What Day Is It Again ?

So yesterday, I wished you all a good weekend and that should have given you a clue - senility and the art of forgetting what day it is/was is becoming a habit for me.

I was absolutely sure yesterday was Friday and I blame our friend Sarah. As I had arranged to run her to the airport for her trip to Dublin, I just (stupidly) assumed it was the start of the weekend. I mean most people go away for weekends on Fridays - not Thursdays!

I even phoned the piscine repair shop to find out if the spare part I ordered  for Sarah and David's pool was in, previously having been told it was due to arrive on FRIDAY!

To further complicate matters for everybody around me, I told Sarah's mum and dad (who are looking after their house and Charlie, the dog), that I'd pop round tomorrow and  fit the part as it was Saturday and I had nothing else to do! And of course, it was Thursday when I said this!

Then there was the mad dash to find my 'fancy dress party' outfit - my Barcelona football shirt - because the party was the following night. Not so! I've got another day to find to find that elusive shirt.

Then the realisation that as it was Saturday the following day, I'd not have to 'watch' the stock market (it's been quite lively this week). It's one of my hobbies and if I'm particularly lucky, I might make enough to cover the cost of J's weekly nail technician who visits the house and who looks like a supermodel and makes me forget even more things! But as I thought it was Friday (when in fact it was Thursday), I was rather crestfallen that my, so far, successful trading week had ended.

And finally, I sat on the terrace last night working out that I'd been a 'good' boy and had made a pack of ciggies last me four days, when, in fact, I'd been smoking like a chimney. Still in the land of senility, I wandered in to the lounge to put the Friday night football game on and found that there was no game on  - it was Thursday!

Never mind - go to bed and forget it. Tomorrow's the weekend - or is it? Whatever - have another great weekend.

The Electrician's Dance

So we’re back to MS Word albeit on J’s netbook which has Windows 7 on it so hopefully no more Google formatting issues although as W7 is new to me, there might still be a few glitches around.

As we head into the weekend it’s going to be busy. Today, I’ve to take our friend Sarah to the airport who is off to Dublin with her hubby for the weekend and then I’ve got to find a shop selling a Barcelona football shirt. We have a 40^th birthday party on Saturday which has a Spanish theme despite me telling the hostess that theme parties were just a burden on everybody going (yup – I’m an old fuddy duddy) and whilst I said to J a Spanish theme could be fulfilled by taking a bottle or two or Rioja, J told me to ‘get real’ and make an effort so my ‘effort’ will be to turn up in a Barcelona shirt. That’ll do it – don’t you think?

Yesterday was quite busy as the stock market roared back into life so that kept me fully occupied trying to make some dosh (or filthy capitalist lucre as my ‘friend’ Eddie calls it) to help pay for a rather expensive reunion I’ve got at the end of the month, and then later on my afternoon was disturbed by some tradesmen.

During the afternoon, there was a loud knock on the door (virtually unheard of because nobody ever knocks, they just push the door open, shout and come in) and it was a gardener and an electrician. The end house’s pool had stopped working and they wanted a guided tour of all the electricity systems – originally, three of the villas shared a pool so there was shared electricity - and they wanted my knowledge of the system to help them work out what the problem was.

I spoke French (I was so proud of myself) and explained that there were four meters and a simple test was to open the meter doors, and the meter which wasn’t turning was most likely to be for the pool which wasn’t working.

I saw them look at each other in a way which said, ‘you know – he’s right’. They looked and one wheel wasn’t turning. ‘Ah ha – it’s this one’, said the electrician.   We all nodded in agreement. The French do a lot of nodding!

Then it was off to the next link up the (electricity) chain, a box half way up the drive where all exterior power is distributed to the various houses. As they went to open the door, I said ‘attention – il y a une neste des paques’ – there is a wasps nest. Unfortunately, what I'd said was 'there is a nest of Easters' which means absolutely nothing. What I should have said was 'il y a un nid des guepes'. But coming from the guy who used to ask for a 'frog' instead of a spoon, and a lightbulb to light his cigarette, I think things are progressing nicely!

They looked at the nest, but being tradesmen and hence used to this sort of thing they shrugged (the French do a lot of shrugging) and the electrician started testing the various circuits. As he got to the third set of fuses, he gave an almighty shout and jumped into the air with a sort of strange little dance . The gardener, jumped in sympathy but the electrician hadn’t received a shock, he thought a wasp had stung his ankle. In fact, it wasn’t a wasp but a nettle which he had brushed against. Hilarity all round (in French).

A couple of more tests and they’d fixed the problem. As we shook hands and went our separate ways, the gardener thanked me and said I was ‘tres gentil’, which is what J says when she introduces Shadow to guests for the first time! Did he mean that I was very gentle? If I’d thought that I’d have run a mile.

