My last day at school came quite quickly and it was a sad affair indeed. I had prepared myself for the goodbyes but looking back I should have taken the afternoon off. Some children kept on asking, through the day, why I was leaving while a little girl in my class kept on coming to me and hugging me. I looked at their little faces, trying to take it all in as if storing memories for future use, not being really useful, feeling in the way and already somewhere else. I wish I could have taken one or two, the ones I know haven't got a good deal at home.
When it was time to leave I could feel my throat tighten and a huge wave of sadness washed over me. I ran away more than walked out, with for last memory little E. calling me, standing at the door in his suit smiling, his bag in one hand and waving with the other.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Sunday, 19 April 2009
16. of wrecks, bombs and the Borg
So we're back in England again after a week staying with Cathy, Dave and the kids and visiting the house.
When we visited the house we could see that our friends had done a brilliant job on it. The whole ceiling was down on one side, the false ceiling on the other was down and half the floor was up making it look more like the wreck of the Mary Rose than anything, but that's the point. Before the work starts we have to go through this horrible period of making it look like a haunted house and then bring it back to life.
We made a trip to Weldom and picked up some bombs. Not real ones of course, but fumigation bombs. The place has been like the House of Flies, on the upper floors of the house there are squillions of them, either dead, dying or will be. Lord knows where they come from, after seeing the mummified cats we kinda don't want to know, just as long as they are all killed. I'm sure the house may have some other gruesome find along the way, as long as it's not human I don't really mind. So these 'bombs' are more like fizzy powder candles. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic scenario where you light the touch paper, run and close the door and 'bouf' the whole thing goes off and all you can see from the outside is evidence of a white cloud. It was more of a 'fizz fizz hiss' that just carried on until it was all finished in the can. But when we went back to check the next day it certainly did seem to have done the trick.
Apparently we are the talk of the village. We had a drink in a our local, there is only one. We were introduced to a couple at the bar who heard us speaking english and also the owners of the bar. It transpires that some people in the village thinks the school shouldn't have been sold by the commune and others happy that is now being rejuvenated. You can't please them all, hopefully we will live up to expectations.
The Japanese Knotweed was raising it's persistent head again after we attacked it last time. It was even pushing up the carpet we put over it to try and deprive it of sunshine. We spoke with our neighbour about it and he told us of a weedkiller that was MUCH stronger than the one we had used. Off we eagerly trot (well, we virtually ran) to the garden centre to buy some. It looked evil. More like Agent Orange, well it WAS orange, but when you added water it went milky, and I have always had a primal distrust of any liquid that changes quality in this way, even seeing that crystal clear topaz colour of pastis change to alcoholic milk. When we purchased the killer the lady in the shop was very insistent that it could kill trees and shouldn't be used near a well, river or other water and expect nothing to grow afterwards. Little did she realise that we were envisaging a horticultural Hiroshima if we got our way. We have to be gardening Borg, resistance is futile!
When we visited the house we could see that our friends had done a brilliant job on it. The whole ceiling was down on one side, the false ceiling on the other was down and half the floor was up making it look more like the wreck of the Mary Rose than anything, but that's the point. Before the work starts we have to go through this horrible period of making it look like a haunted house and then bring it back to life.
We made a trip to Weldom and picked up some bombs. Not real ones of course, but fumigation bombs. The place has been like the House of Flies, on the upper floors of the house there are squillions of them, either dead, dying or will be. Lord knows where they come from, after seeing the mummified cats we kinda don't want to know, just as long as they are all killed. I'm sure the house may have some other gruesome find along the way, as long as it's not human I don't really mind. So these 'bombs' are more like fizzy powder candles. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic scenario where you light the touch paper, run and close the door and 'bouf' the whole thing goes off and all you can see from the outside is evidence of a white cloud. It was more of a 'fizz fizz hiss' that just carried on until it was all finished in the can. But when we went back to check the next day it certainly did seem to have done the trick.
Apparently we are the talk of the village. We had a drink in a our local, there is only one. We were introduced to a couple at the bar who heard us speaking english and also the owners of the bar. It transpires that some people in the village thinks the school shouldn't have been sold by the commune and others happy that is now being rejuvenated. You can't please them all, hopefully we will live up to expectations.
