Lightning doesn't strike twice ...... or does it ..?

When I'm travelling I have two mobiles with me, the U.K. Vodafone one and one on the French Orange Network. Ironically the Vodafone one costs less than the Orange one to send texts in France ......

The French phone is only used to give a contact number to delivery companies, artisans and so on. So messages to it are comparatively rare. The one the weekend before Christmas from Orange was ominous as well as rare - "Due to storms in your area we recommend that you disconnect your Livebox modem". After our experience last summer, when a lightning strike fried our Livebox, our one had been disconnected before we left - so all OK there then. The email I received the next day from Nicole was a bit more worrying: "Did you leave the lights on in your house? They weren't on last night and I seem to remember they were on before." 

Kindly Nicole went in and reset the EDF breaker to restore power, checked our freezers were working and locked up again (in France one subscribes to the supply of a maximum number of kilowatts and there is a main electricity switch in the EDF supply board which trips out if too much power is drawn or there's a major fault somewhere - like a lightning strike).

When we got home ten days later the fridge was a disgusting shade of green and we soon found a number of inoperative electrical devices - fridge, hob extractor, one of the underfloor thermostats, a printer - nine in all. None of the neighbours recall a thunderstorm but some sort of voltage surge had trashed nearly fifteen hundred euros of our electrical equipment.

The insurance company were remarkably sanguine about things, after the June event we knew the drill and had all the purchase receipts ready for sending on to them. As unfortunately one of the damaged items was our printer we had to call in some favours from neighbours to get invoices scanned. As it was the second claim in six months AXA sent in an expert electrical assessor to view the items, and here's where things started to get very - shall we say - French. 

M. Zug the assessor arrived from Lorient 45 minutes early for the appointment, we had all the faulty items laid out ready for inspection with the invoices and receipts. He first spent 20 minutes reading our policy documents and trying to tell me we weren't covered for voltage surge damage; in exasperation I called Karine at the insurance agency. "Pwthhhh - what does he know? Put him on the phone and I'll put him right." was her response. Five minutes of rapid fire French later and M. Zug turned to the matter at hand and consulted our claim list - "Ah yes, a built-in fridge, that's why it's so expensive" was the sum total of his assessment of our claim. He then proceeded to type out the information on our list on his computerised assessment software (with help from me when he couldn't work out euro/pound exchange rates), asked me to agree the final total, told me what I already knew that we had a policy excess and asked me to agree the amount we would receive. No assessment of any kind of the damage, no request to assess if the items were repairable, no questioning of the value of our six year old obsolete printer and no consideration of finding out if the cheap power supply or the actual equipment had failed. Good for us but not sure what value our insurers got from this exercise, 250 kilometres travel and half a day of an electrical expert can't be cheap.

I've more to say about the repair process in a future post or two but, for now and for anyone who doesn't know what a voltage surge can do, here are a couple of pictures of blown components and burnt tracks on the circuit board from the extractor hood:

Getting a bit fitter with a Fit Bit

Walking Monday 28 December: 3.2 km (Tynemouth Long Sands)

Walking Tuesday: 11.9km

Swimming Wednesday: 1.1km

Walking Wednesday:  9.0km

Swimming Thursday: 1.30km

Walking Thursday (New Year's Eve) 13.1km

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This is the first post since New Year, during 2015 I recorded manually all the walking, swimming and cycling activities I performed. Unfortunately, being a manual process, I'm a bit backlogged at present so the 2015 cumulative totals will have to wait a little longer.

At Christmas I was given a Fitbit - it's a wearable bracelet like this in case you haven't seen one: 

It's basically an electronic pedometer - a stepcounter - and it uses some data about you to calculate the distance walked and calories consumed throughout the day. It also - rather spookily - measures how long you have slept for and assesses the quality of that sleep. Of course the whole thing operates through an App which enables recording and analysis over time.

So, in the future I'll be relaying FitBit data in the blog. Not sure yet exactly what info I'll track. Here's my  weekly calorie analysis for example: 

I'm also monitoring weight and blood pressure weekly - not a hypochondriac yet but I do believe in getting as sensible amounts of information about the state of my health.

