Saturday, May 07, 2011

Easter 2011

We had a great time out in France over Easter, though not without its frustrations.  What went well:

  • The weather - most days into the mid 20's C, bright and sunny and a bit breezy
  • Samantha and Elizabeth came over to stay with us for almost a week - it was really nice to see them 
  • Decorating - got one of the guest bedrooms painted and it looks very good now - very sparkling and comfortable
  • Gardening - had the veggie plot rotovated and Jean planted lots of potatoes - we're hoping they will survive without our intervention for a couple of months
  • Cutting the grass - we took delivery of our new garden tractor and a brushcutter, cut lots of grass and generally tidied the garden up a lot.
  • Sprayed the grapes against mildew - not all that many plants but they're heavy with tiny grapes already
  • Met the French neighbours and had several friends come round to visit, including Audrey & George who stayed over in the newly painted guest room 
  • Got the phone, broadband/internet and TV working (both UK and French)
  • The cherry tree is full of cherries which were just starting to ripen, but they'll all be gone by the time we return, though the walnut tree will take a lot longer for its nuts to ripen
  • Lots of good food and wine as usual
What didn't go quite so well:
  • It took the TV company two weeks to get our satellite dishes to us - they were put up on our last day!
  • It took Orange/France Telecom over a week to get the phone working after the internet line was working - lots of expensive, frustrating phone calls on a mobile with almost no signal
  • EDF are charging us on an wildly high estimate of our electricity usage and we can't get them to bring it down to a sensible level until August
  • Sam and Elizabeth missed their TGV train home, due to our mixing up the time and some roadworks on the N10, but they got another one which got them home not much later than planned
So the good far outweighed the not-so-good. Can't wait till next time we go out. 

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