited in the atelier.  The atelier is a well-ventilated workshop area (almost as cold as outside in the winter and thank goodness the last winter was deemed mild because I had to cook out there!).  It could easily be converted into a living room / kitchen with east and south facing conservatory, if ONLY IF! 

I've read on the internet that I must not use acidic juices (wine / vinegar) in cast ironware but that may mean 'not enamelled'.  My friend has left me two small frying pans .. one is unenamelled black which needs its surface to be regraded. One is orange whose outer blackened enamel needs to be cleaned up with caustic soda and then the black oiled again!
One should not use metals which could scratch the containers and occasional dishwasher usage is ok for the enamelled Le Creuset but not the bare cast iron!  Soaking the pots in soft soapy water is recommended but again ABSOLUTELY NOT the bare cast iron which needs to be wiped with oil after each usage. sometimes a quick hot water blanche is ok.