Fans and chemins

(In franglais it rhymes)

We arrived at the Notaire's office bright and early to sign the papers on the house sale. All suited and booted, even Conor had tried his best to straighten his hair up. The kids sat dutifully and played on their iPods and we headed into the office with buyers, estate agent and Notaire to do the deed. There were some amendments to do with job titles, where the money was coming from and the fact that Mr B is now married (I did like the moment when the Notaire said "oh, you are married? To whom? Err, maybe the woman sitting next to him....)

Anyway, then someone came in with a big fan and a huge bucket of dog crap and started throwing it.

My day went rapidly downhill.

Turns out (I'm sparing you a lot of heartache and toing and froing - in French - with this brief summary) that one of our garden paths is a public road (specifically a 'chemin rural'). Not surprisingly, our purchasers were unhappy to sign the papers without this being resolved. They seemed to believe (happily, it being true) that we had no idea at all about this. The issue not having been mentioned by either the Notaire who handled our purchase nor the very expensive French lawyer we hired in Putney.

We spent the afternoon at the local Mairie (town hall) trying to sort it out. We didn't. We have another chance tomorrow morning with the boss of the lady we saw today.

To take my mind off it all later this afternoon, I headed into the garden with macro lens and tripod and had some fun. Above is a dumbass caterpillar I rescued from the pool and put safely in the sun to dry off, with a pile of lovely soft leaves next to him. He ran away from the leaves and headed straight for the pool: here he is creeping right along the edge of the decking.

I was a bit blip-spoilt today, so here's some links - because if I don't keep busy on the computer I might just crawl off into a corner with a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate and cry my eyes out (now you have to feel sorry enough for me to look at the links, surely):

This bug was a very close tie for my blip. If only all his wings had been spread out... Also today, I noticed that the recent ludicrously warm weather, and probably the rain, has brought out some more passiflora - it's honestly like spring around here at the moment with everything blooming. Finally, something I'm sure I'll return to: some rosemary flowers.

(The first link is the only one that I'll cry if you don't look at it.)

Now I'm off with a dictionary to find out what is the French for: "We were royally screwed." and "Where does Notaire X live - I think I need to pay him a late night visit with some big friends of mine and a roll of duck tape."

Or I might go for the corner/chocolate/wine/crying option.