Things I'd Not Planned on Doing ...

By now, world + dog probably knows that we've had a once-in-a-century flooding event: one of those Rumsfelds. You know, as in "shit happens". We got off very lightly - thank gods we didn't buy one of those picturesque houses on the banks of the canal du Midi, nor in Trèbes (where there is not only the canal, but also the river Aude), nor in Lagrasse, through which the Orbieu runs (only under normal circumstances, it runs well below street level). Truth to tell, the only problem we had was the verandah being awash in the morning, and when it all cleared up and the blue sky came back in the afternoon, we discovered why.

The verandah was roofed by a twisted evil genius - or a complete idiot, take your pick, although I'm going with the latter option - and so there's a sort of sheltered gully in it, with its own gutter, which goes into its own downpipe which then spews water all over the terrace. When it works. What we found was that the gutter, and the downpipe, were completely blocked with a few decades-worth of dried cat-shit, and the water had to go somewhere. Dripping into the verandah, as it happens, as a vaguely extremely unappetising turd soup.

So cleaning that out turned out to be our afternoon's job, and let me just say that I'd much rather not have had to do it.

The vines, of course, have very soggy feet, and around here - where the transport infrastructure is pretty much third-world quality anyway - some roads now have places where they're covered with other bits of road, where slabs of tarmac have been undermined and then come free and bobbed happily around for a bit. At least they'll now have to do something about those potholes which is perhaps just a little more sophisticated than chucking the odd shovel-full of hot-mix into them from the flatbed of the municipal truck (every once in a while, when they find a bit of spare petty cash down the back of the mayoral sofa, they splurge on a tub of tar and a cubic metre of gravel), but this being the south I'm not going to hold my breath.

In other news, it is once more time to drag the hi-viz jackets out of the wardrobe and dust off the doggy bells, for the hunting season has opened - with, of course, a bang. You can tell this not only from the occasional sharp report up in the pinède or in the vines, but also from the odd dazed pheasant wandering about the village, with what passes for its mind preoccupied with major existential questions like "what the hell am I doing here?". It would probably be better off pondering "how long am I going to be here?", but there you go, I guess that prioritisation has never been a forté of the bird brain.

(Just as an aside, there's a "fake news" site over here that I look at from time to time: one of their later articles reported on the joy of the various hunting associations on discovering that the competent ministry had significantly raised the quotas on hikers and trail bikers.)

Hunting season also means it's Autumn, and with that come the gentle breezes (gusting up to 50 kph, today) which make it quite a hard slog walking into the wind. And when you're walking with it at your back it's not so good either, as it blows straight up the dogs' bums and up to what they are pleased to call their brains, making them even more bubble-headed than usual.

José, the menuisier from Montbrun, came past a while back to drop off two large wardrobes that were surplus to requirements, and now that the borer has been put to the sword one of them is in the verandah by the front door, ostensibly for stashing coats. But it is capacious enough to conceal a multitude of gins, so Margo ever-so-gently suggested that it would be a Good Idea if I sorted through the (large) box of boots that came down with us on our epic voyage five years ago, and has been sitting out there ever since.

Quite frankly, I don't know why we bothered. Bringing them, that is. Probably because they were sitting at the front door in Saint-Pierre, and towards the end of the proceedings, when it became evident that there was not nearly enough time to sort things properly, it was a case of "fling it all into bags or boxes, load it into the lorry, and we'll sort it out at the other end".

Which has, finally, been done. Of eight pairs of boots - some dating back to the Bronze Age - seven are now in black plastic bags to go out on the street for the next time the mayor's idiot nephew comes past with the truck to do "les encombrants", and one pair is in the wardrobe, waiting for me to attack it with a brush and the vacuum cleaner.

Which I shall do with some trepidation, for over the years they have become full of dog hair and dust and godnose what else, and I rather expect that at the toe end there will be a highly-developed civilisation of fluff which I shall have to wipe out.

I has news! Not, unfortunately, good news. It would appear that our bar is to close at the end of the year, which is a complete embuggerment. OK, it wasn't entirely unexpected, but still ... the thing is, Lionel gets all a-flustered as soon as more than four people come in wanting food, and when he's busy chatting with a mate you could die of thirst before getting served at the counter. The best part, it seems, of running a bar is when you get to pop out and sit down for a fag, with no-one importuning you for service: otherwise, it's too much like hard work.

Still, it's hardly a spur of the moment decision, I would think, so I have to ask myself why they invested in a fancy kebab grill and a huge - and doubtless hugely expensive - sound system only recently. Makes no sense to me, but then it's not really my problem, I guess. I mean, apart from the fact that we will, once again, be barless. Which is not good.

Oh well, we shall just have to fend for ourselves again, I suppose, hoping all the while that the mairie doesn't take an age to find a replacement - preferably one that's competent, and doesn't mind working.

Whatever, we are currently "enjoying" a cold front that seems to have come direct from Scandinavia. From 22° about a week ago it's plummeted to 6° today: the sky is grey, dull and dismal, there is sporadic spiteful rain, and the wind is gusting enthusiastically. Also, thanks to the end of daylight saving, it is dark and gloomy around 18h, which is emphatically not nice.

