The Waiting Room

At Clinic du Littoral this morning Dr Braguet was running very late.  It was my follow up appointment after my bladder operation in April and my appointment was for 11.00hrs.  There were lots of other people waiting too, some for my consultant and some for the other two consultants whose patients use this waiting room too.

The man in the short-sleeved, pink and white striped shirt scratches his left armpit with his right hand.  His black trousers are too short and expose his thin white socks which are partially covered by black slip-on shoes.

Next to him is a very emaciated woman clutching a wooden walking stick between blue-veined hands.  Her husband who initially sat on her left side was clearly having trouble hearing with his left ear and kept asking her to repeat what she’d just said.  After a few minutes he got up and sat to her right since when their conversation has been easier.  You would think he would have known this before he sat down.  He is a man with extraordinarily small feet, encased in maroon, beige and grey striped socks and brown leather shoes with very detailed cutwork on the part of the shoes after the three lace holes.

However, by far the most interesting person waiting to be seen by a consultant urologist is the man opposite me.  His hair is Van Gogh red, mingled with grey and his beard and moustache are quite long and give an unkempt appearance.  He is slight in build and has black metal-framed glasses with a small, 2-3cm long rocket shaped attachment on the right arm, just before it wraps around his ear, I don’t know what it is for.  His jumper is straw-coloured with a cable pattern and his green checked tweedy jacket has bound cuffs.  His brown trousers are too short but on the right leg the stitching has come adrift and the hem hangs down evenly.  He too sports white socks and new-looking navy trainers with bright yellow and navy striped laces.  Beside him on the bench is a black trilby type hat with a tan leather band and a Prem’Touch carrier bag alongside a small black laptop bag also with tan trim.

We have all waited too long.  It is now 12.02hrs and the lady sitting the corner opposite the entrance who had an appointment for 10.15 hrs has just been called in.  It does not bode well.  People are mumbling and look miserable as it is now the hour of eating and they cannot have lunch.  They keep checking their watches.  I open a funsize Mars bar which I have found in the far reaches of my bag and the emaciated lady comments on how prepared I was.  Lunch and midday are firmly connected here in France and their importance in the structure of the day should not be underestimated.

Only three people now remain who were here on my arrival – a couple who have hardly communicated with each other since I arrived and the red-haired man.  People have begun to doubt their own watches and are asking each other the time whilst pushing their watch-strapped wrists towards the person they’re asking as if in hope that they will say that the time shown on the dial is incorrect.  The mood is low.

The lady previously in the corner with the 10.15hrs appointment returns to the waiting room and her friend.  It is now 12.20hrs – she takes her place again complaining about the hardness of the seats and clutching her lower back with her left heavily ringed hand.  She is dressed mainly in black, shoes, tiered skirt and cardigan which is patterned with cherry sized white spots covering  a white blouse.  Her hair is grey, longer than shoulder length, with the remains of an old frizzy perm.

Her friend has short hair and grey glasses with dark red sides, a very floral orange top covered by a grey felt coat with orange blanket stitching around the collar and pockets.  Her black crop trouser have little straps and buttons below the knee and her ballerina type flesh coloured shoes have a band of bronze plastic across the toes.  She flips the pages of one of the well-worn magazines from the rack appearing not to take in the content.

Ah – my name is called – thank goodness - and just one hour and fifty-five minutes late I am going into see the consultant.

The outcome was good.  The operation is deemed a success and I don’t have to see Dr Braguet again unless I have a problem.  I tell her that she has performed a miracle and that I love her.  She smiles and says that it’s always good to know that a patient is happy.

Three things I like:

1.    The duck breast with new potatoes and salad which I have just eaten for lunch.

2.    The sound of the bubbles of gas in my homemade elderflower champagne glugging through the airlock.

3.    The clear shelf behind me now I have dealt with the paperwork which was building.

Supermoon, dead pig and Breton animals

On Saturday and Sunday there was a supermoon visible here in between the night clouds.  I took several photos and I have to say it was the biggest moon I have ever seen, quite beautiful and atmospheric - I think it's impossible to depict in a photograph and understand the size if you didn't see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a reasonably relaxing weekend the week has been busy.   Monday afternoon was Book Club and we took advantage of the sunshine and sat outside to discuss The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani.  I found the first half of the book very slow but thought that the second half moved at a much better pace.  I gave the book 7/10.  Unfortunately, it had a lot of similarities to the previous month’s book The Seamstress.

