Last week Sile and I began to get our first taste of what living in France was going to be like.
There were downsides.
As a nation they are perhaps not as efficient as they think they are.
We had already experienced that when the bank were a little tardy in getting a cheque for us.
Yhis time we had an appointment with the water board at 15.30 on Wednesday.
This was made, I was very impressed to note, by email and confirmed by email by me.
When they hadn’t arrived by five Sile rang them.
“But Madame” she was told, “The appointment was for 1.30, M. arrived and there was no-one there”
We had a copy of the email,with the correct time, in our hands.
They however made another appointment for the following day, and this time they arrived only three hours late and, unfortunately, they couldn’t turn on the water anyway, and they would need someone in the house when they did.
Difficult when one is living in Ireland.
However there were good bits too.
The first day we arrived we were just collecting some food in the house when a charming neighbour spotted us and asked us over to her house for an aperitif.
Two other neighbours to whom we introduced ourselves were also very welcoming.
One man who had a marvellous walrus moustache was delighted that we were Irish and instantly made the rugby connection .
I am obviously going to have to learn how to talk fluent French rugby to survive.
We were just going in to the house on saturday when Sile spotted a GB plate on a car parking in the carpark by the church.
Never one to be backward I went and introduced myself to the young man driving it.
He instantly asked us back to a nearby house for coffee and to meet his friends another British couple who had a B&B in the next village.
Thus we met Steve and Nici and Peter and Valerie.
If they can forgive me for dragging dog crap up through their house (You must keep your eye on the ground on French pavements!) I think we will be seeing more of each other.
Furthermore Peter also acts as an agent for people like us and will help us sort out the water problem.

Before we left the town on Sunday we took a stroll around the circular boundary of the village.

There, at a cross roads we spotted a war memorial to the Glorious Dead
of the 1914/18 war.

And there on the side was engraved the name of the man after whom our street; Rue Rene Lentheric, was named.
Not the founder of a fashion house but a young soldier who died in WW1.