Bugged

One of those days. Bureaucracy all the way. A day where despite working hard all day long, we finished the day behind on almost all fronts.

First, water. Having tried to contact the right office for days, I contacted the wrong, but larger, office in desperation. I was told off for wanting water connected during the holiday period. Our local office is on holiday now until September (that's not a 'holiday period', that's practically a calendar quarter). But she said if I showed up at the office at 8am I might catch someone. Joy. You'd think I was asking for a favour rather than the opportunity to be fleeced for something that just falls out of the sky.

Next, electricity. Our electrician showed up 3 hours early for a meeting today, brought all the brochures he said he'd bring, promised to start work next week and, having taken away the paperwork I don't understand for our supply application form, promised to call and sort it out. He called back a mere 30 minutes later with all the info he could get. I was told that ERDF (who handle installations of supplies) said I had a supply already and just needed to call EDF (who actually sell you the electricity) to have it turned on. Joy! But no, EDF say it's not a proper supply and I have to call ERDF again and ask them to make it a proper supply before they'll turn it on. So I call ERDF. Very rude man (it was 5 to lunch when I called, but still) tells me they only do installations, so I can have a new supply for Euro1,000 or go away. I chose the latter.

After a restorative lunch, I called EDF back and the nice man (same man as this morning) took pity on my "I only want to buy your electricity - please help me do that" and spent 49.55 minutes talking to ERDF (with me on hold). This chat brought the delightful news that the power supply we want (so things don't short all the time) is not available in the way we want it (monophase - if that doesn't mean anything to you - and why should it if you've not experienced the joys of French electrical systems - I'm not explaining it, let's just put it in the 'too hard, don't really need to know the details' box). In fact, it turns out that our department may have chosen a rubbish low-powered system which means we can only have half the power we want. So we'll be having to remember to turn off the towel rails if we want to have the oven on, and not run a hairdryer at the same time as the hoover, and such like. Sigh.

So now I have many appointments with ERDF, no electricity and no water.

And when we tried to put some plasterboard on a partition wall it went wrong in so many ways that Mr B wanted to break it all and go and start again with wooden (rather than metal) partitioning. I don't blame him.

After all that, coming back to our rented house is a relief. Even though it is a tip from lack of attention. Dinner, glass of wine and a pleasant half hour watering the garden have restored my even keel a little. Tomorrow: furniture building, painting and much finger crossing that the kids like the centre they're off to.

I've gone on too much again. Sometimes though, you just have to get it all out. And when we're relaxing in our lovely new home (it will be lovely, one day) I don't want to forget the endless hours listening to EDF hold music that I went through to get there. This bug was lurking outside the front door of the MBH as we left. I was going to make him B&W, but the colours seemed fun, in the end.