Tuesday morning was Short Mat Bowls at our temporary Summer venue of Laniscat Village Hall while our usual home at St Gelven Village Hall is renovated.  In the afternoon I finally managed to do the last official paperwork at the Maison de Services Publiques in Carhaix where a very pleasant woman, who spoke English, dealt with the changeover of my Peugeot to French registration.  Apparently I should receive my new number in 4-5 working days. 

 

I shall lose my personal English number plate but the DVLA advised me to hang onto the plates as if I ever returned the car to England it would probably get the same number plates again.

I also visited my friend who has just had a gastric bypass – not quite the same operation as mine, but by the same surgeon in the same hospital.  She obviously doing well and it was good to see her out of hospital and getting on with life again.

Wednesday was Writers’ Group, usually held at my house but today at another member’s house as she had just come out of hospital after a back operation.  On the way there my car felt strange and I asked my passenger, a former AA man, what he thought it was, I even suggested that the air pressure in one of the tyres might not be right.  When we stopped at SuperU for refreshment and fuel we found I had a flat.  He changed the tyre, new in April, which is ruined – buxxer, buxxer, buxxer!  Again it was warm enough to sit outside and read our work to each other in the garden.  On the way home my passenger spotted what he thought was a dead pig at the side of the road.  I turned the car round and he was right.  Not a good thing to see and for some reason outside double gates with a sign indicating something about pigs.  I took some photos.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heavens knows what had happened to it or where it had come from.  Not a nice thing to come across.  I can’t imagine what caused the marks on the lower abdomen.  When I got home I downloaded the photos and then half an hour later couldn’t locate them on the computer.  I drove out again to take more photos and the pig was still there but had been moved and the marks were hardy visible with its new position.

Much more pleasant were the photographs I took of poppies opposite my friend's cottage when I dropped him back home and the straw calf which was in a field as I came out of the village of Kerpert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was joking with my Breton neighbours this evening that here everyone likes to make animals out of things. Here is a new arrival in their garden.

 

I took my laptop round to my neighbours to show them the photos and was invited to stay for supper so had a good evening with them.  They told me that my opposite English neighbours had arrived in the village at their holiday home so I popped round with a dozen eggs on my way to put the hens to bed.  

The forecast for today was good and it lived up to its promise - a lovely day.

Three things I like:

1.   Making elderflower champagne - in spite of the mess on the floor afterwards!
2.   Watching the hens enjoy the weeds I've pulled out of the veggie patches.
3.   Lying out in the sun this afternoon and admiring all the flowers.

New Restaurants, Old Ruins and Fresh Crabs

Having been inundated with eggs here this week, I took an old mushroom container full of them over to a friend.   I was telling her about two restaurants my physio had told me about last week and we set off to drive to them.  The first, Auberge de l’Etang Neuf is near St Connan and is in the very modern building built next to and over the lake which houses the Museum of the Resistance Argoat which celebrates the victory against the enemy in the Guingamp area in July 1944.  It’s a very lovely setting, with fisherman fly fishing in the lake and everything so green.  The restaurant was hosting the people involved in the inauguration of the building and so was not open to the general public that day but the staff kindly showed me the menu which was very interesting and I will return to eat there.

