Houston, We Have A Problem

 

 

Dateline: March 31: The morning after making the new drain connection, Paul said he had the most awful smell in his bedroom the previous night and it had nothing to do with our curry, well kind of! Paul’s shower tray is not finally fitted and the trap was dry, so the odours from the town sewer were gently wafting through his room, forcing him, even after pouring water down the shower trap to seal it, to sleep with all the windows open. Fortunately the nights are now warmer!

Following this incident, we were still concerned with occasional nasty whiffs outside and having previously failed to lift the manhole cover in the courtyard, we attacked it with renewed gusto, oh and a pick axe and several lump hammers of ascending size, and associated cold chisels.

Resistance was futile and despite the cover and frame having rusted together, the whole unit was finally lifted to reveal . . . a foot deep empty pit. What a let down. So far we had found not even a slightly sophisticated underground drainage fitting in any of the builder’s merchants we had visited and this discovery seemed even less remarkable. Closer inspection however and poking the rusty detritus around in the bottom of the pit, revealed an inset round plastic cover, a double sealed chamber in fact! Such sophistication!! This cover lifted easily enough and that’s when the full horror of an absence of maintenance for decades hit us . . . the smell and flies were disgusting. We were deep in the merde! (and where on earth did the flies come from? No, I don’t want to know, but have my suspicions)

There was only one thing for it and my brave comrade took a firm grasp of his shovel and with my stoutest pair of navvy gauntlets on, I held a pair of doubled up bin bags open to receive a foot thick of solid matter.

Why on earth an interceptor trap had been installed in a foul waste drain which discharges into a public sewer network is a mystery, but probably dates back to before the introduction of the town’s main drain network and was forgotten about. Not funny.

Anyway, a couple hours of flushing through with a hosepipe and newly cemented manhole cover in place and all is well and working much better then it probably has for many years.

I thought it best not to take any photos of this, our smelliest day, but these things are all part of a home renovator’s diary and as such, I though I would share it with you all.

I’m a sharing kind of person.

Night night everyone, sleep well and I wish you sweet (smelling) dreams.

LC

At Last, Someone Thought I Was French!

Wow, furry walls

Dateline: March 30: I finally ran out of excuses today and as Easter and our important visitors will soon be upon us, I had to go and take one for the team and make the drainage connection to the foul sewer.

The actual hard work was digging the fairly shallow trench from the house to the last manhole on the property, a distance of some six mighty metres and like any digging at Le Clos de la Rose, it involved rock. So much rock in fact, that I used the pick axe as much as the specialist all steel trenching spade. This latter, sleek and all black model, was acquired as much because it seemed a specialist tool was essential to have in my arsenal of manly tools, even although it’s not a power tool. It did however make life much easier, as its clever design made light work of forming a suitably narrow trench with much less spoil to shift.

Dusty, sat in the business end of the trench, deep in combat with my manly yellow and black power chisel, breaking through into the place of unmentionables, I heard a van pull up and someone addressing me. Not hearing much above the chatter of my weapon, I stopped, stood up and took off my gloves to greet my admirer. Me being a courteous sort, I had previously learned the correct phrase to use when interrupting someone and was pleased to hear this polite young chap apologise for disturbing me and realising I was a local builder working on a property, asked me for directions to a particular wine producer’s domaine. I was simply overjoyed as I knew it and gave him the directions he needed.

It’s possible that many of you wont realise the significant importance of this milestone event of my life in France. Every single French person knows before you ever breathe a word that you are English and when able, will always answer you in English, not French, whereas my van driver actually thought from the outset that I was French and understood my simple, yet hopefully effective directions. Life is cool!

Meanwhile, upstairs, Mr Beast is making great progress with the bathrooms and we now have furry walls, as the new partitions are filled with sound insulating quilt, in readiness for the final layer of plasterboard. A further trip to Bricoman and a most helpful Briconaut assisted us with getting the tiles and by the end of the day, we not only had the walls to the guest bathroom (my sister’s and husband Roger’s), but the first tiles on the floor.

In the next exciting episode: ‘Deep in the Merde’

That’s all folks, see y’all soon now,

LC

Six mighty metres of rock breaking

Signed by the author

Tiling the light fandango . . .

. . . and not forgetting the edges

Builder's curry !!!

The Nights Are Getting Warmer

Dateline: March 26: All thoughts of snow and ice are now lost in the past (well apart from the grievous damage to my wristwatch after falling on some ice and finding it isn’t covered on any insurance policy!) as we have an early summer now and since the clocks moved forward, are eating on the terrace most nights and then admiring the stars as they pop out of a darkening sky in one twos and threes until the sky is full of pin pricks.

The other night however, we were preparing a late meal in the kitchen, when I heard some fireworks going off, thinking it must be someone’s birthday of some such celebration, as the French do so like their fireworks and are very good with them. There followed however a thunderous commotion of sound and popping my head round the door revealed a sky full of bright orange flame and sparks, not quite what I had anticipated.

Outside our gates, there was a concerned atmosphere amongst the dozen or more neighbours gathered there, about a third wrapped in their dressing gowns, as the flames ravaged a nearby building up the alley in front of us. Being braver, or curious, or more foolish than the others, Paul et moi set off up the alley to discover a building only recently being worked on by the builders, ablaze and the external door wide open to add fuel to the fire. Kicking it smartly shut, we felt we had reached to limits of our bravery and retreated to the safety of the neighbourhood watch to see what would happen next.

Twenty five firemen arrived and succeeded in keeping spectators from warming themselves too much and we, having ascertained that the building was uninhabited, retired to finish our dinner.

Meanwhile, the build continues and we have our focus firmly fixed on completing the new bathrooms for our Easter visitors. Back to work then, more later . . .

LC

PS. We have a cunning plan to restore the wrist watch to its former glory without having to pay a certain Swiss company a wholly unreasonable ransom. It’s a simple case of ‘who you know’