Some bright spark.....

Having had a somewhat dry last trip well no it wasn't too bad, the lack of water meant I had to drink beer instead, which was quite OK. 

Back on the ferry for the second trip out, another trip another issue. 

Into house, windows open - check, gas on,- check. power on..... Power on.... 

Now herein lies another saga, like many other parts of the world EDF have been ditching mechanical meters for electronic ones that can be remotly monitored. This is a good thing if you live somewhere far away. Previously we would have to arrange to be there for a meter reader or submit a photo of the meter that showed the reading plus the serial number. 

As covid bit, the letters from EDF got more and more insistent we let them install a Linky electronic meter. Not an easy thing to do when we were in Wales and the house is in Brittany!! On top of this we had been paying  estimated bills, for electricity we had used while the house was empty and the supply switched off. 

So, with us not enabling them to change the meter, someone at EDF had thrown their rattle out of the pram and turned the supply off. 

This was much simpler than the water, straight to the new mobile phones international streaming and find the helpline number. The call handler was incredibly focussed and quickly identified the issue. Apologised that he could turn the service back on instantly because of course, it was not a Linky. 

So anyway, 24h later these two techie sorts turned up in a van and switched the power back on, ripping out the old clockwork  meter and installing a linky, or so we thought. 

Doing a final reading on the old meter revealed, what a suprise that they owed us a deal of money. I told EDF I was cool with this, it would just mean our account was in credit for about forever. 

This was not of course good enough, they said they had to issue me with a cheque to be paid into the French bank account I no longer had, at that point. 

Then bills started arriving based on more estimated bills, the linky they had installed would not actually talk to their computer system! 

With sense of humour failiure approaching, I said I would send them cheques for all the future bills, drawn on my UK account.... 

Watch this space.....

Lets get things back to normal......

A regular feature of our previous life has been regular trips to our little house in Brittany. Our new household additions, the grand children have taken to this with great enthusiasm, in fact I think they would quite happily just travel back and for on the ferry for a week never mind 8 hours. There was of course the one crossing where it all cut up rough, a day crossing too. As the Armorique ploughed it's way through a substantial swell many people turned green, not so the little monsters, no, they thought the strange motion the best thing ever. 

Of course getting there is only half the game, a property you have not used for a couple of years is likely to be a bit neglected. Sure enough we arrived at this huge patch of growth which was where our house used to be. Crawling through the brush I found the front door. The locks were properly siwzed, what I needed was  a can of WD40, just like the one I had left home..... So it was off to Intermarche to get some stocks. Back to the house and a bit of persuasion, we were inside the house. Turn on the lights - all was well. Turn on the taps - nothing. 

Need to  fidn out what was going on there, for now it was time to break out the big stimmer and cord, lots of strimmer cord. Saying the place was overgrowns was a massive understatement. A whole day and all the cord we had did about 2/3 of the garden. A restocking trip to Intermarche, they didn't have the size of cord our strimmer usually takes, they did however have some serious mega heavy duty stuff, with upgraded cord it took about 20 minutes, this was not so much mowing as a massacre!! 

This just left the minor matter of water, I was on this while management did much of the strimology. I went up the Marie who gave me a phone number for the water company, which was wrong. The centre technique in the village gave me another number, another wrong number. Time to get serious, off to Intermarche and as the fount of all knowledge, the receptionist who has worked there for ever. She scrawled down a number, within minutes I had made the phone call, spoken to a very helpful person, got in the van and was on my way to the office to sort it out. 

Turns out, during covid the water company had changed, the new firm had no contact details for us and concluded the house was abandoned. The mains had been switched off, fill out all the contact and contract forms, 12 hours later the taps ran. We were in business, also in the shower for some time after all that strimming.  

So this was us post covid back into our little house in Brittany. We were happy (ish) the boys were loving it, home and time to plan our next disaster errrr holiday I mean. 

 

Back on the write side of history

This is my chance to start anew, to renew my aquaintence with blogger after a huge pause. 

Said pause being due to the contested arrival in our household of two of our granchildren, now aged 5. 

Lots has happened in the meantime, first of all there was the famous Brexshit cock up. 

I must say, way back, when  the selfservaites announces their next PM would be Scamerloon known as  Dai Cameron to his friends, I thought to myself. This was it, the selfservatives could not find any one who would make a worse prime minister. 

Someone in the tory party must have been listening and accepted the challenge, some how all the later prime ministers have suceeded in being worse than the last one. Teresa May who accidentally lost all the records on the investigation into child sex offences by parliamentarians. Borris who was: wrong man, wring place, wrong time diring the pandemic, a stunning combination of incompetence and sleaze. Liz Truss, well where would you start with that one. Now of course it's Sunak who has been great so far, a fantastic advocate for his wifes tax affairs, aka as Dr Death by the governments scientific advisors during covid. 

Where on earth will we go next. 

Life here though has not been short of the odd excitement, and I await the next with bated breath. 

 

 

Back to what we are used to....

