A lucky break that’ll make the summer

If ever a day was a reminder that spring is just around the corner, then that day was today. We’d been expecting a high of 10 degrees Celsius with a northerly wind possibly gusting up to 20 mph (30 kmh), but what we got instead was 12 degrees in my garden, 15 degrees when I nipped down to Montignac, and a balmy spring-like day with hardly any wind at all. It could have been a perfect day to go flying, but I had something else that I had to do today.

I was the lucky recipient of a stunning piece of good fortune this week-end just past, which I’ll go on to explain in a moment. But first a little bit of background detail. When I was clearing my house in England that I’d just sold to come to France, it was impossible for me to bring all of my possessions with me. For several weeks beforehand I’d been selling what I could off on Ebay but many items I’d just given away by advertising them on Freecycle and such like. I had a good set of white plastic garden furniture complete with seat cushions and a matching sunshade and also a gas barbecue that I hadn’t used for a couple of years, which was all never going to fit into the 7.5 tonne van that I’d hired, together with a Calor gas cylinder that wasn’t suitable for France anyway. So before I left, I offered the whole lot to a single mother who lived close by who I knew had an empty back garden and not a lot of spare cash to furnish it with.

She was very pleased to receive them so I wasn’t too sad after all about leaving them all behind, but this still left me without a barbecue in France, of all places! I’ve got through the last two summers without one, not that I wouldn’t have bought one if the need had arisen when first when my mother and family came to visit followed by my son and his girlfriend last summer. We managed without on both occasions but I was thinking that it was about time that the situation was rectified as I didn’t want to face yet another summer with the smell of barbecued burgers, steaks and sausages wafting over from my neighbours’ gardens as soon as the weather improves!

Every Monday, ‘la facteuse’ delivers a wad of promotional literature into my letterbox. Most local people have stickers on their boxes saying ‘No Pub!’ but I like to receive it because it lets me know what’s going on, helps with my French and the paper is also handy for lighting my wood-burner! Last Monday there was a flyer from Leroy Merlin and one of their special offers was for a couple of gas barbecues.

This pricked my interest and although I’d had all week to go across to their store in Chancelade to see what was cooking (pun, geddit?), I hadn’t bothered until Saturday afternoon. After dealing with one or two domestic chores, I thought that I’d then go over there to have a look at the special offers. When I arrived, because it was a lovely sunny day, albeit a bit chilly, the car park was heaving. There was a marquee outside the main store with a large sign up saying ‘SOLDES’ (sales) so I thought that that would be a good place to start. And lucky I did!

As I entered, I asked a young lady just inside the entrance if this was where the ‘barbecues sur promo’ were but she didn’t know. I’m surprised if she’d have known what day of the week it was actually, bless her, but fortunately she then asked a young man who’d just come in. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘But there’s only one left, a 79€ one!’ So I told him to take me to it but quick, which he did, and sure enough, there it was standing alone at the back of the store with a price sticker on it. I told him to make sure that he didn’t sell it and that I’d be back in a trice with ‘un chariot’ as the box that it was in was about the size of a medium size coffin, and as I went off I saw him pushing it into the back where no other customer would be able to find it. Five minutes later I had it on a trolley and was paying for it at the checkout. So what a bit of luck, to get the very last one 🙂

I left the box on my kitchen floor on Sunday but decided that today would be the day to assemble it. I’d already peaked inside and knew that there were quite a few components to deal with, so eventually got onto the job after a late brunch, or early lunch, whatever term you deem more appropriate. Pretty soon I had plastic wrapped bits and pieces on every horizontal surface and leaning up against my kitchen walls and here’s a shot of the main body which I found also had more bits inside it when I lifted the lid.

It took me about two hours to finish off the assembly, which turned out to be more time-consuming than difficult, and when I’d finished I was more than satisfied with my lucky purchase. Although not quite up to being able to cater for the whole of the First Battalion of the Royal Marines, it’s bigger than my old one and I’m sure that it’ll more than meet my needs of feeding my friends and family when they come to visit this summer. Here are a few shots that I took of it outside while I was wheeling it round to my ‘cave’ where it will now remain under a plastic cover until it is called for duty when the weather gets warm enough to eat outside, and I’m eagerly looking forward to when that happens in the coming weeks.

After I’d finished, I went off to Intermarché to fill my jerry-can with 20 litres of fuel. The forecast for tomorrow is for the weather to be at least as warm as today and with a little bit less wind, so it should be very flyable and with nearly full tanks already and with another 20 litres ‘just in case’, I should be ready for anything. I dropped into Galinat on my way back from Intermarché to check on 56NE after the high winds of last week, but all was well. The runway was also good and firm, so with a bit of luck, tomorrow should be a great day to go flying 😉