Gaseous Emissions

After yesterdays disappointment (that blip will be showing up in due course) Mr B finally arrived back (I'm sure you can now guess yesterday evening's not so good news) home at 11ish. I was still out at the market then being entertained by a series of extremely chatty folk at the bread shop, the wine stall, the cheese stall and the cabbage stall. And there's my shopping list too.

After a lunch comprised mainly of this morning's shop (minus the cabbage) we headed off for a tour of our local tip... There has been a bad smell for most of this year, and today was our chance to find out why, when it would stop and to have a chance to vent our frustrations to the local director. He was there at the start, but refused all attempts to draw him into conversation until his minions had given us the grand (and very technical) tour. At the end he promised he would answer all our questions. Trouble was, at the end of the tour it turned out that he had buggered off home to his nicely scented house far away, leaving us with only a technician to shout at.

Anyway, this biogas sign amused me with its collapsed person.

Later, there was much more shopping including buying paraffin for our stoves. Carrying two 20litre containers out of the shop, a man and woman were obviously talking about me in the car park. I presumed it was the usual slightly sexist "you'd think her husband would do that for her" but no: the woman came up to me and asked if I wanted to join their rugby team. I said I used to play a bit but wasn't good at all at it and anyway I thought I was too old now. Oh no, she replied, we take women up to 40 years old.... I smiled and replied, but I'm 43. "Non!" she replied in shock. And it didn't look put on at all. Made me smile.

Later still I felt slightly foolish when I went to collect CarbBoy from his Christmas basketball day of fun (a neighbour had taken him there) and sat and chatted and 'bonne fete' ed lots of folk and only after 10 minutes realised that CarbBoy had already left. Ah well.

Even later, there has been home-made duck confit (with chips, of course) and now an evening of telly with Mr B.

The holidays officially start here.

The title, by the way, comes from one of my favourite jokes. Which I'll probably tell you on a slow blip day.