At Long Last - Thursday 21st August

The Barbeque Builder, Chief Cook and Occasional Bottle Washer

For those of you paying attention, you will note that I didn’t write yesterday. Our lives have been altered and our timetables upturned. We are back on line. The gentlemen who run the internet cafe in Montpellier will probably close up shop and the lady in Customer services will be mourning the end of our daily phone calls.

Having got to the stage where we never believed anything that she told us, we went into Montpellier yesterday morning to be greeted warmly by the owner of the internet café. By this stage he was giving us the same two computers each time and making every effort to ensure that we felt at home, in the hopes of us returning on a regular basis. It was only due to the fact that they close firmly for lunch at midday that made us pack up and go home as we really didn’t hold out much hope for the promised visit of the technician between 2pm and 6pm. However, we did have a more definite date with the electrician who was coming to install a night meter to help us keep down the electricity costs.

We waited patiently and then all of a sudden, it was like a car park outside in the front garden. Not one but two little vans arrived, with the France Telecom technician getting in through the door about thirty seconds before the electrician. Things could have gotten ugly at this point as the technician needed the electricity switched on in order to work his magic, and the electrician needed it switched off so that he could complete his task and get on.

I fled to the kitchen and quickly rounded up glasses, iced water and fruit syrup and offered it to the electrician who was gracious in his acceptance and quite happy to hang on for five minutes. There was a roar of applause and general back-slapping and high fiving when the computer screens came to life and there was dear old Yahoo waiting to welcome me. We were back in touch with the world. For the first time in five weeks, I could speak to my children in far away Melbourne, I could download photos of the new family dog, phone my mother in England, and contact my brother in Canada and commiserate with my sister in law who had just suffered a broken arm. Skype messages from Argentina flashed up on the screen, a message came in from South Africa and my dear friend Sybil in Florida sent us a cheery wave. Emails from patient friends started coming in and there was access to all the latest news from around the world. I felt like a child in a sweet shop and didn’t know what to do first, and until nearly midnight last night I was still rushing hither and thither.

We did stop long enough to go for a very pleasant walk around a new neighbourhood that came as a complete surprise to us. We knew that St Jean du Moulin had grown in the past twenty years, but we stumbled upon an entire new chunk of grand houses, steep driveways and high walls covered in the much sought-after ivy. Having walked for nearly an hour, it was quite a relief to find that we had completed a circuit and we came out just about opposite the house for which my knees and hips were most grateful.

My liver has apparently returned to its normal shape and size after giving me a serious fright, and my waistline is also returning to a better shape and size after four days of careful eating. I suppose I shall have to undergo a barrage of tests once we are signed into the French medical system because this isn’t the first time it has given me a bit of a warning, and I am duly chastened and getting really good at making home made soup, seafood bouillabaisse and roasted vegetables on the barbeque. Who says that diet food has to be boring? The little melons which we buy from the farm stall are as sweet and juicy as could be, and there are six pain au chocolat languishing in the deep freeze and there they will stay for the time being.

I have been sitting here this afternoon tearing up copies of the Daily Telegraph. It’s not that I dislike the paper and throughout my travels I have always been delighted to come across a copy of it. We are starting a compost bin and now with access to Google and all the information that we need, we can begin to make use of all the vegetable parings and melon skins, and old newspapers We are going to have thousands upon thousands of leaves coming down in the near future which apparently help the process along, and we have found an unusual wire mesh container in the tool shed which will work perfectly. We were slightly suspicious that Papy might have been planning to rear rabbits in it with a view to popping them in a pot at some stage, but I cannot verify this so I shall give him the benefit of the doubt and decide that it was some clever gizmo for stopping rabbits eating some sort of plant.

We inspected the beans early this morning and I am proud to announce that as the flowers fall off, there are little green beans appearing. I’m sorry to think that there is no time to get another batch going before the autumn comes, but we will thoroughly enjoy our first batch. The courgettes are definitely preparing to go into action and the spinach shoots are starting to show. There are some very suspicious gaps in the rows and some extremely fat ants walking about, and while I don’t want to cast aspersions, I might be forced to cast a bit of ant powder down some of the holes.

It seems to be all gardening and computers today but we will work out a decent schedule once we have caught up with the backlog. I had forgotten what a terrible time waster it is to have all this information at my fingertips, but at least I found out about what to put in my composter!