On Saturday the post lady popped our EDGF application for electricity for the vans back through the letterbox. I was hoping with great anticipation that the envelope would manifest itself into a start date and the promise of swift and trouble free installation. You can imagine how my heart sank when I saw our application returned to us including the cheque I had sent on account. We were about to go out to Ann’s for dinner to say good bye to our chorister friend Lydia who is returning to the US next week, so I did not mention the returned application form to Mike in case he blew a fuse and our evening would be marred with frustration and disappointment. On Sunday morning I gently slipped the envelope to him over toast and coffee and we both went through the letter and read the contract again and both were puzzled and confused as to why it was returned. Before the coffee got cold this morning I made the call to EDGF for an explanation and a solution to the obvious to them, but not us, problem. The lady was very patient with me and explained that the whole dossier was returned because I had not written the declaration of acceptance in my own hand. I was still no further forward in my understanding of the problem and we had to go through the declaration page twice to discover what the words were that I had to write by hand to say that I had understood the document and we were happy to have the work done. I said that I would not have sent the contract back if I didn’t want the work done but as all things official in France you have to play by all the rules albeit straight out of the 18th century book of bureaucracy. The documents are back in the post now so please all of you out there in blogger land a crossed finger or two would not go amiss.
At dinner on Saturday evening we laughed until we cried at the comment our Debbie in Australia had made on face book not liking the word cock when discussing my boy chicken. Needless to say the conversation developed into play on words and actually got a little saucy. We discussed the best way to refer to my old fella without causing offence. It was decided that I should say coq as in au vin or better still, rooster, but actually boy chicken reflects who he is and today he looks a lot better and is making a good recovery from his falling over episode of last week. In the picture you can see that we have extended the fence height to discourage the hens strutting through my garden and tearing it to shreds. So far we are experiencing “stop at home” hens and a much happier rooster come boy chicken whose had his girls around him all day, and seems to like it.
Mike had to bite the bullet this morning and entered into the broken down mower shed to try to find out what is wrong. I hid myself in the poly far away enough to be safe from a very frustrated Mikey fella but not so far away that I was not aware that things were not going to plan. By eleven thirty the offending part had been discovered and removed and we then needed to get into town to see where we might start to enquire as to how to find a replacement. To add to the frustration of a complicated hydraulic nightmare of a broken mower we then had to join the rest of France in a two hour lunch before knowing how this episode was going to pan out. Happily the man in the mower shop was not outwardly phased by the worn shaft and complicated application and asked us for a 24 hour window to find the part number and source the bit so all that was left for us to do was to get home and get on with something constructive.
Like mowing the lawn with a mower that works and is a lot less complicated to manage.........
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