 

On the way we stopped at the ruins of an Abbey which I hadn’t come across before.  It was an enormous structure and parts of the very high walls have been stabilised by new masonry work.  There were some very strange cast concrete structures and I have no idea what they are supposed to be - any suggestions gratefully received. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then drove on to Plésidy where another small restaurant, Le Relais St Jacques, is located.  The couple who own it are a Frenchman, Michel Guémard and his North Carolina American wife Léa.  We sat with halves of beer for about an hour chatting to them after their lunchtime customers had gone.  Their menu is good too and when my next visitors come I think it will be on the itinerary.  The couple met on the pilgrim way to Compostela, Spain – taking 60+ days to complete – which I thought was really romantic.  My ex neighbour is doing the walk too in three week chunks in the Autumn each year.  Last year I read a book about Nick Crane’s journey the “wrong” way on the path – Clear Waters Rising – an excellent read.

The chicks born eleven days ago are growing well.  There was one casualty, a cockerel who's legs weren't going in the right direction so there are just three cockerels and one hen chick now.  The chicks who are out in the run, nearly five weeks old now, are huge in comparison and enjoying their freedom in their own run in the rabbit are.  Claude, my white cat, enjoys sitting on top of the run and dreaming about how it would be if he could get to them.

The garden Is coming along nicely now with the heat and the rain being ideal growing conditions.  This is part of the large border

 

and here are two photographs of the plants blooming along the house wall.  The flowers on the clematis are enormous, I'm sure larger than they were last year.

 

Lunch today was courtesy of the fish counter at SuperU where they had brilliant value spider crabs for sale. 

 

 

 

I bought two and dressed one with mayo and piment paste some of which I ate for lunch with some of yesterday's homemade sunflower seed bread, toasted and buttered - scrummy!  I haven't decided how to serve the second one yet.

www.rainbowcottagesinfrance.com has had some nice comments from friends.  The guests who left this morning after a week's stay 'phoned from Rennes airport to say that Mum had left two rings behind in the bedroom.  I located them and agreed to send them by registered post when I go back to England in about four weeks time for the birth of my granddaughter.  The last parcel I sent from France, to my daughter, never arrived, so it seemed safer this way.

 

Three things I like:

 

1.  My friend who stayed a few weeks ago has just become a Great Grandmother!  Her great grandson was born this morning in St Thomas's Hospital, London.  She will henceforth be known as GG!

2.   My lovely - boasting I know - homemade bread.  I have made loaves three times this week and they are just the best.

3.   Picking and making elderflower champagne yesterday.  I am taking steps to ensure it doesn't explode  in the bottles this year.

Rainbow Cottages in France - my new web page

Finally I've got organised and am ready to advertise both the cottages for letting.  I have already been having guests but didn't previously have a web page for them to view. 

My new web page is called:

 

 rainbowcottagesinfrance.com

 

 

and once I've managed the intricacies of website design I hope to have it up and running properly.  

Meantime, I have done a temporary page with most of the information that potential guests need and anyone can contact me on sandrachubb@orange.fr or 'phone me on 0033 (0)2 96 29 71 96 to book or discuss a potential booking. 

 

Small Cottage is for two people and is just that - a small, newly renovated cottage with combined sitting room and kitchen area and upstairs a double bedroom with ensuite. 

Middle Cottage, also newly renovated, has two bedrooms, one with a 6ft/180cm wide bed and the other with a small 4ft/120cm double bed.  Downstairs the large room has sitting, dining and kitchen areas.  There is a very large Breton fireplace in the sitting room.

 

There are rabbits, Boris, Ruby and Bert, in a fenced off area of the garden and Muscovy ducks on the field along with goats and chickens - the latter lay wonderful free range eggs.  Claude and Gracie the kittens arrived in October 2012 and have grown somewhat since then.

Both cottages are comfortable and well equipped.  They each have a logburner with logs supplied, television with basic UK television channels, wifi etc. etc. The garden is south-facing and there are tables and chairs for relaxing and dining outside. 








I won't go into great details here now as they are all on:

rainbowcottagesinfrance.com

 

 

Today's post is my 200th and it seems fitting that for this post there should be something important happening in St André for me.

Three things I like:

1.  Welcoming guests here from all everywhere - so far they've come from Holland, Germany, Russia, America, Australia, Costa Rica, England and Scotland.
2.  Finally getting myself organised to do the web page.
3.  Having lovely comments left about the cottages, garden, location and host.