Following on from Roz’s blog it seems a bit harsh to call a kitten an imbecile heureux just because it has an eye infection and a dodgy heart but there we have it- just one more thing to add to my list of reasons not to trust French vets……or more precisely the young(ish) one in Chalus.
This is the man who came out of the room when we went to pick the dog up after he’d had his bits chopped and said in English,‘ Sorry, he’s dead’. Ha ha. A Frenchman with a sense of humour we thought. Indeed. Little did we realise at the time that it was merely a distraction technique so that when we came to hand over the money we’d be so wildly happy that he hadn’t in fact killed him that we wouldn’t notice the extortionate amount we were paying. Still as this was a first for both of us and we didn’t have a clue how much it should have cost we paid over the 220 euros and left hoping that that would be the last time the dog would run away/bark/have relations with a cushion etc. It was only about a year later when I was talking to Dave Butcher (patron of Dallage 87 - makes very nice and very competitively priced flagstones and concrete borders) and who had just taken his dog in to the same place for the same operation but at a cost of 70 euros less. He told me that he’d been talking to the vet and the expense was related to the amount of anaesthetic used - so the bigger the dog the more expensive. Ours is a sausage dog and his is a Labrador. We haven’t been back since….. anyway enough of thievery.
The weather was fantastic again today (19 degrees C) and again this evening we didn’t really need to put a fire on, although we did anyway because it’s nice isn’t it.
The man from the new Casse Auto in St Mathieu came round yesterday afternoon to take Matt’s BMW away finally. Etienne said that he caught his dad blowing a kiss to it as it was hauled off on the back of the trailer. It may have been this heightened emotional state which had something to do with the mini-drama which occurred later when, having gone to pick Etienne up from football training at the stade in Champsac, he was floored by a chain fence which is about 1cm from the ground and serves no function whatsoever except to trip people up. To add to the indignity he had gone wearing a pair of slippers, thinking that no one would notice in the dark, which landed on the gravel and had to be picked up by the other parents who he’d been chatting to only seconds earlier. Matt said that he could see the laughing faces in the floodlights as he did the drive of shame home. Still it’ll make a change to have something to laugh at at the match on Saturday other than the team, who in representative form lost 8-0 last week.
Etienne was off school today with some flu or another, which gave us the perfect excuse to lie on the sofa watching Return of the Pink Panther with honey and lemon drinks. He’ll be off again tomorrow too by the look of things so I’ll have to crack on and check the tv listings to see what tomorrow has in store. I wonder if he’d be up for This Morning?