Wednesday 15th August
Got up early today following a text from my daughter, she is
on her way to Dubai for a holiday (and the sod text me later to let me know
that she had a 3 course meal on the plane, free drinks, a private TV and a
chauffeur driven car when she arrived, and I’m excited about a flushing
toilet???????) went to our lounge room to call her so as not to disturb John
and heard a noise on the way downstairs, I’m busy trying to convince myself
that it is only the rain, did I say it rains in Brittany? A LOT!!!! Went in to
the lounge and came face to face with a cat, not sure who was most shocked,
then realised it was the cat as it jumped and tried to run out of the window
(unfortunately it was shut, so it just head butted the window) and then we
stared at each other again before it ran around the room and out of the door,
this also explains all the paw prints in the kitchen each morning (a much
simpler explanation than my over active imagination had conjured up).
The cat started to get a bit braver during the week and hid on the small roof watching us, leaving food out for it helped, but didn't stop it coming in to the house and ripping the bin bags to pieces each night!
As we are up and about early we decided to go and get the bits
and pieces we needed from the building suppliers, we went to the tip first and
it was shut, it was 40 minutes late opening so we decided to go on the way back
(there are very few people on time in France, especially estate agents) drove
all the way in to Carhaix and everywhere was shut, so we assumed it all opened
at 10 am, when we got to the E Leclerc’s and that was shut we knew something
was wrong, it turned out that today was a bank holiday. The days blur in France
and I knew there was a bank holiday on Wednesday, but thought today was
Tuesday, it was only when we were at LeClercs that I checked what day it was,
oops.
Be prepared bank holidays are taken as seriously as Sundays
in France and everything shuts, thank goodness we bought food and wine yesterday!
Came back and Andy informed us that he had looked at
somebody else’s electrics and they seemed quite strange, so we went on a
mission looking at other peoples, saw 3 different houses with 3 different
systems, one of which was the B&B which then resulted in a bottle of cider,
lager and champagne, but hey ho it is a bank holiday and everybody insisted we
shouldn’t be working.
Came back and spent the afternoon trying to rewire our
wiring system,
which was made more difficult by the number of visitors (closed
doors do not stop people popping in). John with the little dog turned up with a
bottle of wine for us to try and as he was leaving Theresa and Craig arrived to
look at radiators and the house, this turned out to be a Godsend as he had a
major tip relating to buying building materials (if your reading this, thank
you xx).
Top tips
1.
Do not run out of food or anything else on a
Sunday or a bank holiday.
2.
Keep a check on the days as there are a lot of
bank holidays.
3.
Do not try to work on a bank holiday or after
copious amounts of alcohol.
4.
When given advice ask at least 3 people the same
question.
Any tip about where is the best place to buy building/decorating materials?
ReplyDeleteWould be interested to know!
Hi Gerda
ReplyDeletewe tend to use Brico depot, the one in Morlaix is a really big store with a timber yard next door (also plaster, cement, plaster board etc).
we have bought the majority of our bathrooms from here also, but I would recommend having a look around at showers etc as we have bought items on special offer at Mr Bricolage (normally much more expensive, but their specials can be quite good).
there is a shop called Castorama, which is also a lot more expensive (apart from their specials) we bought all of our internal doors from here.
if you can bring paint from the UK, the french paint is not the same quality and very expensive.
Biggest tip is try not to listen to a lot of the expat experts, who recommend to bring every thing over.
Happy to discuss via e-mail if you want more details or to meet for a coffee when you come over.
good luck :)