In a dress!!

TallGirl totally voluntarily and with no prompting from me (honest - really) chose a to wear a dress for a party today.  And condescended to be photographed.  So here's a blip-censor approved slice of it.

Stunned with the shock of that, I took no other photos today.

Also stunned with the heat.  Even even even hotter.  With a wind seemingly straight from my fan oven on the sizzle stage of roasting a joint. Good day then to head into Castres (almost via Toulouse when it turned out that, somewhat distracted by chat, I was following the wrong green signs) to swap our non-working Orange TV box for a working one.  It has, I have to confess, been non-working since we got here, but I figured it would get to the top of the list one day and, four years later, this is that day.  Turns out the reason it wouldn't work was nothing to do with the instructions being in French or me just not trying hard enough, but that they gave us a box for a satellite dish.  Which we don't have.   And the ADSL box won't work because our signal is too rubbish as we don't live in a town.

I get grumpy about this every now and then.  An Irish blipper will perhaps recall the strength of my feelings on the raw deal rural dwellers get in terms of internet service, while services in town continue to ratchet up.  Anyway, the Orange lady didn't seem at all perturbed about this mistake.  Their customer service is one of the many reasons that I am currently involved in an unnecessarily complicated set of mobile phone switching procedures.  TallGirl is getting a new phone with a brand new company - simple.  I am switching my mobile from Orange to SFR.  Meanwhile TallGirl's old phone (now CarbBoy's) is switching from SFR to, you guessed it, Orange. It. Will. All. Go. Smoothly. Despite my having booked it all to happen the day before we go on holiday.

And the rattle on the car became decidedly worse today.  Mr B's advice was to stop driving on motorways as the recovery costs are very high.

Great.  

I estimate I have spent about 75% of the time I have lived in France worrying at the back/front of my mind about a vital bit being imminently likely to fall off the car.  It's exhausting. Tomorrow I predict I will lie under the car with gaffer tape and see what I can do.

(Sob, probably.)