One for the Pot

I know: a teapot on a shelf is pretty dull. But this is a teapot on a new shelf in our new kitchen. A kitchen that has hot AND cold running water, a cooker and a beautiful hand-made unit. Despite having no heating (and with fog for the past 48 hours it is now officially very cold here) I feel warmer just walking into the kitchen.

Today we had vague hopes of painting, cleaning and putting on floor varnish in our bedroom; but the requirement to clean the house up a bit got in the way so we gave up on that. Now we have a clear hallway, and after three trips to the tip we have very much less junk in the house.

Our lovely electrician, Sebastien, arrived to put a thicker cable across from our building site electric meter, which he says is less likely to burst into flames. Which is nice.

But we still only have 3 kW of electricity for the next ten days, which is probably two radiators, a couple of lights and a phone charger. The phone charger will be essential as today we went to look at our phone line connection - which is in a neighbours basement. France Telecom had assured me no engineer was necessary and that we could just plug it in. Not so. When I called them to ask for a visit they assured me the line was all connected. When I insisted he said he would have the line checked and then came back after a very long time to confirm that the engineers reported a fault on the line. He said they would come and find the fault. When I casually said that the fault was that it wasn't plugged in, he stopped and dramatically said "Madam, what is your job?" For simplicicity I said I was a lawyer. He answered haughtily that his technicians are technicians, and they were the ones who would tell me what the fault was. He did not seem willing to accept that I was capable of diagnosing a gap between cable and wall but, since he was offering me a technician on Monday, I thought I'd let it go. Hopefully the engineer will be more willing to listen to reason.

Too much writing already, so off to enjoy some telly, and our last family evening in this rented house.