I'm Starting to Feel Like One Of Them Tuesday 5th August

The field nextdoor

When I say “One of them” I mean one of the locals as opposed to a visitor. We’re getting to the stage when we drive through Castries and see the traffic coming to a standstill, and say “It’s time these tourists went back home” and other similar comments. Every other trip we’ve had here, we have been one of those tourists and it’s a very smug feeling to come home to our little house in the south of France each day, knowing it’s not just for a three weeks holiday but forever if all goes well.

The lady at the Tabac looked hopefully at her pile of Daily Telegraphs when we passed by today, but I’m not in such desperate need of news that I am prepared to shell out 3.5 euros a copy each day. Any moment now, I can get on line and find out what John McCain has said about Barack Obama and whether Miami is ducking hurricanes and who is the new captain of the English cricket team; or maybe I will just look up the temperatures in Montpellier and see what Carla Bruni wore to the last official function.

I took my life in my hands today and asked the young man at Leroy Merlin if he had an ironing board. Not only did I do it in French, but he gave me a clear answer and didn’t fall about laughing. I was so impressed with myself that later in the day, I told a man that the municipal tip was open in the afternoon, but he looked a bit confused and turned round and drove back home.

The day started full of hope that the phone would ring and the internet would be connected, but instead there was a message on the cell phone informing us that a serious problem had been encountered with the line to our house and that we are asked to be patient for yet another 48 hours. This is the third lot of 48 hour patience that we have been asked for and try as we might, we just can’t work up the patience required.

Instead of waiting for another two days (by which time it will be the weekend again), we drove to the library in Castries to use the internet there, only to find that they had shut up shop until the 23rd of August. We phoned the main library in Montpellier and two of the smaller branches, to discover that they had gone the same route, but we have managed to find one branch open tomorrow in the city, so it looks as though we are going to make the tram trip in.

The afternoon was a whirl of excitement. We loaded the trailer with all the long branches cut from the bay tree in the garden, and took it along to the municipal tip or “decheterie” which was open this afternoon. It’s a very slick operation down there and having driven up a steep ramp, we could then offload the greenery into the maw of a large chomping machine which chewed it all up and presumably turned it into wood pulp which will then be sold off somewhere else. An efficient young man in a bright yellow luminous top was directing traffic, and a queue of vehicles discharged a vast array of items from lounge suites to old car tyres. Twenty years ago, this would have been dumped under every tree along every roadside, but the municipal tip has gone a great way towards cleaning up the countryside and it gets our full approval.

We were somewhat concerned this morning when our neighbours dog started barking, and after a couple of hours, we realised that it wasn’t going to stop. It was hard to see if the noise was coming from the house right next door or the one two doors along, but the sound was both wearing and worrying. Michelle had told us a horror story of how the dog next door had finally hung itself after being tied up on a short chain that got wound around a tree, and I hated the idea of some poor animal being tied up in the terrible heat.

I was just getting prepared to march along and find out what was going on when all of a sudden things went quiet and we haven’t heard so much as a yip since. Maybe the owners had been forced to leave their pet behind while they were on an outing somewhere in which case, I would be happy to offer my dog-sitting services if they find it necessary to leave it behind again. My greatest worry was that the neighbour was following the pattern of his predecessor and was planning on having a dog permanently tied up in the garden.

It makes us realise how spoiled we were while living on the farm. Our nearest neighbours lived over two miles away so any noise produced either by them or by ourselves was of little concern to anyone. We also went through a bad patch in Miami when someone in the apartment above us took to trotting about on her marble floors in high heels until 2am which nearly resulted in the re-opening of the Bay of Pigs episode. Peace and quiet is something that we both appreciate, so hopefully the episode with the neighbouring dog was just a one off.

It is now 6.30pm and the cigalles have declared it time for a sit down and a drink. There is nothing nicer than a large glass of half and half water and rosé wine with loads of ice cubes clunking about it in. We can justly rest on our laurels and admire the four rows neatly dug with the rotovator, and the absence of the huge pile of dried grass and dead leaves which has been removed from sight behind the garage. I have to confess that my housekeeping efforts in the garden are far more concerted than those inside the house, but I really will get to grips with the polish and the dusters before our boxes arrive.

We called into the pharmacie today and formed an orderly queue behind several ladies who were also purchasing a bottle of spray-on insect repellent. I was rather tempted to pull up my shirt and expose my stomach which looks as though I have an advanced case of smallpox, but I doubt it would have drawn much sympathy as we all seem to be in the same boat at present. Let’s hope that the end of the heat will see the end of the little beasties, but we do have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that the expected August rains will bring the mosquitoes to the party. So far they have been almost absent and I have to confess that there are relatively few flies around as well.

Jean has just come and shown me his feet. This would be an unusual occurrence were it not for the fact that they are so dirty that they look as though he still has his flip-flops on. I sat on a rock in the garden today and idly picked half a pound of soil out from under my nails while adjusting my red cotton headscarf which keeps some of the sweat out of my eyes, and thanked the Good Lord that I wasn’t lining up for a manicure in Aventura or agonising about getting my hair done. If we can achieve what we have achieved within three weeks, working in this kind of heat, just imagine what we can do once it cools down. We are off to Lunel plant market on Sunday morning to purchase winter vegetable plants to go into our potager, and for those of you keeping pace, the bean plants are preparing to flower which means that the harvest cannot be far behind.

There is a rather worrying postscript to the doings of the day. Even as I write, I can hear the cheerful voices of two real estate agents and two clients who are wading about in the long grass of the field next door. Clip boards are being waved about and visions of large houses are probably being discussed. I thought that Jean and I should prance about in the back garden and pretend to be either insane or incredibly noisy in the hopes that they would go away and seek for other pastures with better neighbours. I suppose this means that we had better get over the wall tonight and rescue as much horse manure as possible before the bulldozers come in.