Global Climate Change ..... ?

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.55km (62 lengths, new PB)

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Swimming Thursday: 0.9km

Walking Saturday: 2.6km

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Crossing back to the UK in December before Christmas often means enduring some extreme (at least for us) weather; snow as in 2009 and 2010, rain in 2013 and a force 10 gale in 2012. The 2015 edition of the crossing also provided extreme, albeit in a different way, weather as we sat on the deck of the Pont Aven in the sun watching the Channel Islands slip by. December 18 yet sunny and 15 degrees, not normal.

We've still led a largely charmed life this Autumn as weather system after weather system has slipped by to the north of us and dumped rain on various parts of the U.K. 

But in anticipation that this can't last for ever Gérard and his guys finished the roof on the Grange before we left:

In the increasingly fair city of Newcastle Upon Tyne

Walking Monday: 2.2km

Swimming Monday: 1.3km

Walking Wednesday: 2.3km

Swimming Wednesday: 1.15km

Walking Thursday: 4.9km

Swimming Thursday: 1.00km

Walking Friday: 5.0km (actually running - whose bright idea was that on Christmas Day?)

Walking Saturday: 16.8km (New Forest and into town to watch Saints beat Arsenal)

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It's The Gaumont, Southampton, sometime in 1980. 

Mark Knopfler, frontman to Dire Straits is on stage just at the point when they became successful and moved from playing small theatres like the Gaumont (now rebranded The Mayflower) to their future in playing mega-stadiums.

"Good evening, we're Dire Straits and we are from God's own town, the fair city of Newcastle on Tyne"

I hadn't been to Newcastle then, I've been several times since and I'm back here again, this afternoon on a guided walk around the old quayside area. First time I came here it was a derelict quay area, not somewhere you'd want to be after dark. Today it's a revitalised waterfront area where everyone goes for the nightlife and there are spectacular additions to the waterline including the Gateshead Millenium Bridge and the refurbished Baltic Centre. 

In September we were in the South of France at the Millau viaduct, designed by Foster Architects. Today we saw another Foster design, the magnificent Sage centre in Gateshead. Like all great designs it's simple, reputedly based on a tray of apples wrapped in cling film, and it's transformed the Gateshead area. 

The iconic Tyne Bridge built in 1928 frames the equally iconic Sage Centre built in 2004.

Roofing the Grange

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 0.95km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.20km

Moles caught this week: Pip 1

Moles caught this year: Pip 8, Tim 5

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This may be the last major building activity we undertake at La Basse Cour. The stone outbuilding, colloquially called Walnut Grange, is getting a new roof. We repaired, patched and re-pointed the stone walls last year and now Gérard and his team have arrived to rebuild the timbers and put on a new roof. We are having a steel roof in the same grey as the hanger roof and house window frames - RAL7016 colour shade to be precise. The front will be built in with timber cladding and custom built-to-measure wooden doors - I managed to find a wood stain that was available in a RAL7016 tint as well. Next we'll be setting up a RAL 7016 fan club ......

Gérard came round on Sunday to check out the delivery and - in between rushing off to Lauzach to sweep a chimney - cut back a few major overhanging branches on the old walnut. (I once asked Gérard his views on the 35 hour week, "It's OK if people don't want to work very hard"). The trainers on my chainsaw course would have had kittens if they had seen him free climbing the tree with his chainsaw in one hand, no helmet and no protective gear. The result has opened up the tree though:

The neighbours here still talk about the ten days in 2012 that Gérard spent re-roofing our barn in consistent sub-zero temperatures, Gérard, Aurelian and Sébastian arrived back here working at the same furious pace as when we last saw them - although they have two speeds they only seem to be frenetic and even more frenetic. 