As former foster carers we are quite used to dealing with the scrapings of the bottom of the pond of stupidity that turn up proudly wearing the badge fostering support worker. Sometimes though they come up with something that suprises even us. To be fair to Llamau, the mob that currently take money from the local authority to manage us, they have, after a few initial experiences decided to hide under the nearest stone. This last week though, they appointed a new support worker who decided he was going to take his job seriously. The management and I concluded, after out initial phone consultation that phrases like "out of his depth" and "not the brightest button on the shirt" were appropriate. Things went a little downhill when he sent me a series of increasingly irate texts about my failiure to turn up for a meeting about a young person who wasn't actually placed with us. Puzzled? Yes I was. Still, to recover from that, he said he is going to call a placement meeting about the many issues we are facing with L. He said, he had phoned her several times but she would not answer the phone. I thought I would be helpful, I asked if he had read the case notes, he assured me he had, was there anything in there which might explain why she would not SPEAK to him? He assured me there was not. I did have a moment and ask about the quality of their record keeping. Being kind, I asked if he could recall the lenghty converstion we had but a few days ago, he could, there is hope, thinks I, had I mentioned anything that might indicate that she would not answer the phone, he could not remember anything. I thought it best to politely terminate the call at this point, after all, shouting "she is an elective mute you fucking cretin" down the phone might cause offence. I did actually save him much trauma, I got to the phone before the management who would have had none of my legendary diplomatic skills.... L's SW who is really good is back in work this week and we will have quite a conversation. And thats before we start talking about the CAMHS trainee psychologist who has been doing "counselling" with L She is much more academically inteligent so she is even more clever at being stupid. She was tasked with producing a health passport, this is a document that someone with Mental Health issues takes with them everytime they go into hospital, to explain their special needs. I have not seen it yet, management rolled her eyes when she was reading it this morning.

Changing times.

So into the chemist and the new reality.

Screens everywhere to shield the staff and contact less preferred cash no longer king...ó

On the top shelf behind the counter a dazzling array of hand washes, masks and gloves, at least there are some to buy now. All there right next to the Viagra, there has to be an irony in there somewhere....

R

Things that are mislabled

Forgive me for seeming knowledgeable, self confident perhaps even  arrogant but I sort of thought I had nailed this parenting thing and knew what it was all about.

It would seem I was mistaken.

The babies though have extended my education

Lets take your day to day stroll through the supermarket.

Misplaced in the aisle marked "cereal" you may well find Weetabix, far from being a food, this is actually, probably the strongest adhesive ever invented.

Similarly, you might  find  butter not with the putty, or the grease or the body paint   but somewhere where it's suggested you might eat it (that's also possible, but only in large lumps obviously) it  can also be fed  to the dog as an astonishingly effective canine laxative.

Flora, or margarine totally belongs in the paint section.

Tomato sauce is a hair treatment, make up  and clothes dye to  rival everything, well apart from chocolate. Actually chocolate does all of the things listed above at least as well.

Then  there are  nappies, they should really go under artists materials, serving rather too well as a palette where "artistic materials" are stored till they are needed as, adhesive, putty or paint. With the added advantage that there is no need to raid the kitchen, to get the necessary resources, these replenish themselves periodically with no need to give tadcu the slip to get to the kitchen.

This . of course brings us to the final educational point, people of my age will have studied the theory of relativity at school. Einstein the genius postulated that time is not a universal, rather it passes at different rates dependent on the position and velocity of the observer. A nanosecond is an impossible short interval, now relativity gives us the nanysecond,  this shows how time really is relative, this is that minute moment of time while tadcu blinks after getting both boys suited and booted immaculate to go out, for James to get the Flora (1 litre catering pack) out of the fridge and paint the kitchen, himself, the dog and the cat, hmmm, add effective animal laxative to  Flora's uses...

R

 

Days of peace.....

So grandparentness has turned into one day at a time lockdown survival. The boys are a delight but goodness me do they have some energy and my are they naughty.

Today was a good start, a lie in, 7 AM call.....

Out of kip and a serious mission, the lads have had 12 weeks where many shops were covid closed shoe shops included. The dynamic duo are therefore in urgent need of properly fitted footwear.

Off up the road, to the shoe shop, fully loaded with trepidation at how to manage two incredibly lively toddlers at a time of social distancing.

They were of course totally angelic, well behaved, lulling us into complacency.

So we drove home with the crew, who fell asleep as you would.   

"You go and do the food shopping, I can cope with the kids"    Says the management, and off I went into town.

What could possibly go wrong?

I wasn't away that long, but long enough.

With me  out of the way, management took up ingredients and started some serious cake making.

James, left for nano seconds decided to investigate the cooking oil. Fortunately this was not our usual gallon cater pack special, it was a mere litre pack. Having tried drinking it, and finding it wanting, he poured the rest over himself and over the floor.

This produced an impressive pool, which the management  attacked with the steam cleaner.

Meanwhile, the  boys were amusing themselves elsewhere.

At this point I arrived, noted the hissing steam cleaner and lack of children.

They had retired upstairs.

So, not long afterwards, I was upstairs.

"Right, so which one of you has been drawing all over the walls that nanny painted last week".

Silence.

"I dunno" said Osian his voice and demenour a picture of innocence.

A pencil clattered to the floor just  behind him.

I was raised in South Wales, in a town where kids first phrases are things like "weren't me officer" and "I'm keeping schtum till my mouthpiece get's here".

Thats usually a 5 year old.

Osian is 2....


Goodness me - what have we let ourselves in for....

R