11th November 2021
It’s been a while since I last blogged, for lots of reasons and for which I offer my apologies for those of you who have missed me.
I’ve had a couple of water infections, the second one of which was a bit of a beast that took 5 weeks to really get over. Usually my infections are e-Coli which, whilst not to be wished on anyone is pretty readily sorted out with any one of a number of antibiotics. This second one is usually abbreviated to ‘KO’ – or Klebsiella Oxytoca – which can be very dangerous. I had my usual water infection symptoms – severe pain in my left shoulder (because I can’t feel anything from my chest down anything painfully wrong below that level refers to my left shoulder, bizarre I know but there you go!), pee that’s cloudier than the worst home-brew you’ve ever held to your lips and frequent wet nappies L. Karen called a Doctor out for me as soon as we recognised what was going on and it was a week before the urine test results came back and the appropriate antibiotic was swallowed. I needed a second weeks’ worth before the infection seemed to be sorted but because it can impact the kidneys I’d ended up with swollen legs and ankles which meant staying in bed pretty much all day with my legs up and catheterising myself 6 and 7 times a day (usually I do 4 a day). The day time wasn’t too bad but it meant threading a pipe in every 2 or 3 hours during the night which really impacted on our sleep! It’s sorted now but we’re glad that it’s over.
Our building works haven’t been going according to plan either. Earlier posts will tell you about the problems we had with a French builder and how we were introduced to an English brickie. Unfortunately he wasn’t as good as his word, he wasn’t a tidy worker and always seemed to be having a brew. Now Karen was a teacher for 30 years and so worked to a timetable so she always found it hard to stomach a way of working that was totally alien to her. Me less so given the work I’d done in the past but I had to grin and bear it because we were very much stuck with him for fear of never getting the work finished. The crunch came when he started breaking through the wall to prepare the door way for the new conservatory – at 17:30 he was rushing to get away but he hadn’t secured the hole in the wall! Karen pulled him up over it (I was in bed suffering with my swollen legs and waterworks) and he grudgingly made a desultory attempts to close up the hole although behind the pallet there was still a gap large enough for someone to crawl through!
That night Karen expressed her distress and concerns to me – all of which were extremely pertinent and I asked her to leave it to me to sort out the next day after the nurse had been and gone. The next day arrived and Karen commented to Barry that he’d really upset her with his attitude the day before and his response was to pack up and pack off, telling her that if she didn’t like it she could find someone else! When all’s said and done he was pretty useless – great at talking the talk but he walked with a pronounced tilt – so no great loss.
Fortunately our friend down the hill from us – Andy – came to the rescue and boarded us up properly and is, as I type this at 15:45 on 11th November 2021 busily sorting out the wall and brickwork for the door frame for the conservatory. More worryingly he had done all the groundworks for the conservatory and that was due to be delivered on Tuesday 2nd November and then erected on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I wanted him there when they started to put the thing up because it was his base, he’d messed it up once (which cost is 1500€ extra as they had to adapt the whole thing to fit!) and if it was till wrong he was going to have to wear the problem. Well I guess he bottled it and looked for the easiest way of getting out of his responsibilities and a telling off from Karen was all the excuse the wimp needed. As it turned out 3 guys turned up at the time they said they would and it was all up and done by Friday night except for a few little bits that they came back and sorted on the Monday. So the upshot is we’ve got our conservatory, at last, and it’s super. There’s still work to be done – fitting the door from the house, laying the insulation and floor, then the under floor heating and finally the tiling –take a look at the photos below:
Barry’s loss of bottle has also meant that the new car-port isn’t finished either! All that’s left to do is to finish a plinth to take a 1000 litre water butt to harvest the rain off the roof. Fortunately we’ve got another friend – Paul – who’ll sort that out for us between now and Christmas,
My last bit of personal news is that I’m booked in for my Covid-19 booster jab on the morning of Friday 19th November. Karen has another month or so to wait for the 6 month gap to close but we’ll both be triple jabbed by the New Year. So good news all round as Covid continues to stay a very real and increasing threat. The French are pretty good at behaving responsibly, wearing masks in enclosed spaces such as supermarkets (where you are challenged if you’re not wearing a mask) and we have to have proof of vaccination to go to a restaurant – either a print-out or on an App on the phone. All restaurants have to scan the QR code as proof and President Macron has said that over 65’s have to have proof of a third jab or lose their passport. The French have taken to this quite well, given they are usually quite opposed to being told what to do. We know a few people, young and old, who are refusing to get jabbed. One, our friend Jehan who runs a little restaurant we use has actually had Covid-19 and was very poorly with it, puffing on oxygen for weeks. Now another friend, Jeremy (like me) who waits on for Jehan and runs yoga classes, is poorly and getting worse with it. Neither have been jabbed – and continue to refuse it. Jeremy’s wife Helene, who does some cleaning for us, is also a refusenik and to add fuel to that fire they have a 1 year old daughter who, as far as I’m concerned, they are risking exposing to this awful disease. These are all supposedly intelligent people who, for some reason can’t (or won’t) see the sense in protecting themselves. What makes this even more unbelievable is that children in France have to have had 11 vaccinations before they can attend school.
