Cathey with Simon & Julia

10/23 & 24 Thursday & Friday

We headed over to Narbonne on Thursday to try and find the Leclerc there in order to replace our broken chair. Another hour of fruitless searching…sighting an advertising sign, following it, and coming up empty.

Street signs are not very prominent in France. Well, I take that back. In the middle of a city like Narbonne, at every roundabout, there are prominent signs directing you to the center of town or to the route to Beziers or the beach, but not signs naming the highway number or the streets. Same when driving through the small towns. We’ve learned not to look for street signs or route numbers. As we drive through the countryside, we scope out the next town on the map and, as we enter one town, we simply follow the signs to the next.

I gave up the search for Leclerc and headed home. We were almost clear of town when Cathey spotted another sign, off to the side and almost completely hidden from view. One last chance and by God there it was. It turned out to be a really cheesy discount store with nary a chair in sight after going aisle by aisle, shaking our heads at cheap plastic ware, weaving in between buckets catching drips from the roof even though it wasn’t raining. And the deli counter smelled nasty.

As we were climbing into our car, out walks an elderly woman with precisely the chair that we were looking for. Yes, they have these chairs, but not many are left. Back to the service desk, some broken French and gesticulation, and two chairs appeared. There is a God and she loves us.

We had dinner at Simon and Julia Wollen’s house. The same real estate agent that recommended the Hotel Residence to us also touted Simon and Julia’s bed and breakfast, the Chambres du Canal along the banks of the Canal du Midi in Capestang. They’re empire Brits, born and raised in Kenya. To further their children’s schooling, they moved to England. When it came time to retire, they purchased and renovated their big old manse on the canal. We stayed with them on our second visit to the Languedoc and, for some unknown but fortuitous reason, we connected.

Simon and Julia are gracious hosts and, if you plan to visit the Languedoc and you and any children that you bring along are considerate and well-behaved, I strongly recommend that you stay with them. Don’t disappoint me. Simon and Julia have become close friends that we are lucky to have found. They’re no longer youngsters. I won’t embarrass them by telling you their ages – a bit older than we guessed at first – but they are active, in touch, storehouses of local information, and willing to share. When it comes time for Cathey to choose a French hairdresser, she will begin with Julia’s recommendation.

A most pleasant evening. Simon and Julia seem to enjoy our company and we certainly enjoy theirs. Not a lot of political conversation, just enough to indicate that they were interested in the impending American elections. Mostly the conversation centered on what each of us had been up to lately – Cathey’s family, health issues (the great cholesterol scam), their last vacation, wine and cheese and the like. It turns out that a part of the new fiber optic network was routed through their bottom garden. One day they awoke to find their fence down and their garden a shambles. C’est la vie en France.

Julia prepared rabbit dripping with rosemary for dinner and a neat dessert with cream on top and chocolate and almonds underneath. They accepted an invitation to dine at our place next week even though they will be leaving on vacation only a day or two later.

On Friday morning Dom stopped by. He’d had a notion that perhaps the problem with the television wasn’t the alignment of the dish but the fact that we had an old, analog satellite box that might not handle the new digital signal. So he brought over his box from home, hooked it up, and there was the BBC, right on cue. So we’ll head for the Castorama in Beziers where Dom tells us they have the cheapest boxes.

These stores have such wonderful names. The two furniture stores are Fly and But – there’s an Ikea but it’s more than an hour’s drive. Food markets are called Geant, Casino, SuperU, Intermarche and Champion – although our Champion outside of Cazouls is going to close next Wednesday and open up Thursday as a Carrefour. According to Cathey, that may be good news. Their selection and quality is similar and Carrefour is cheaper.

After Dom left I noticed some smoke drifting up past the kitchen window. I thought that it might be humid air from the dryer escaping from the garage door – the dryer is in the garage and unvented. I walked outside to smoke a cigarette and take a look and Whoa Nellie! Smoke was billowing from the electrical junction box attached to our outer wall and the whole neighborhood smelled of burning insulation. I yelled up to Cathey to shut down everything electrical and ran upstairs to turn off the main.

I scurried over to the mairie (Town Hall), just two blocks away, and managed to make the problem known. In ten minutes a young guy was at our door, looking at the box and scratching his head. He took a ladder off his little van and put it up against the house just as a second, older guy pulled up in a bigger van. He took a look at the box, shook his head, climbed the ladder and cut the wires leading to the house. Then he came back down and tried to pull the innards out of the old box. The meter and such had melted against the back of the outer box – all hard plastic run together –  and just wouldn’t come away. So they ripped the thing off the wall, anchor bolts and all. They snipped all the wires, cleaned up the junk on the ground, and left, telling us that they’d be back after lunch, leaving the bare wires exposed (no juice) and the ladder still up blocking the alley.

Before leaving for their mid day break, the older workman made certain that we would have no problem getting our lunch together. Very important to him.

Remember, this was Friday afternoon. I had a picture in my head of the situation had it occurred in Mexico, the land of manana. They’ll return after lunch…on Tuesday. But sure enough, the two men showed up after lunch and, after an hour and a half, we had a new box and everything worked. One of our neighbors stopped by with a bag of apples fresh from his orchard in the country, perhaps in commiseration, perhaps due to the fact that we give our perishables to his mother who lives across the street when we leave town. Another neighbor joked around with the workmen, then wanted to know if I was for Obama. I told him that I was, which seemed to satisfy him. He then uttered the first three English words I’d ever heard one of my immediate neighbors utter.

“First black President,” he said, mightily impressed. I said that I hoped so.

When the workmen took my name, they asked for the derivation of Ira. Was I Greek? No, American, but the family came from Russia. “Ah, vodka,” said one. “No,” said one of the neighbors, “American. Whiskey.” I told them that I didn’t have any whiskey but that, if we were in America, I would offer them a beer after their work and I did, indeed, have some beer. They thought about it, but they passed.

These conversations all took place in French, by the way. I’m getting there. I’m not ready to discuss my thoughts on Sartre and existentialism quite yet, but so far the neighbors haven’t asked.

The comforting part of this little episode, aside from the fact that our house didn’t burn down, was that the service was so rapid. We get our electricity from the village co-op and, because the problem was outside the house, we won’t have to pay. And because it’s a co-op, our bill is amazingly low. We’re billed quarterly and pay about the same for three months as we pay in the States for one.

We were without electricity from about 10AM to 4PM and that pretty much shot the day. I took a walk to access the internet in the local tourist office to catch up on my 756 spam emails and 4 emails that came from family and friends. Came home and fired up the barbecue. Lamb chops and skirt steak from the market on Thursday. More yum.