If your neighbour had just paid thousands to replace and stabilise the rendering on his walls so that bits no longer fell off on your roof, might you consider overlooking the 8€-worth of your electricity consumed in the course of the work? I think you'd just be grateful that the work had been done willingly and promptly, wouldn't you? Oh well: I've had some much less pleasant neighbours in my time, but I was a little surprised. I nevertheless waived change from a €20, and await advice whether the water came to 12€61...
Nice evening yesterday with former neighbours Sheila and Henry, whose new house needs some voile fabric to drape across unsightly walls and ceilings. Since I still had three pairs of full-length écru curtains cluttering up cupboard space, I was more than content to swap them for a bottle of wine - excellent deal, since I didn't pay for them in the first place. When I came by them in 1991, they had been lurking in Mr Fixit Michel's garage for some years since he'd taken them out of the old BT France office in Paris 8e. Others from the same batch remain in use here and at Forges-l'Evêque. Since Sheila also had my Neuilly-Levallois-Ixelles-Dübendorf dining table, she's getting quite fond of BT France!
Still no sign of the cat, though if he's no longer with us, his presence lingered on each time I opened the window, which I'd forgotten he'd pissed on. Copiously. Now dealt with.
Since we've hardly stirred from home since we arrived on Monday, we took a ride along to Gruissan and Narbonne today. The place we lunched in and liked back in May turned out to be closed - again: evidently they're only doing evenings. We went instead to a place we used with Celia and Andy a few years ago, and for the last few hours I've been wishing we hadn't. Underdone skate, underdone onions in the quasi-ratatouille accompaniment. I'm not exactly writhing, but not far off. Hoping for better things when we meet our friends the Coopers at Le Somail on Saturday.
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