French frustrations!!

I’ve mentioned many times before about the problems you run into just ‘doing things’ here in France that you never thought about before because they just never arose. This morning was a case in point.

The temperature is rising again this week, back to a possible 40 degrees C by the weekend. This not only makes daytime flying impossible but it also makes working outside uncomfortable to say the least. So having sorted out all of the outstanding ‘other’ things as I thought (I’ll come back to that in a moment), I wanted to get back to finishing off the outstanding work on the X-Air.

So this morning I was out of the door for a (reasonably) early start only needing to drop into Bricojem in Rouffignac on the way to Malbec to pick up some acetone thinner and another cheapo paintbrush. But what do I find? Bricojem are ‘sold out’ of acetone. Can you believe that?

The problem is that the only idea they have of ‘stock contol’ over here is, ‘Is there any more on the shelf? No? OK, better order some more – it’ll just be a week, come back later’. The only problem is that when you need it NOW the only alternative that you have is to go elsewhere – and elsewhere is either Périgueux (half a day lost) or les Briconautes at Montignac.

The latter is much closer but in completely the opposite direction away from Malbec, back past where I live, but with no other choice, that’s what I had to do. So by the time I’d got what I wanted, that was the end of my ‘early start’ and with the temperature climbing rapidly, that’s another day gone, the more so as I think that I’m already feeling the heat somewhat as a result of the lingering effects of my illness.

So what else? Oh yes. I’ve been chasing les Noyers, the Savannah centre, since June for a replacement plastic wing tip to effect the repair on the Savannah, which has been grounded the whole time ever since. But without luck – phone hardly ever being answered, no response to emails and a grossly excessive price being quoted for the part which I had little choice but to accept.

So in a final act of desperation I gave Steve and Brian, the guys at Sandtoft Ultralights in Derbyshire a ring, who are the Savannah importers for the UK, to see if they could help in any way. ‘No problem!’ said Steve, we’ve got a couple of spares in a box because a while back we brought in two Savannah Classics whose wings were changed over during construction to VGs, which use a different wing tip. Give me your address and I’ll put one in the post for you’.

What an incredibly kind gesture and Steve even declined my offer of carriage – ‘Nah… it’s only a couple of quid’. Amazing blokes so kudos to Sandtoft Ultralights.

But then what? This morning, totally out of the blue with no prior notification after many unacknowledged calls and emails from me, I get a call from les Noyers. ‘We have your wing tip’. Thanks for nothing, really. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. ‘France’ and ‘Customer Service’ are two mutually excusive concepts.

Have you heard? Banks and other high-tech organisations will be FLOODING from London to Paris as a result of Brexit. Yeah, pull the other one… 😕