The Japanese Knotweed was raising it's persistent head again after we attacked it last time. It was even pushing up the carpet we put over it to try and deprive it of sunshine. We spoke with our neighbour about it and he told us of a weedkiller that was MUCH stronger than the one we had used. Off we eagerly trot (well, we virtually ran) to the garden centre to buy some. It looked evil. More like Agent Orange, well it WAS orange, but when you added water it went milky, and I have always had a primal distrust of any liquid that changes quality in this way, even seeing that crystal clear topaz colour of pastis change to alcoholic milk. When we purchased the killer the lady in the shop was very insistent that it could kill trees and shouldn't be used near a well, river or other water and expect nothing to grow afterwards. Little did she realise that we were envisaging a horticultural Hiroshima if we got our way. We have to be gardening Borg, resistance is futile!
Saturday, 28 March 2009
15. roadkills
It had the feel of a David Lynch movie. The mist was thick and the headlights of the car bounced upon it, it was like driving into a wall that kept receding away. We were on the motorway in the dead of night, having decided to drive home overnight as Fox was finishing work at 9 pm. It was very unsettling, at least for me. And then suddenly, what just hopped in front of the car? No, not Laura Palmer but a stupid white bunny that was treating me to my very own experience of "bunny caught in the headlights".
I screamed a scream I would have prefer Fox not to have heard for it was more akin to a 10 year old girl's having a bad dream than to a 35 year old man's driving a van, albeit a small one. The rabbit did what any rabbit is supposed to do when caught in headlights, it froze. And this, I'm pleased to say, saved its life. I started to relax when Fox said: "Imagine if it had been a deer". Indeed.
I had never killed any animal on the road (or off the road for that matter), and after my encounter with the rabbit my eyes rarely strayed from the road. So imagine my surprise few days later when my first roadkill didn't turn up to be a rabbit or a deer but a bird. Yes, a bird. The threat came from the air. The little buggers are darting from one edge to the other on either side of the road and quite close to the ground, in search of food or mate. But oblivious to the traffic. The poor thing hit the windshield with a thump! and ricocheted over the car.
I was mortified, so Fox came to my rescue: "It's probably just stunned hon, they always flight into windows and stuff". Windows travelling at 110 km/hr? Doubt it. But I feel lucky, really, because when I told the story to Cathy she remembered when she hit a bird once. It hit the front of the car, rebounded off the roof and crashed on the windshield of the car travelling behind, going through it and losing its head in the process. That kind of carnage would buy me years on the couch.
I screamed a scream I would have prefer Fox not to have heard for it was more akin to a 10 year old girl's having a bad dream than to a 35 year old man's driving a van, albeit a small one. The rabbit did what any rabbit is supposed to do when caught in headlights, it froze. And this, I'm pleased to say, saved its life. I started to relax when Fox said: "Imagine if it had been a deer". Indeed.
I had never killed any animal on the road (or off the road for that matter), and after my encounter with the rabbit my eyes rarely strayed from the road. So imagine my surprise few days later when my first roadkill didn't turn up to be a rabbit or a deer but a bird. Yes, a bird. The threat came from the air. The little buggers are darting from one edge to the other on either side of the road and quite close to the ground, in search of food or mate. But oblivious to the traffic. The poor thing hit the windshield with a thump! and ricocheted over the car.
I was mortified, so Fox came to my rescue: "It's probably just stunned hon, they always flight into windows and stuff". Windows travelling at 110 km/hr? Doubt it. But I feel lucky, really, because when I told the story to Cathy she remembered when she hit a bird once. It hit the front of the car, rebounded off the roof and crashed on the windshield of the car travelling behind, going through it and losing its head in the process. That kind of carnage would buy me years on the couch.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
14. camping it up
I resigned yesterday. I didn't feel elated or had a smirk on my face, instead I handed in my letter to my superior in a doorway, feeling very conscious of the fact I was leaving a month earlier than previously stated. But I'm sure she understands that sometimes we say something and then do another, after all she promised me during my job interview that I'll be put forward for my level 4 in British Sign Language but turned me down every single year when I asked for it. See?But the truth is that we can't afford not to be there any longer, my early departure is more of a necessity rather than a choice. We know that local youth is getting into the school (probably through the broken windows, and the buggers don't even switch off the lights before leaving) and when Dave lifted the floorboards this week he found more than the mummies of two previous lodgers (see above and below). He found dry rot. Or so we think. We need to get an expert on site, and pay him of course. More cash out of our pocket and no job has started on the house yet.
