Friday, March 18, 2016

A fly in the ointment - sort of *

For just over a year I’ve been using drops and ointment in my eyes because when I saw my ophthalmologist 13 months ago he said that I might need an operation to remove scar tissue in my left eye. The good news is that I don’t need an operation and I didn’t need new lenses for my glasses either.

Apparently I’ve reached an age when there aren’t great changes to vision. Unfortunately, in France the ointment that I’ve been using for almost 30 years is out of stock. A substitute ointment was almost no use at all. Now I’m on stronger drops till my beloved ointment comes back again.

* couldn't think of a better title - could have put A Fl-eye in the ointment!

Saturday, March 12, 2016

When life isn't as expected

Thursday morning got off to a strange start. My phone is cracked and I must have bumped it at some point on Wednesday evening. My alarm didn’t ring; just made that horrible «I’m buzzing towards the edge of the table” sound. Fortunately I was awake already, so didn’t miss it.

When we got up we realized that although the toilet flushed the tank didn’t refill. I went to put some water in the kettle and there was just a pathetic trickle. Rob walked along to the village shop and discovered that there was a fire in a silo at a local farm. The water had been cut by the firefighters so that they could fight the fire. It came back on again so that I could wash up the breakfast things but the pressure was pretty pathetic all day as they were using water for over 12 hours.

It really is strange to have no water at all. I had bottled drinking water which we could use sparingly. We take so much for granted. Just the simple act of rinsing my hands after peeling an orange became complicated.

All is back to normal for us, but it won’t be normal for the farmer’s family for quite some time to come.