Coup de Cœur- Part Four: Whistle While You Work
And so we boldly continued, confident that a little bit of work was all it would take to spruce the goose and be ready for the Mayor to cut the ribbon on our shining, reborn triumph ….
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Its so nice to know that you were able to enjoy such a tedious work… top it off with yoe being funny..ahhh how many people can do that….?? ..such an attitude that we should emulate..
There were moments, still are, in the process when I throw a mighty tantrum and say I’ve had enough and I’m not going on but I do find laughter is the best balm for hardship ….
A pity youa nd your husband are not in residence…for the sake of the little old lady opposite. He must have added years to her life…and if the little city is anything like my first village in France it would not be long before she had sussed his showering timetable and invited her friends round for coffee.
There is an active old lady gathering outside the rather incongruous shop opposite the church which is owned by a fantastical bleach-blonde who dresses her well padded and beyond curvaceous frame in leather minis, satin scoop tops and stilettos and is the antithesis of anything you might imagine in the depths of rural France (think palette knife to apply make-up and areldite to stick the lashes on) but is a deeply lovely lady. She holds court with a posse of old to ancient ladies every afternoon that it is warm enough and I presume indoors when it isn’t. My husband wouldn’t stand a chance if she got wind of the situation. He’d be a desiccated remain in no time!!!!
Father’s view of make up was that it was applied with a trowel and taken off whith a chipping hammer…he never thought of the araldite for the lashes!
Having twenty years of living in rural France the attire of the lady concerned does not surprise me in the least…you could get some surprises knocking on doors in some of those villages….but I agree, your husband would be in peril!
I share your father’s view. I’ve never fully understood WHY women can’t just be themselves. Or men for that matter 😉 My husband is a gentle thing and man-eaters need to be kept at bay. He married one once and we are still suffering the fall out 😂 Rural France, as you know better than most is a double edged joy/trial/love/hate/celebrate/despair place. On the days I don’t quote W C Fields on his deathbed, I still tend to be quite smitten ….
just reading this: How time flies when you’re having fun, n’est-ce pas?….. is KILLING ME SOFTLY (with laughter!)…. and I haven’t even started reading your 4th instalment 🙂
So glad someone go that and very glad it was you!!
You have just reminded me that I STILL haven’t read your instalment – I shall do that today, I promise 😉 – and probably a new one too!!!
💛😊
So handy to be able to wave to the ladies whilst showering. I know it’s 3 years ago now but those floors are really starting to look clean. Pity about the loo, and the obvious overspill. It’s one thing to clean up your own families mess, but quite something else when it is years of a stranger’s mess.
Just please don’t encourage him …. the old ladies of the parish all adore him – I care not to ponder the reason why 😉. You are so right, Peter, cleaning up someone else’s mess is much much worse. I have the utmost respect for my third daughter who spent a summer as a ‘Scout’ in Oxford cleaning for a college that will remain nameless – as you will know, they have visitors when the University is ‘down’. Some of the stories she tells of the way people (many of them professors and other high falooting academics from all over the world) left their rooms and particularly bathrooms make my toes curl. And most of them didn’t leave a tip for the cleaners either. Bearing in mind that they would be getting a lovely room in an historic building for next to nothing or nothing at all because their own institute was paying for their privilege it was quite boggling.
I saw the tribute to The Bean in the first photo, glad it wasn’t just my eyesight making me see things (yes, that is kinda double-edged statement). 🙂
Haha … classic! The Bean is very happy that you noticed her without prompting. It was entirely a spontaneous flaking and I am glad I preserved it photographically for posterity. It feels like her hidden mark on her place 😉
Love it when things like that happen.
The post I laughed thru from beginning to end, seasoned with a few 😮 moments.. 😊
Well spotted… I have it a bit of a polish with you in mind … I remember how much you enjoyed it’s first airing (and indeed Two Brains airing his altogether!!) 🙂
I kind of like the shower on the pedestal! Maybe not the inherent display of oneself though!
Ah, the nitty gritty of removing the signs of pity of Those Who Came Before. (How did said fools come to look so disdainfully upon hygiene and common sense?) The world is indeed colored with all kinds, but many of them have never been house-broken, and then they leave their broken-house for others to rectify. I envy you not in this procedure, but I equally understand the joy of laboriously righting the wrongs. And I have yet another stunning photo of you to use in my gestating (at least in my head) blog extravaganza (with music!) that will eventually rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes…. 😉