Added on Monday 21 May 2007
Once again it has come to this time of year that I fall down again! At the beginning of this month I had to go to the doctor because of a slight abscess on my right leg, as this wasn't healing as quickly as I thought it should be. Nothing too serious, I thought, just a quick shot of antibiotic should do it ok. After getting to the doctor he looked at it and agreed that a few pills would be fine, what I didn't know was just how strong these would be! After two or three days of taking them I suddenly started to lose the place and by the weekend I was totally out of the planet. I literally was falling about, falling down and had no idea where I was, managing to realise (just about) that all was not well, I stopped taking the pills and it took me two days to begin to recover. The downside of this was that in those few days of being unaware of where I was, I had managed to collect a few injuries to my back, my shoulder, my head etc. all very painful indeed! Now two weeks later I am still managing to cope with the (slightly lesser pain) and the effects of concussion, which has left me feeling rather strangely woolly. Meanwhile, during my lost weekend we had the French elections and apparently I was gibbering on about Sarkozy and Royale in between falling down every half hour! Fortunately, by the following Thursday I was beginning to come back to this planet and Fiona was beginning to tell me about some of the strange things I was doing during the this period. All in all, a very strange period of my life as I have never experienced anything like it before. I am glad to say that I am now in a recovery phase (albeit slowly) but certainly with a few injuries still to heal, I really feel that I have lost a few weeks of my life somewhere and I don't like it! I think that I will change doctors in the future.
During this period our neighbour across the road has reconstructed an arbour to the front of his house, which has brought it back to the way, it was when his father had the house some years ago. With it?s rather old tiled roof I was rather intrigued why, but Mr Lacombe told me that as it was within site of the chateau then it had to be kept in keeping with the old style. This rather pleases me as it does seem to be very much in the style of a rather old house and I am very glad that these traditions are still kept up. A couple of days after writing the above, Mr Lacombe invited us across, along with our neighbours Valerie and Arthur, for an aperitif. This was in order to say thank you to us for raising the alarm when the fire started some two years ago. I was intending to take some photographs from his point of view but, as usual, technology got in the way in the form of flat batteries in my camera! Not to worry though as I will manage some pictures in the next day or so. Because we only see the house face on from across the road it was fascinating to see around the inside and the care and attention that he has taken in rebuilding the property, all still a bit new looking but considering the devastation that the fire caused all has been beautifully and carefully restored.
Thankfully, our bookings for the summertime have seen a great increase this year and it looks as though we will be much busier in 2007. Surprisingly most of these have come from North America with not so many enquiries from the UK. This always surprises us, as the dollar exchange re the Euro is so low at the moment; however, we are always pleased to see the interest from there. It just means that I must get back into being productive and being well again! Before my recent illness struck me backwards I managed to upgrade my editing system and re-vamp my desk making the system much less cluttered and a bit more manageable, and hopefully a bit more user friendly for our prospective students, and myself as well! Anyway it is back to the grindstone and the recovery stage for me now and hopefully all will be well with no more falling down stuff again.
Rural France. I love it, well most of the time!
? Barry Paton. May 2007.