Adventures

This & that…

First of all, i have been paid! Woohoo! I feel positively affluent :)

Second, i have another new piece of furniture, a chest of drawers from Claire. It used to belong to her youngest son, Simon, and the drawer fronts had stickers telling him in which drawers he could find his clothes. So, i took the drawer fronts off, covered the drawers and the top with Contact paper, and replaced some missing knobs (i'm getting to know Mr. Bricolage intimately). The contact paper is a kind of strange blue woodgrain pattern, but it's pretty. The new knobs are a dark metal filigree pattern. I took the old fronts off only because the screws for the new knobs weren't long enough, and i didn't want to go back to Mr. Bricolage again. I must go in there at least twice a week.

I think it looks pretty good.

Yesterday (Monday) i spent the day with Claire in Le Havre. The city has a reputation of being rather unattractive, because most of it had to be rebuilt after World War II. The center of town was designed by an architect named Perret, and he constructed everything primarily out of concrete. Comparisons have been made between his style and mid-century Soviet architecture. I happen to think the buildings look quite nice, and much less block-like than some others i have seen in France. I tried to find some good pictures, but the ones online don't really do it justice. I think people don't like it because it doesn't look like Paris.

Claire is great; i'm so glad i have met her. I had told her i didn't have anything in particular in mind to do in Le Havre, so we could do whatever she wanted. When i got there, she rather apologetically asked if we could go grocery shopping. I agreed, and so we spent quite a long time walking around an enormous Auchan hypermarket talking about what we thought was weird about the French.

Claire grew up in Sale, just outside Manchester, and (for those who don't know) my parents grew up in Stretford, about 5 minutes from Sale. Occasionally Claire would say things that would remind me of my family like "give over" for "stop it". It was quite comforting in a way. She also has a great sense of humor, and we get along very well.

On the way back from Le Havre, she took me on a quick tour of the Port Jerome industrial zone. It's a bunch of chemical plants just a few miles from Lillebonne, and at night the lights are very pretty in a scary, poisonous kind of way. We then stopped at Notre Dame de Gravenchon (on the industrial zone's doorstep) to pick up the chest of drawers from her old house. The house is under contract to be sold, but there are still a few things in it.

That's it for now. I'm going to go put some things in my newly acquired drawers.

Bonnes vacances!

Yes, i know i only just started working, but it's vacation time. I'm off for the next week and a half with very little to occupy my time.

Next Monday i will go to Le Havre to hang out with Claire, and the following Friday i am going to Paris with Dominique for the day. Dominique is making her regular tea run to Fauchon (she claims this is her only luxury), and she has invited me to go along.

Today i went down to my local bookshop, Librairie Méresse, because they are advertising English, math, and science lessons for local school children. I spoke with Bertrand, the owner, and told him i would be interested in helping if he needs more teachers. He took my information and said he would let me know. We'll see.

I got some good news in the mail the other day: the CAF (Caisse d'allocations familiales) is going to give me some money to help pay my rent. Since my income is below the poverty line, i qualified for enough money to cover more than half my rent every month. I didn't expect to get that much, so i was very happy when i got the letter.

I don't have much to add, so i'll stop here. Maybe i'll take a nap...

Victory!

A quick and decisive one at that, thanks to Rob and Andy (who both had pretty much the same suggestion).

It took me only 2 minutes to do, and the sound of clothing actually being tossed around inside my washing machine is like music (albeit rather percussive, modernist music).

Lunch, or a demonstration of healing techniques

Yesterday (Sunday), i spent the afternoon and evening at Dominique's house. We were supposed to go to Honfleur, but it was raining. Instead, we had a leisurely lunch with Hervé's former judo instructor, his nephew, and his nephew's girlfriend.

Patric, the instructor, is studying eastern medicine. Pierre-Yves, Dominique's son, is suffering from a muscle strain in his back. A match made in heaven.

After our lunch was well on its way to being digested, Patric offered to work on Pierre-Yves's back. The resulting therapy escalated from a chair massage to contorted manipulations of Pierre-Yves while he was lying face down on the coffee table. I took one picture, but i should have taken more, because this one does not do the process justice.

I honestly don't know if Pierre-Yves ended up feeling better.

Defeat…

I'm declaring temporary defeat. I have lost the battle with the washing machine, but perhaps not the war.

I cannot get the new belt on, and it's driving me crazy. I am including detailed, labeled pictures in case anyone has any ideas how i can do this, but for right now, my troops are taking a little R&R.

Click on any of the pics for a larger view:

This is the machine standing up. I used a few books to hold up the motor & drum assembly while trying to attach the drive belt (there is a rudimetary suspension system in there that, without the books, just kept everything bouncing around)

It was soon lying down

Here's a close-up of the motor after i detached it from the drum. I was able to loop the belt around the drive shaft by angling the motor, but then i couldn't re-attach the motor.

This is because of these pegs, for which i curse every French washing machine manufacturer:

Here's a better view of pegs 1 & 2. Peg 3 is at the back of the motor, so you can't see it in any of the pictures except the one above.

I considered buying a hacksaw and forcibly removing the pegs (they're just hard plastic), but i wondered if that might make the motor unstable while the machine is running.

It seems unfair that i have been able to get this far with the machine only to be foiled by plastic pegs and a lack of sufficient upper body strength. Will someone clever please tell me what to do now?