Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Bookings’ Category

Weddings are hard work!

We were pretty much completely full last Friday and Saturday with a wedding party. Not really all that profitable as the previous owner had went and negotiated a rate about 25% below our high season rate and, of course, they all eat out. Somehow, we managed to get almost all of the rooms reset by Sunday lunchtime which was just as well as a bunch of folk stopped that night… we made almost as much with the four Danes as we did for the whole wedding party (and with a lot less hassle too).

It was actually raining today. Thought I’d say that, just to cheer you lot up. Of course, it’s sunny as I write this and seriously warm too.

Techy question: now that the ADSL connection appears to have been sorted out, I’m using that a whole more of the time. I have a France Telecom ADSL modem connected to my trusty Netgear wireless router and I access this from the Toshiba Tecra, wireless. However, after about an hour of surfing or whatever the wireless link goes down. It starts working again (for a shorter period usually) if I switch the router off and on again. Is it just the router overheating or something? It’s usually around the 30C mark here. Would just firing up a baby fan for the router sort it out?

Nearly forgot… it looks like we’ll be installing airconditioning much sooner than expected. Seems that there’s a scam (sorry, scheme) that lets you install it at a monthly cost around the same as the heating would normally cost you and the French government send you a cheque for 15% of the total amount in February of the year following installation. Doesn’t appear to be a downside. It’s one of those heatpump type thingy’s (ie it works like a really big fridge).

In case you’ve missed it, William G is on his way to becoming a French resident. I was supposed to meet him in his new house last Thursday but with the wedding and a couple of additional last minute arrivals I just couldn’t make it (hence lack of several cases of wine, David). Anyway, the whole family are heading over on July 14th. Could the last person to leave IT please switch off the servers?…

Bonjour!

Yesterday (Friday) was total chaos.

We started getting up around 8.30 as usual and planned our day out: French in the morning for me, then off to the Mairie to see about getting ourselves registered and finishing with a trip to the accountant.

The door bell rang about 5 mins after we decided to do all that.

Five Belgians had arrived for our gite, a day early. It’s really a gite for at most three so we started organising extra beds in a big hurry. Wendy managed to persuade them to go off and take a drive to collect supplies while we got organised.

We got one extra bed in and realised that no way could we fit five in so I called Alistair (the adventure tours guy) to see how his gite was fixed up. His is for nine and fortunately was free so we offered them that when they got back. Had to drive them up to his place as it’s a bit hard to find and impossible to describe how to find in English, never mind French. We set off for his place just after noon (yup, three hours to sort out the gite!).

On the way back we spotted a big bin by the roadside so I dropped Wendy off at Champion to get supplies for the next couple of days (`tis May Day on Saturday and everywhere is shut) whilst I headed off to pick up the trailer and fill it with rubbish. As we’ve not got to the Mairie we’re still running with domestic size bins a) have more waste due to the hotel b) have heaps of junk from the move and c) have heaps of junk left over from the previous owner to get rid of. One trailer is about two big (ie 2 wheelie bin size bins) bins full. Fortunately we spotted a couple more big bins on the way back to collect Wendy.

Thought we’d pick up some outdoor furniture for the gite too but they’d went and sold the table we were looking for.

By them Alistair had arrived. I stayed with him while Wendy went off to get some more shopping done.

I mentioned that our main toilet wasn’t working which ended up in a race to the DIY store to collect a new one plus more tools to finish off fitting the lock on the front door.

We didn’t know how to turn off the water so had to wait `til our neighbour arrived at 9pm before completing the fitting of the toilet which by 11.30pm was operational.

In the meantime we have also sorted out the Sky satellite which is now in a position which should let it work in the gite. Which means another trip to Castorama on Monday to get another satellite tuner for the gite (assuming it works with our box).

We are all totally knackered!!

Oh, and it was James’ birthday on Thursday so in the midst of the above he was pedalling round the courtyard in his little car and pushing his bike around and generally wanting to be involved in all the action. He’d his eye on the bag of toys that the little Belgian boy had brought along and was getting set to mug him for them.

And early on my French mobile arrived. I’m on 00 33 6 981 420 65.