C’est la vie as we French say and have a great weekend.

PS – ‘tres gentil’ means ‘very kind’. I also think in a doggy sense, it means ‘very gentle’ which still worries me!  

Theology and Lasagne

The good news is that Wolfgang (PC engineer) is back and J is making an emergency visit to his house on Thursday with two very sick PCs. The bad news is that of the six PCs we have in the house (yes - I know) only two, J's netbook and Guy's Dell Laptop, are working - the others I could write a book about. Let's hope Wolfgang's trusty screwdriver can do the trick.

But my otherwise fraught day with wonky PCs, my car tyre puncture place still shut, my mobile supplier ripping me off and a huge unexpected bill from the local government office, was lightened by two young men who came to dinner last night.

They arrived with 'Irish Dave'  who has featured in these pages before at the following URL: (http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/death-at-dinner.html)  and are studying Theology at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For some reason, I'd always wanted to talk to theology students and we had a great chat about their course work and hopes and aspirations following graduation. Amazingly, I managed to behave myself, probably because neither of them were drinking alcohol which limited my intake, which I can't admit to very often!

It was a great night and it was terrific seeing them wolf down J's lasagne and just sit on the terrace enjoying a late summer evening  - they are camping and have been 'roughing' it for the last two weeks.

And that's it - I'm so frustrated with Google's blogging 'compose' editor I can't type any more. It's completely useless and is the reason why I usually write my articles in MS Word and transfer them into my blogging template but as Kitty's PC (just working and no more) does not have Word on it, I'm reduced to typing, retyping and correcting Google's random placement of my words and phrases.

C'mon Google - get it sorted out.

Old Blogs For The Next Few Days

Apologies - J's PC has packed up and as that was the one I was using whilst mine is being fixed, I'm left with having to grab Kitty's laptop between 6 hour bouts of her MSMing. So what's the problem with the blogs? The problem is all my scripts etc are on J's PC and it's  completely ******.

Do other people have these problems? I seem to recall at BT that every 2 years or so, my PC, despite it's 'self fixing' abilities, eventually got so screwed up that I had to take it to the software guys who would say 'sorry - your software has become unstable' which I assumed meant that it had tried to fix itself so many times that it just got fed up and gave up! A new software install was required and if you hadn't been prudent enough to keep a back-up, then all your data was lost. Luckily, I must have had a feeling that J's laptop was about to expire as I took a full back up of my date the night before - lucky or what?

Unfortunately, J, who is doing her degree course on her laptop, did not and never does. Memory sticks are for films!

Anyway, whilst we wait for Wolfgang, our laptop man Friday to return from his month long holiday, I am reduced to using my iPhone, J's netbook which is  so small I can't even see the print with my glasses on and, as I said, grabbing Kitty's which doesn't have office on it.

So apologies as we try and sort ourselves out. Just to keep you going, here is my very first blog posting - some 550 postings and two years ago ......

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/another-fabulous-day-in-paradise.html

What My Wife Does To Irritate Me

I was listening to Talksport radio the other day and I was in stitches. Men, the station’s listeners are mainly of the male species,  were phoning in with the things their wives do which irritates them. It was hysterical.

It made me think of the things J does which irritate me:

J and I have an agreement that last out of bed, makes it. So why, when it’s my turn to make it, the bed has to be made within 10 minutes but when it’s J’s turn, the bed remains unmade - because it’s airing?

Why, when she’s had all day to tell me something, does she wait until the moment I pick up the phone to call my brother and then starts talking to me?

Why, on the very rare occasion I use the jeep, generally to go to the tip, there’s only enough petrol to get me out of the drive?

Why, when Coco is ‘her’ cat, do I have to feed her and when Shadow is ‘her’ dog, I have to pay his vet bills?

Why did she get me to pay extra for a ‘night-time’ delay switch on the washing machine and dishwasher and then switches them on at 9am in the morning? Our overnight electricity is 40% cheaper!

Why does J wait until I say I’m going to the DIY store and then give me a shopping list for the supermarket which has been lying in her bag for several days?

Why, when I take J out for a meal, is the bill around €100 and when she takes me out for a meal, the bill is less than €30?

Why does she move my shaving mirror and my soap every time she’s in the bathroom?

Why does she leave her ‘leg razor’ lying blade-up in the shower cubicle – every time she uses it?

Why does J buy ultra-luxurious toilet paper for her bathroom and recycled, rough rubbish for mine?

Why does J have to move a sun lounger around for 30 minutes before lying down on it?

Why does my wife buy two types of orange juice, expensive and cheap and, yup, you’ve guessed it, I get the cheap stuff whilst she drinks the expensive brand?

But, even after all that she’s still not that bad!