Well, that’s not strictly true – after breakfast I started on the website for this season’s adventures for Pionsat’s football club. Even though I might not be there as much as I have been in the past that is no reason for ignoring it and I already have match reports for four games.
When the battery went flat in the laptop I went outside to see what the postie had brought me. I was hoping it might be good news, after all it’s been a long time since I’ve had any. And – to my surprise if not total astonishment ……
…. Yes, I’m very quick with the criticism of French public service and beauraucracy (and not without reason in many circumstances) and so I ought to be just as quick with the praise. And so hats off to the lady in the Prefecture at Clermont Ferrand. Not only did my International Driving Licence arrive today, attached to it was a new bright and shiny French Drivers Licence with medical certificate for driving lorries and buses and also for cars and vans pulling heavy trailers. This latter bit is very important as a French driving licence specifically states that a car or light van pulling a heavy trailer (one up to 3.5 tonnes laden weight) is fully authorised. And of course, what is the total laden weight of our new trailer?
A short while later Bill came round. And he stayed here having a really good chat until quite late in the afternoon. I couldn’t download a driver for his old printer – it’s not supported – and in any case he told me the price of the ink cartridges he needed to buy to fire it up. Over €50, he said, so I pointed him in the general direction of these Epson SX115 all-in-one things that we have been buying. Complete with ink cartridges, it costs a mere €49.50 and the replacement inks are €4:00 for the black and €15.99 for the three colour cartridges.
We were also looking at dial-up modems (broadband hasn’t got to him yet) and the cost is unbelievable. They are clearly a breed close to extinction. But we did find that Orange was offering a basic internet connection on “dial-up” for just €10:00 per month so as he is going to Montlucon tomorrow he’ll stop by the Orange shop to see what they can do for him.
We spent a while looking at photos of old cars and so on, and the discussion turned round to next summer. He has an old Peugeot 106 at his place that hasn’t gone anywhere for a while and isn’t worth anything much as it’s right-hand drive. No-one else wants it so we’ve decided that we will bring it round here and strip it, and then prepare it for grass-tracking. Bill was a racing driver of sorts in his youth and I reckon it won’t take too much persuasion to get him behind the wheel again. And in any case we need to find something else to do in the summer when there’s no footy.
He had a good look around the Ebro and reckons that he will help me have a bit of a play with that too when I can make some space (whenever that might be).
But I also got to thinking again as well. Terry and I have a scaffolding and a heavy duty trailer between us. He has this amazing pressure-washer and I have a big diesel generator. Simon has a huge crepi machine. You can see where I’m going with this. We have all the basics of a little plant hire business here. A big petrol cement mixer which you can buy really cheaply round here and which I can fit my single cylinder diesel engine to is something else we can consider. I reckon that there might be some mileage in exploring avenues such as this.
Once Bill had gone the phone rang twice and each time it was someone reading War and Peace to me and it wasn’t worth starting anything after that. But still, things are slowly progressing and that’s a good sign.