Still, it could be worse. I had occasion to drag myself away from the fire and brave the weather to go help Nicole out, as she had not Internet: the phrase "computer-illiterate" was invented for her. So I reset the router, and then re-entered the WiFi key into her iThing, which had decided, for some reason, to forget it. And don't get me on to the subject of why the bloody things can't use WPS for key exchange ...

And then she had gmail working on the tablet but not on the laptop because somewhere along the line she - or, more probably, her daughter - had changed the password: you can't actually see the password on the iThing because it's protected by TouchID, which didn't seem to want to work, so I couldn't put the right password into the laptop (also, frikking Edge seems to have saved every password for every site except that for gmail), and if I reset the password via the laptop (because Google won't allow you to reuse an old password) I would have had to edit the password on the tablet and as that's protected I couldn't do that either ...

I do not know why complete strangers come up to me in the street to tell me that Apple gear is so simple to use, I really don't. I now have a brief answer for them, but I fear it may be impolite.

Anyways, the point was (originally) that we are having only light breezes compared to Corsica, where gale-force winds have kept the ferries in port. So think of us, will you?

Hippo Birdie ...

Once again, the French bureaucracy reveals it self in all its Byzantine glory. Now that we have a new window - one that actually functions, and lets light into the place - I have received a letter from the Direction des Finances Publiques, with a few questions for me. I say "a few", but that is an understatement. For a slight, simple change to the façade, they are asking for the total surface area of the house, the surface area on the ground, the number, usage, and surface area of every room in the house (do not forget that a "salle d'eau" is not the same as a "salle de bain", as the former may or may not have a shower in it, but the latter has an actual bath), the principal construction materials, whether or not there is electricity, gravity, and ... the list goes on.

Always the optimist, I do like to believe that as they have all this information anyway the issue can be resolved with a simple, cordial phone call in which I gently explain all this, and the droid at the other of the line replies something along the lines of "Oh certainly sir, no need to bother yourself, I'll just mark your dossier as closed, shall I?" but as usual this turns out not to be the case.

First of all, the phone lines are only open on random half-days in the week, and secondly, when you do not get a recorded message telling you this, you get a recorded message telling you that your call is indeed important to them but everyone is frightfully busy right now and could you please call back.

Oh well, it's not as though I had anything better to do than waste a morning sitting in a dingy waiting-room in an ugly, grimy prefab concrete office block in Carcassonne.

And while I'm happily whingeing, why not whinge about Orange? One of our neighbours is an English bloke who bought a house here as a holiday home, but has decided to spend more time in France so thought that perhaps getting the phone line reconnected and getting a Livebox for the innatübz would be a good idea. But his French is kind of approximative, and trying to organise that from the UK would be rather problematic anyway, so I rather foolishly said that I would see what I could do.

Rather to my surprise the initial phone call to organise everything was actually a rather pleasant experience: the guy that took my call was courteous and helpful, and in about 20 minutes max everything was done: the Livebox to be sent off here to The Shamblings™ with an appointment for 8-9am the following Monday for the technician to come past and do whatever it is that they have to do (sod-all as far as I can see, apart from smugly manipulating a multimeter, but what do I know?).

I got a swag of SMS over the weekend to confirm the appointment, the Livebox duly turned up (I cheated and opened the box, just to make sure it wasn't full of empty), so on Monday I didn't worry about things, thinking to myself that Cliff could probably handle stuff from that point on. As it turned out, I was mistaken: no fault of his, I hasten to add.

For around 15:30 that very afternoon, as I was browsing the industrial cheese and yoghurt aisle at Carrefour, I got a call from some bloke announcing himself to be a technician from Orange, but I bent down to inspect a tub of mascarpone and the call got cut off - doubtless blocked by the rubber Gruyère. He'd a masked number so I couldn't call back, and apparently he felt he'd done his duty because he didn't call back either, so when I got back home I had a little rant at Orange.

Which seemed to have some effect, because the very next day I got an apologetic call (from a non-masked number, this time - yay!) proposing a new appointment for 10am on Wednesday, which I guessed would be just fine, and took it. And around 12:30, still no sign of a technician on the horizon: and the phone number went straight to the answering machine, and I was starting to get kind of pissed off.

At which point I rang Orange - yet again - to make my displeasure known (and also, if truth be told, to see if I couldn't piss someone else off, just to spread it round) and they managed to get hold of this second technician and patched him through to me. He was very apologetic indeed, said he'd not been able to make it himself and had despatched one of his minions but said minion apparently didn't make it: someone would, he promised, be there forthwith.

This word, "forthwith", seems not to mean what I think it means, for it is now 17:00 and still neither hide nor hair of any sort of technical person of any description. This is the south of France, I know, and "time" is an elastic notion, slippery to pin down: nevertheless I rather think that I shall get all mediaeval on them very, very soon. I think that I shall also suggest that it would be good PR to not charge the 60€ "frais de déplacement", under the circumstances ... That will be when I can get through to them, of course, because right now it goes straight through to a recorded message to the effect that "Awfully sorry but there's a shitload of irate people calling us right now, please check out our really neat web site? Oh look! A squirrel!".

