Sunday 16 November 2014

Welcome home…

At 2am on Friday morning to:

A very cold house,

An empty oil tank.

A broken boiler,

No hot water,

An electric shower fuse explosion,

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Pouring rain,

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Leaves to be raked up

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A leaky roof (although our very good neighbours, Rory and Gill, have obtained estimates for the replacement ridge tiles, damaged in the recent storms)

and

A stinking cold.

Thank goodness for the Boots Vapour Rub, even if it is 20 years out of date! My excuse is that whilst working I was exposed to all sorts of bugs, but I rarely caught a cold!

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By 8am I was ready to book our trip back to Le Petit-Pressigny. Luckily by 2pm, with the exception of the cold, normal service had been resumed! Thanks, Tim.

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Despite the problems it feels good to be back, and we’re looking forward to catching up with family and friends.Rhiannon and Stuart popped in with some flapjack and chocolate shortbread, and to expose my ‘out of date’ cold remedy…

6 comments:

  1. Every home needs a Tim!!

    Vapour Rub never dies...
    it just goes from strength to strength...
    whilst I fully understand that many medicines need a sell by date...
    things of the rub-in ilk certainly don't... it just means waste and a continual turnaround for the shop and manufacturer.
    And where does all the outdated, but perfectly good stuff, go...
    a specialist processor...
    We have, upstairs, remnants of a small pot of Tiger Balm...
    it was my father's...
    bought in Singapore in 1968.
    Also remnants of a tube of Deep Heat...
    in a little "hotel breakfast jam" jar...
    it ate its way out of the tube somewhere in 1990...
    but I have no idea how old it was then...
    so your rub is not alone...
    there will be medicine cupboards all over the world with pots and tubes yelling...
    "Hi! Remember me??"
    as they await fresh air once again.

    Get well soon...
    but I think I might be developing your cold...
    or else it is yesterday's sawdust trying to escape!

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  2. Oh dear, poor you!
    I stopped getting colds when I retired - no longer working with the general public. Until the day I used my bus pass to go to Sheffield on the bus. An hour cooped up with the great unwashed resulted in a humdinger.
    It's so demoralising when you've left your lovely house in France, fought your way home on the English motorways, and arrive to find a series of jobs and disasters await you.
    Thank goodness for Tim's skills with a toolbox! And I do hope you feel better soon.
    Looking on the bright side.......you don't have to rush at anything and you haven't got to feel bad about taking time off work to get better!

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  3. Aaargh! We always kind of expected that coming from England to France, but not the other way round! Thank goodness for helpful neighbours as well as a practical husband.

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  4. Not nice, hope everything is back to normal very soon and you get rid of your cold. We are back in the UK on 16 Dec for two weeks and staying with my FIL. The bedroom we stay in is freezing, 3 outside walls so I am not looking forward to it one bit! Take care and try to keep warm. Diane

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  5. Not the perfect UK welcome....but it sounds as if apart from the cold, normal service was quickly resumed....and France will be there, waiting for you again next time. Enjoy seeing people you haven't seen for a while and wallow in the fact that you dont have to get up early tomorrow if you dont want to ! jx

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  6. Definitely not a good welcome home, Gaynor - but I'm sure once things are feeling better, yourself included, you'll have a lovely time - and as Janice says, France is still waiting for your return. Axxx

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