It’s now Friday 12th November and we’ve just had our lunch on the terrace – a delicious home-made cheese and onion pie – sat in glorious sunshine and a really pleasant temperature of 19° C. Hopefully this weather will hold for a while because after what seems to be forever we’ve actually got it all sorted for Karen’s daughter Leighann to visit – along with her son – our Grandson – Marshall. They’ll be with us on Sunday 21st November for a week (maybe). Karen is like a kid counting down the days until Christmas, which isn’t surprising given that she was there for his birth on 15th December 2019 and hasn’t seen him since other than over Facebook Portal calls. I’m yet to meet him and I can’t wait J. Our very own Covid-19 separation was bad enough but pales into insignificance given the heartrending problems it has caused thousands of others. Funnily enough when Karen went back to the UK to be with Leighann for Marshall’s arrival at the beginning of December 2019 she complained that there had been a woman opposite her on the Stansted Express looking like death warmed up and coughing and spluttering all over the place. While Karen was in London she stayed with friends of ours, both of whom were struggling with what they thought were really bad ‘flu symptoms and Karen was feeling the same, complete with a persistent dry cough and a touch of breathlessness within a day or two. Covid – 19 or what? If it was it was right at the very beginning and if it was it was a good job it had cleared up before she got home because it would have had serious repercussions for me! Fortunately she was much better by the time she got home and all’s been well son far – which can’t be said for the Covid-19 status in the UK or even here in France where it is ever so slightly on the increase.
As I said earlier on in this piece the French are pretty well behaved with regards to masks, hand sanitising and distancing. We watch the BBC News every day and are staggered at the number of people who are behaving as if Covid-19 is no longer a threat! This isn’t helped when Johnson avoids the House of Commons to face the music about Owen Patterson and criminal corruption (call it out for what it is – sleaze doesn’t tell the half of it), visiting a hospital instead and then is photographed not wearing a mask when accompanied by 3 NHS people who were masked up. It made a nonsense of the comments made by Lord Kamal in the House of Lords that same day. But then again Johnson isn’t having a good time of things at the moment is he? His behaviour at the COP 26 talks was more than embarrassing it was disgraceful and he blew it trying to persuade his audience that the UK was not a corrupt country. I’ve covered lots of this in earlier blogs so I’ll not repeat myself other than to add that when the Tory press start to turn on him – as they have – and his backbenchers start getting twitchy I can imagine the letters to the 1920 Committee are getting prepared. Whipping MP’s to support a crook won’t sit well with ‘Red Wall’ MP’s and those time-served old codgers in the South East for a long time to come. We can only wait and see.
I’ll leave politics there for now other than to say I hope your fuel tanks are full and your shop shelves bulging with produce. Regardless of what Sunak said when discussing his Budget there are no shortages of HGV drivers here in France. Deep in the heart of the French countryside we have got everything we need – and everything we need comes on the back of a truck! There are only two words necessary to explain what’s happing in the UK – ‘Boris’ and ‘Brexit’. If any of you have a Tory MP please write to him or her about the potential for a return to sectarian violence in Northern Ireland if Johnson and Lord Frost continue to play at ‘Billy Big Bollox’ over the Northern Ireland Protocol. It’s their agreement, they signed it, told us all it was all done and dusted so they must own it. Again earlier blogs of mine have stated quite clearly that if there was only one reason to stay in the EU it was the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. The Tories don’t have a good history with their dealings with Ireland and this just might trigger it all off again.
OK, now I’m going but before I go regular readers will know that I’m an avid reader and last year I instigated my own counter to the Booker Prize – the Brookesy Prize. This year I’ve read some amazing books, old and new, and have shortlisted three favourites:
‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth. An enormous read at over 1400 pages but it leaves you with an almost tangible taste, sight and the sounds of India. Well worth investing the time in reading.
‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ by Robert Tressel. This is my ‘Desert Island Discs’ book and even to this day the period of history it covers bears comparison with the antics of the Tories and their years of austerity. Read this before you die and buy it for all your children for Christmas.
‘The Day of the Triffids’ by John Wyndham. Written in 1951, at the height of the Cold War this is Sci-Fi at its prescient best forewarning those who had the imagination for it of weaponising space with nuclear armed satellites and the genetic modification of plants. I first read this when I was in Primary School – it hit me then and did so again – making it a worthy winner of this years Brookesy Prize.
Time to go so TTFN
Stay safe, get jabbed and remember that Covid-19 is still here, still killing people and not going anywhere any time soon. STI
Jem