Anyways, in other news I is now officially 60, and feel none the worse for it. Spent much of Friday afternoon getting stuff ready because I loathe last-minute rushes: rolling out puff pastry and smearing it with grated cheese and mustard and cream to be rolled up into logs and go into the freezer ready for later baking, making fillings for club sandwiches, using that pristine mandoline of mine to slice potatoes and make proper tortillas de patatas ... which left me time to go off to the bar, as is only right and proper.

Speaking of the bar reminds me that Magali and Lionel have invested in a kebab spit and grill, so of a Wednesday evening you may - if you feel in the mood - head up and get yourself a reasonably decent kebab. (Personally, I like the meat to be rather more crispy, but there's no accounting for taste.) On the other hand, for the next little while it might be prudent to ring and order in advance, for Lionel tends to get inexplicably flustered when there are more than five people in the bar at a time so if you turn up without warning your order will be late, and personally I'd be surprised if, when it did come out, it was actually what you ordered.

Whatever, all that prep paid off because it meant that when I awoke on Saturday moaning, with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, I had plenty of time to do a swoop through the market with Mad Karen before coming back with a half-dozen baguettes and slicing some rather nice authentic Corsican coppa, pulling a kilo of foie gras out of the freezer just on the off-chance that someone might want some, and buttering sliced bread for all those club sandwiches. (Let it be said that the smashed banana/honey with Marmite and sprinkles met with a - mixed - reception, but person or persons unknown liked them enough to ensure that there weren't any left over at the end of the night. Or maybe they met a more ignominious fate, discreetly tipped into a bin.)

Also at the market there's a woman who makes and sells bread, one of which, the Vollkörn or something like that, is the closest I've come across to good old Vogels whole-grain bread. Looks rather like a German black bread, dark and heavy: not really the sort of thing you'd want to throw to ducks, as they would sink. But quite delicious, and as Bob! had told me of the guy just close by who sold real, fresh fromage frais I picked up a kilo tub of that too, which got slathered onto slices of the bread along with chives and garlic and freshly ground (is there any other sort?) Madagascar pepper.

Eventually people started turning up, which meant it was time to slice the cheesy logs and slip them into the oven (I am so glad I bought some more decent baking trays), stick the bread in a plastic bucket along with a breadknife, and take everything out to the table on the terrace - along with copious amounts of rosé. Of course, because one does.

Our friends down here know me perhaps too well: I am now richer by three bottles of good gin, an excellent Cognac, a bundle of Cuban cigars and more bottles of rosé than even I can shake a fist at. All in all, it could well have been worse. I can even say, quite honestly, that not too much later that Sunday I woke up with a mouth like a baby's bottom: sadly, not smooth and soft to the touch. But still feeling chipper enough to wake Sarah up and persuade her to take me out with the camera that afternoon.

Sadly, that was the last day of decent weather: from about 26° it has plummeted to maybe 18°, and the sky is overcast and grey. Plus there has been torrential rain, which - with the wind coming from the wrong trouser-leg - meant that I spent some time Wednesday moaning out in the verandah with the industrial wet+dry vacuum cleaner, sucking up about 30 litres of water. Not one of my favourite jobs.

On an unexpectedly fine Sunday, you could actually do worse than leave Moux for Douzens, thence through Comigne to Montlaur, and from there to Labastide-en-Val, through Saint-Polycarpe (the abbey's well worth the detour) and then off to Alet-les-Bains. This is the scenic route, which - luckily - avoids such places as "Dead-man's Peak", and just as well too. I've been driving around in mountains and through hairpin bends for 25 years, and I was thankful to have the experience. Let's just say that on those roads you do not want to meet someone coming the other way, especially if it's some local chasseur in his huge frikking 4x4.

Still, provided you've remembered to pack enough brown paper bags for those in the back seats, the scenery is in fact nothing short of spectacular, especially at this time of year when the trees (there's quite a lot of deciduous stuff up there, rather than the omnipresent pines and cypress over this side) are changing colour, and the low sun plays on the occasional bit of pasture off to one side. Much greener, too, than here. Were it not for the fact that I can't persuade anyone to come with me when I go out on a photoshoot in the benighted backblocks I'd have packed a picnic, or taken the CampingGaz burner, a pan, some scallops and cream, a bit of foie gras, decent bread and some wine ...

Alet is worth the visit: ancient stones and half-timbered houses. I wandered around until the battery of my camera gave out: at which point I debated having a drink but decided to head home instead. But I took the quicker route, via Limoux and Carcassonne: it seemed prudent.

Finally, if anyone out there is worried about us - don't be. Although it might be a little tricky to actually leave Moux just at the moment, what with the roads being underwater and all, the village itself is at the magnificent height of 90m above sea level, whereas the plain is at about 30m. So apart from the streets being awash with water heading - as is its wont - to a lower level, we're fine. Better here than at places like Trèbes, or Carcassonne, where either the Aude, or the canal du Midi, or both, have burst their banks.

That's the thing about a Mediterranean climate: you never know if you're not going to get a flash flood at some point, and find the river at your doorstep has suddenly risen by seven metres or so.