Not a good month....
Firstly there was my step-dad's funeral, which was earlier than I was first told and it ended up by being a bit of a rush for me. That led to me rushing off to England and not doing all the things one should do when leaving a property over the winter months...
...such as turning off the water and draining down the pipes. Which meant that after a fortnight of the lowest temperatures since 1950, the shower fitting and the flexible pipe under the kitchen sink froze in my shop. so, when the thaw came, my neighbours heard running water and went out to find it cascading out of the first floor window!
They were brilliant - turned off the mains in the street, and mopped up. Every day since, they have been in to open windows and try and dry everything out. A million thank-yous to Polly and Colin of Maison Lapeyriere, in Le Dorat.
Fortunately I HAD turned off the electricity at the mains, as most of the water poured down through two floors into electrical goods on the way, and the fuse box. I may have to wait until the summer until I dare turn it back on...
Two days after this disaster Polly rang me to say that the shop had been broken into and the thieves had stolen the fridge-freezer, microwave and coffee machine. Seems it never rains but it pours (or, in this case, it thaws...)
So - back to the funeral - the first one, that is, because I came back from that to find that my mother-in-law was in hospital, and shortly after, she died. Her funeral was arranged for two weeks later (during which time the flood and break-in happened) so I had to stay on in England for that. It was on Thursday 24th February, just a month later than the first one, and on the Friday after that (yesterday) I drove back to France.
But not even that was eventless, as I got caught in a two-hour traffic jam in Paris, and finally got home at 11pm, 14 hours after I had started out!
I'll blog about the shop on Chez Penny, another day. Frankly I'm so tired today, and a visit to the shop this morning did nothing to improve my mood.
At least the weather was good today - warm and sunny...
Incidentally, I visited several garden centres in England and bought some seeds...
...and other plant-related things to put in the garden...
The potatoes are both earlies and can go in now - or as soon as I can get someone to rotavate the ground for me. I'm planning to have a vegetable garden this year, as well as flowers. It'll keep me busy and, hopefully, look lovely too!
2 comments:
G'day Penny. Condolences on the loss of your family members, that is hard and then to have all that happen with the shop, it would be a very stressful time for you. I think your garden is going to look just lovely when all those flowers and the vegies start to grow.I hope you get everything sorted out in the shop ok. Take care. Liz...
What a difficult time you've had ... thinking of you.
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