Suivre la route de briques jaunes

Today's been one of those days when you are reminded you live in a foreign country,but a good day for tying up loose ends.My time was spent at the Hotel d'Impots (tax office) for a quittas fiscal then the Sous Prefecture to query requirements for the Certificate d'immatriculation.Got a Controle Technique and applied to the DREAL for a Attestation de Conformite.
Jayne meanwhile was sorting a query with the DSV concerning alpaca bruccelosis testing,wrote a couple of email letters in French and then did a ten minute interview for RBG a local radio station about life in Brittany with alpacas .
All Frenched out now! Need a dose of Coronation St or better still that 'Over the Rainbow' show of wannabe Dorothy's. How great is that! Ok I make no secret of the fact that I detest Graham Norton but there is something strangely compelling about the elimination process of the girls and the seemingly heartless way they are rejected.Andrew 'Lord' Webber (who seems to be turning into a caricature of himself) presides over the selection from his golden throne.
"Well Emily you polled the least votes,you are not as well liked as the others,we thought you were a bit crap, you'll have to go" they as good as said.
"But before you go, sing us a song"
So fighting back the tears and probably feeling absolutely wretched the poor thing gives us her rendition of the classic title song. A song that makes me go gooey at the best of times.
Well readers, I was filling up it's true. I had a secret blub.

It's all go

Well I seem to have hit the ground running since arriving back from England.The sun has not stopped shining from the moment I got off the ferry and all those jobs that have been waiting for such times have been tackled.This has meant working into the sunny evenings with no time for this rubbish!
So the doors and windows have all been repainted,1 house,2 gites, garage and workshop. New truck cleaned, lawns mowed,verges strimmed, drives weeded. Truck cleaned, field shelters cleared of old bedding, tractor repaired,Poly tunnel cleared out and weeded ready for it's new polythene,lots and lots of logging and I cleaned the truck.
After six years here I'm finally in a position of having logs stock piled so I can burn the stuff that was cut three years previous and is good and dry.The only problem with logs is you always want to burn the oldest which invariably is at the back of the pile!
I should have built a bigger store.
Meg,our recently adopted (not pregnant) weimaraner had an appointment at the vets last week to have her 'ladybits' cut out. She is now sterile and never again to surprise us with little ones.
We have just removed the huge lampshade the vet fixed around her head to prevent her picking open the stitches. Poor thing has spent a week crashing into things and the simplest tasks such as taking a drink became a Krypton Factor challenge as she attempts to envelop the bowl within the contraption without knocking it over.
Her operation became something of a necessity in the end. You see we still have her male puppy, still called ' puppy' but is now actually bigger than she is! And we of course have old dog 'Shaft' our English Setter of some thirteen years.
Too old to be bothered we thought and anyway,he doesn't even like her that much.
How wrong we were!
Meg came into season and a womans needs should not be under estimated. She flirted and taunted him into submission. He turned from a docile pensioner that normally wouldn't give her the time of day into a drooling frustrated wreck in a matter of days.
Keeping them apart became a challenge of unbelievable complexity. Shaft in one room and Meg in the other,and letting them outside in rotation.
The fly in the ointment of this arrangement was Puppy who, being the brightest of the bunch learnt some time ago how to open doors by jumping on the handles, and regularly lets himself in and out whenever he so pleases.
I guess it was during one of his comings and goings that the deed happened.It was only a matter of time I suppose. Meg was well and truly, well.... 'Shafted'
Because we had working so much recently I decided we deserved a rare day off. So Sunday we took ourselves off to the beach with Puppy and Meg. Shaft doesn't understand new environments and just wanders off and gets lost so he has to stay at home.
It was the first time we had really taken the dogs out any distance in the car and it soon became apparent they were not good travellers. Meg was drooling buckets of slobber and Puppy soon threw up. And yes,I had just cleaned the truck!
Anyway we got to the sea side and had a great day.The waves at Guidel Plage are terrific and there was lots of kite-surfing going on.
There's not a lot happening alpaca wise at the moment.We said goodbye to Elsa last weekend as she went off to Gwen & Virginie's and Da Vinci is going this week-end to Myriams,so it's starting to thin out abit in the field,just in time to make room for the new borns,the first two are due in a fortnight,so it's regular checks outside from now on.
It's the Terralies show at St Brieuc in a months time. A monster agricultural show with an attendance of some 100,000 folk over the three days. This year the alpacas have their own 'village' in a marquee with a halter show judged by Nick Harrington-Smith and a Fashion show for mohair and alpaca products. So we have some dusty animals to clean up between now and then.

The black widow

Just back from a week in the UK where I picked up a new truck,all big and black and shiny.
Take a good look.It'll never be this clean again. It's a fact that men clean and polish new vehicles for the first couple of weeks and then loose interest. I've done it twice already!
It's just like the old one but posher and without all the squashed panels! This weeks job is to pinch some bits from the old one and get it Frenchy- fied and re-registered.