And why not? Because our project manager is dragging his feet to find another mason, probably hoping to wear us out in a waiting game (for two weeks he ignored our phone calls and emails). Should we get impatient and get workers on site he would be entitled to denounce a lack of trust and ask compensation under the terms of the contract we signed before leaving us to sort things out. We are of course tempted to buy him out, and it's still an option we're considering, but we are foaming at the mouth at the very thought of handed more money to him for having done so little.
So in the end it became evident that as long as we would be in London there would be little or no progress made on the renovation, so we decided that one of us should go. Speaking French, it fell on me to pack up and move. The project manager might be able to dodge our phone calls for two weeks but it will be interesting to see how he'll do with yours truly camping on his doorstep.
Well, not so much camping as 'caravaning'. We first thought about cleaning and turning the kitchen of the house and its adjacent room into our living quarters and 'roughing it up' but papa would have none of it and within days found us a caravan. The comfort of the caravan will be a small consolation for having to go there on my own as Fox will remain behind until I find a job to keep us afloat for the first year. This is disheartening as we have seldom been apart, twice for a week at a time and each time I have been miserable throughout. This is not how I pictured our move.
I imagined us driving one sunny day, leaving Britannia behind smiling at each other. We would arrive at the school at sunset, we would open a bottle of wine and put fresh sheets on the bed. We would eat amongst the carton boxes looking in each other's eyes. The next few da
ys would have been spent unpacking and painting around the house, walking in the garden sipping wine and the evenings listening to the house talking to us, getting used to its noises. But instead the house won't 'talk' to me but will scare the living Jesus out of me, along with her living-dead cats and army of flies. I will have to hide from the neighbours in the caravan (Fox is the sociable one and would have to do some serious damage control by the time he joins me). Hopefully job hunting and stalking our project manager will keep me busy.Sunday, 22 February 2009
13. la douloureuse
The French have a name for a bill or an invoice. They call it la douloureuse, the painful. When we met with our project manager two weeks ago, I jokingly asked him for la douloureuse and good Lord he didn't disappoint. Fortunately for my ego I glimpsed the final figure before he handed the breakdown of the quotes to me and had just the time to compose a collected and non-expressive expression on my face. But my heart sank. It was 30 thousands over budget. That was a karmic slap across my face for having gloated to the bitch notaire about the school, no doubt.
I looked at Fox, unaware, collecting the tiles that didn't shatter when thrown up in the air when the storm that battered the Poitou the week before hit the roof of our préau. I wasn't too worried about the roof, I was happy to leave it to the insurance to sort it out (if anything I was disappointed that it wasn't the house's roof that didn't get damaged, I would have been delighted to pay the small deductible for a brand new slate roof). He too would be so disappointed, and I was saddened to be the one to break the news to him.
Luckily, we couldn't dwell on it as we were expected at the neighbours. All those living at the end of the village were up in arms against the Mairie for having stopped the collective sewage system just meters from their home, leaving just a handful, us included, on independent septic tanks. So they were putting up a fight and wanted us to join the movement as well as recruiting the English next door since they couldn't communicate with them. Besides allowing us to absorb the bad news individually, this meeting had the additional advantage to introduce us to our immediate neighbours and giving us the upper hand by being of service to them. But no matter how welcome this distraction was, we knew we would have to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything.
I looked at Fox, unaware, collecting the tiles that didn't shatter when thrown up in the air when the storm that battered the Poitou the week before hit the roof of our préau. I wasn't too worried about the roof, I was happy to leave it to the insurance to sort it out (if anything I was disappointed that it wasn't the house's roof that didn't get damaged, I would have been delighted to pay the small deductible for a brand new slate roof). He too would be so disappointed, and I was saddened to be the one to break the news to him.
Luckily, we couldn't dwell on it as we were expected at the neighbours. All those living at the end of the village were up in arms against the Mairie for having stopped the collective sewage system just meters from their home, leaving just a handful, us included, on independent septic tanks. So they were putting up a fight and wanted us to join the movement as well as recruiting the English next door since they couldn't communicate with them. Besides allowing us to absorb the bad news individually, this meeting had the additional advantage to introduce us to our immediate neighbours and giving us the upper hand by being of service to them. But no matter how welcome this distraction was, we knew we would have to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything.
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