There’s no mains gas around here, so you have the choice of bottled gas or a tank of gas; we inherited the latter, which is fine, if somewhat ugly. We decided to have a new, underground tank installed and set about getting this done, but as we’re learning, nothing, but nothing here is done at the sort of pace we’re used to.

I started by phoning the company, back in May; yes, they’d send somebody out to see us. Weeks went past and we heard nothing; I phoned again, and again, and again….. eventually making such a nuisance of myself that I was given the mobile number of the lady I needed to speak to, who came round (only 3 hours later than the appointed time!) and set the process rolling. There wasn’t a lot of gas left in the tank, but she agreed it was a good idea to order a refill when the new tank had been installed. The first date available for the changeover was August 16th; we found a plumber to join the tank to the pipe in the house and thought it would be easy. Why don’t we yet realise that NOTHING is easy here?! What fools we are!

The digger driver arrived at 8am, closely followed by the plumber. It was quite apparent from the start that there was a clash of personalities; the digger driver wanted to get the job done and the plumber’s work was nowhere near fast or accurate enough, even cutting the first length of pipe too short! There were raised voices and things nearly got very nasty when the digger driver, very skilled at his job, just happened to catch the plumber’s leg with the bucket of his machine. On the dot of midday the plumber, who hadn’t quite finished his part of the task, took off for the statutory 2 hour French lunch break; to wind the driver up even further? Who knows?

Eventually the job was done, so I phoned the company to order a delivery of gas; “Do you have the contract?” ” No, the lady who visited us in July took it with her.” She should have passed it on, but it would seem, didn’t, and is now on holiday and no, nobody else can deal with this.” Do you have the certificate of conformity?” ” No, where do I get one of those?”    “The plumber will have it.” So I rang the plumber, who has sent it off to some organisation or other, who will send out an inspector, who will inspect and send it back to the plumber, who will send it back to the gas company! “How long does this normally take?” I ask, bearing in mind that we’ve got less than a week’s worth of gas in the tank. “Normally it’s quite quick, but this is August…..”, which means everyone’s on holiday and France grinds to a halt.

Just a good thing it’s salad weather!!!!!

And speaking of weather, we’ve often been told that it can be unbearably hot here in August; this is our first August and there’s a heatwave! At 9am it was 27ºC, by 11am it was 30ºC and last time I looked it was up to 38ºC. The forecast is for it to hit 40º in the next few days and there’s no sign of any respite until at least next Thursday. By keeping all the doors, windows and Shuttercraft shutters closed all day, we’ve managed to keep the downstairs part of the house to no more that 26ºC so far, but the bedrooms are warmer, so Nick and I have decamped to the trailer tent in the grange – much more bearable!

We still haven’t got the car back, so we’re spending a lot of time in the pool, just trying to keep cool. What a good investment that was! 🙂