My regular readers will be aware that the lovely Chris and I have decamped to France for the summer. I'm happy to report that Lola is still enjoying the freedom of the garden and we're starting to get worried about how she will re-adapt to life in a Singapore apartment. Normal Notes from Singapore service will be resumed on our return, but in the meantime, I hope to entertain you with tales of life in the French countryside.
The first of these concerns French letters (I know, it's cheap and obvious, but I couldn't help myself), or more accurately, French letter boxes. If you've spent time in France you may well have noticed that houses do not have letter boxes in the front door, the way they do in the U.K. Apparently this is because of the rural nature of France, whereby the French postie would be spending half of his or her life walking to houses hundreds of yards away from the road which would mean that the French Post Office would ned twice the number of posties to do the job and stamps would be twice as expensive. The law requires that French residents have a postbox which easily enables the rural postperson to deliver the mail, preferably without getting out of his or her van. As we have never had a postbox worthy of the name, we have, in the past, had any mail sent to us in France re-directed to Singapore. That doesn't work so well when we are in France for a few months at a time, so I invested in a postbox last week. It is a fetching shade of beige and has the regulation lock that enables the postie to unlock the box and place parcels from Amazon inside - more of which in a later post.
Post box in hand, I departed down the path towards the road to look for a suitable place to position it. Easier said than done. Where we are is pretty rural, so there is no convenient wall to attach the box to, and I wasn't sure that attaching it to the nearest tree would be acceptable, or even noticeable. So I set off up the path again for a pow wow with TLC. We finally decided that positioning the box on top of the cement frame that contains the various meters for the house would be the smart thing to do, so it was off to the local DIY store to purchase some of that fixative that sticks one thing to something else without the use of nails. Fixative and postbox in hand, I set off down the path once more, reading the label on the sticky stuff as I went (it's quite a long way). As I got to the bottom of the hill I realised that, while said sticky stuff would stick anything to anything else inside a house, it was not meant for external use. Back to the local DIY shop where I purchased the sort of glue that would enable a climber to adhere themselves to the sheer side of Mont Blanc for the duration of the fiercest winter in the history of mankind without losing any grip whatsoever and set off down the path again.
All seemed to go well. The sticky stuff worked like a dream and I glued the postbox to the cement structure very neatly, with the little door facing the road. 24 hours later, I trotted down the path to check that the box was still stuck fast and indeed it was. Very. Unfortunately, I had managed to glue the door shut as well, and to glue it shut with the sort of stuff that would enable a climber to adhere themselves to the sheer side of Mont Blanc etc. etc. By now you will have worked that the title of this post is not in any way a slur on the French postal service, but a reference to my good self.
What do do? Well, I got a thin sharp knife and spent the next half hour worrying away at the quarter inch at the bottom of the box that needed to be freed until the door was well and truly liberated, then trotted back up the path for a celebratory glass of wine.
The first of these concerns French letters (I know, it's cheap and obvious, but I couldn't help myself), or more accurately, French letter boxes. If you've spent time in France you may well have noticed that houses do not have letter boxes in the front door, the way they do in the U.K. Apparently this is because of the rural nature of France, whereby the French postie would be spending half of his or her life walking to houses hundreds of yards away from the road which would mean that the French Post Office would ned twice the number of posties to do the job and stamps would be twice as expensive. The law requires that French residents have a postbox which easily enables the rural postperson to deliver the mail, preferably without getting out of his or her van. As we have never had a postbox worthy of the name, we have, in the past, had any mail sent to us in France re-directed to Singapore. That doesn't work so well when we are in France for a few months at a time, so I invested in a postbox last week. It is a fetching shade of beige and has the regulation lock that enables the postie to unlock the box and place parcels from Amazon inside - more of which in a later post.
Post box in hand, I departed down the path towards the road to look for a suitable place to position it. Easier said than done. Where we are is pretty rural, so there is no convenient wall to attach the box to, and I wasn't sure that attaching it to the nearest tree would be acceptable, or even noticeable. So I set off up the path again for a pow wow with TLC. We finally decided that positioning the box on top of the cement frame that contains the various meters for the house would be the smart thing to do, so it was off to the local DIY store to purchase some of that fixative that sticks one thing to something else without the use of nails. Fixative and postbox in hand, I set off down the path once more, reading the label on the sticky stuff as I went (it's quite a long way). As I got to the bottom of the hill I realised that, while said sticky stuff would stick anything to anything else inside a house, it was not meant for external use. Back to the local DIY shop where I purchased the sort of glue that would enable a climber to adhere themselves to the sheer side of Mont Blanc for the duration of the fiercest winter in the history of mankind without losing any grip whatsoever and set off down the path again.
All seemed to go well. The sticky stuff worked like a dream and I glued the postbox to the cement structure very neatly, with the little door facing the road. 24 hours later, I trotted down the path to check that the box was still stuck fast and indeed it was. Very. Unfortunately, I had managed to glue the door shut as well, and to glue it shut with the sort of stuff that would enable a climber to adhere themselves to the sheer side of Mont Blanc etc. etc. By now you will have worked that the title of this post is not in any way a slur on the French postal service, but a reference to my good self.
What do do? Well, I got a thin sharp knife and spent the next half hour worrying away at the quarter inch at the bottom of the box that needed to be freed until the door was well and truly liberated, then trotted back up the path for a celebratory glass of wine.
