FRANCE MID JULY 2010

Festivals are in full swing. This is a group of Breton dancers at nearby LE FAOUEL.

 

Plus a few more.

 

Holland and Spain play in the World Cup soccer final in South Africa. Watching with Scottish visitors  in the unfinished lounge room!

 

The weather has been terrific so we took our visitors to the seaside at Guidel Plage about 50 mins South of Guemene.

 

Sitting on the beach.

 

How’s this for a traffic pacifier? Stay below 30Kph – BIG SMILE

 

Exceed 30 Kph – NOT HAPPY JAN!

 

Sculpture at the same town, Pont Scorff, fabricated from car parts.

 

Les girls or Three muscateers.

 

We’ve had a problem with mice. This idea supplied to us by our Scots visitors is brilliant. Cellotape a piece of smelly cheese to the corner of the bowl and prop up with a coin. The mouse goes under to check out the cheese reaches up for it and – bingo – coin topples and mouse is trapped. We have caught 8 mice this way. In the morning slide a plastic sheet under and take mouse for a walk to the other side of the river. Hopefully we are not trapping the same mouse over and over! We are contemplating purple dye! We caught the first mouse in a conventional trap but it looked like a hampster (Fawlty). We decided the next one would be trapped humanely (They all look like mice! The first one must have been an interloper)

NEW TOY

 

We have invested in a new toy. After checking out what was available in all our favourite hardware stores it was decided to go with this “battery powered” hedge trimmer by Robert Bosch. Always mistrustful of anything battery powered I listened to the sales pitch which said this one has a “New generation” battery which doesn’t remember the last time it was charged (Which often means it will only last 5 mins next time you charge it!). I thought if the Germans can play soccer that well we should take a chance on a German designed hedge trimmer!

It works really well. No noise, or hassles with fuel associated with a two stoke motors, light in weight and goes for 50mins without charging.

This is the “Oscar” look for our garden gate. Oscar was Andrews Maltese/Bishand Terrier which needed a cut like this so it could see! Enough of the ads…

 

This is the river Scorff, our river, a few Kilometres down stream. There’s an otter in the water there somewhere.

 

Work on the house is not all plain sailing. The front legs of the wardrobe collapsed while shifting it away from the wall. It weighed a tonne. Fortunately only one door split in two, the mirror survived. All the contents had to be dragged out through a small gap so that it be stood up again.

THE SAGA CONTINUES!

 

You think we have been joking! This is the paperwork generated by France Telecom Orange since we have been in France and we only want the internet on for seven weeks (Three of those lost getting this far!). I have to admit one sheet of paper was to activate the mobile phone I bought here a couple of years ago.

In the background are two extra modems sitting on their delivery boxes (Note that the boxes are completely different! Don’t want to be too consistent – do we?). By chance these arrived in the same delivery the day after I called the “English Language Hotline”. When they arrived we already had, for two weeks, the only modem we need (In plastic container on the right).

Anyway, we are on-air and with any luck will get out of this without paying a small fortune!

 

Other work underway. Pouring fluid into the foundations to create a barrier to rising damp.

 

We are into the the French way now!