First off was the old steel roof on the main building so that the new pannes (purlins) and roof structure could be fitted:

Next the steel panels on the lean-to came off, the whole roof structure here is being replaced as the previous one was a seemingly random collection of bits of rotten timber nailed together:

At the end of the first day the rest of the roof is off and the first new panels are in place:

Confused seasons

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.00km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.20km

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The warm autumn weather has confused some of our plants. So in December we still have perfect roses, this one is "Aloha":

The Autumn leaves haven't been a great show this year (I think it needs a sharper cold spell to develop the colours) but our ornamental cherries are looking bright:

Just next to the pond we have another cherry already in flower: 

This is Prunus Subhirtella Autumnalis - another import we brought over from the UK and the third garden we've grown this variety in. It is the first tree in flower - or maybe as it starts flowering in November it's the last tree to flower - and apart from very cold spells it will flower through until March. 

It also grows next to where we buried Smudge, our 18 year old cat, in 2013. When she was moved to France Smudge got a complete new lease of life in our rural environment. I took Jess, our senior cat of 11 years, to see Ludovic the vet this week for her annual injections, "Nice fur, good teeth. She's in great condition for her age". Must be something to do with the air - or the ready supply of mice.

This week we have been mainly .....

Watching Tennis :o)

Walking Monday: 9.2km (Thames path O2 to Greenwich)

Walking Tuesday: 2.1km (Canary Wharf)

Walking Wednesday: 4.1km (Greenwich Park)

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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We've been in London for three days at the ATP Worldtour Finals at the O2 Arena, North Greenwich, having got day tickets for Tuesday back in August. We'd planned to fly FlyBE from Rennes to the (rather imaginatively named) London Southend airport on Monday, plans changed slightly when the flight time was brought forwards but, when the draw came out the early flight gave us a chance to get to see Andy Murray on Monday afternoon. So, leaving home at 7.30 in the deepest darkest part of France we live and travelling via car, plane, train and tube we got into our seats at the O2 by midday.

The O2 is a spectacular venue, sitting up in the top tier gives a feeling of being right above the play but, despite the size of the venue it is a remarkably intimate arena for tennis:

Having seen Andy Murray through to a workmanlike 6-4, 6-4 win over David Ferrer we returned on Tuesday afternoon for Berdych/ Nishikori and - what a bargain for the £19 we paid for the seats - Djokovic/ Federer in the evening. The afternoon match was a tight three-set affair, we got a great seat upgrade given to us in the stadium to just behind the baseline:

Tennis at it's most competitive is a gladiatorial type sport, fuelled by the perverse scoring system which sometimes lets players get back from almost impossible positions. The presentation at the O2 builds on this (think loud rock music, light shows, lasers and "Strictly" style floor projection systems) and could not in any way be more different to the genteel atmosphere at the SW19 tournament.

The bars in the O2 had been full of Swiss supporters all day preparing for Roger's evening game. We went into the fan zone before the evening session and saw Richard Gasquet, the reserve player having finished 9th in the rankings, warming up Roger. Significantly for what happened later the last session had Gasquet serving from the service line and Federer practicing his trademark "sabre" slice service return.

Sky were broadcasting live from the fan zone with their team of Marcus Buckland, Annabel Croft plus Greg Rusedski and Peter Fleming:

Barbara got in on the act although I'm told that it didn't get out on the live feed ..... !

So to the Fed/Novak match. The stadium was packed and rocking, the noise from the Swiss fans proved they hadn't wasted their afternoon in the bars and the Gladiator analogy was never more appropriate. In the projected show before the start Novak's 2015 record was won 73, lost 5 - but 2 of those defeats were to Federer. The first set began at a furious pace, sharp intakes of breath could be heard all around our seats as one topspin drive was countered with another even more spectacular one, 125 mph serves came back faster and shot after shot landed inches from the line. 

Eventually one of the two had to crack and, unexpectedly, it was Djokoviic 5-7, 2-6. The main difference was. the variety of play from Federer to such a degree that Djokovic ended the match hitting four successive balls out of court. 

We had seen Roger's secret though. On the practice court before the match Richard Gasquet, the ninth ranked player who was in town as the injury reserve, was hitting serves from the service court line to Roger for him to practice his "sabre" shot, the chopped serve return taken impossibly early. We were two of only about 100 people who saw this - and none of us told Novak.