At lunchtime, the borehole drillers still hadn’t turned up, so LSS called them.
“Oh, sorry, there’s been a delay. Didn’t the foreman call you?”
“No.”
“Oh, the naughty man. Isn’t he a scamp! Well, we’ll try and pencil it in for Monday next week.”
Not that there’s any rush, of course. The one thing we have a surfeit of at the moment, is water. Some of you avid readers may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve mentioned the weather. This is not to say that we’ve been having marvellous sunshine; it’s simply that the rain has become so commonplace that I don’t even mention it any more. I think since we’ve been in France we’ve had one whole week without rain. The rest of the time it’s just damp. Or windy. Or both. LSS has been struggling with the garden, as the potatoes now have mildew, and the tomatoes are starting to look sickly as well. She’s sprayed everything with copper oxychloride, but even this is having limited effect because no sooner are the plants sprayed, than it starts raining again and everything gets washed off.
So this borehole delay can be seen as just another shining example of French efficiency. No wonder Napoleon lost.
(With apologies to ‘Allo ‘Allo)
“Where are ze rations for all ze horses?”
“So sorry, mon General. Ze suppliers are out of stock, and we can’t get any more horse nuts from zat company in Surrey because zey are Eenglish and don’t want to supply us with any.”
“Merde.”