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Down south in the north of France
27 juillet 2015

Well, that's unfair.

fall

winter

spring

summer

two seconds later

Comic by The Oatmeal

              

Just before I came back to France from Mayotte, the various news papers and channels had been going on about the canicule, the heatwave that was all over France. Thirty degrees in one area, thirty-five in another, can't sleep, the pets are restless, the baby's too hot, there's a dog in the car, who cares, we're on the beach. Thirty to thirty-five degrees is about normal for Mayotte, so coming to France at this time shouldn't mean too much of a temperature difference. 

Unfortunately, my destination was not one of those newsworthy places where the heatwave was doing its worst. I'm in Lille, right up in the north. It's 18°C and it's raining. Rather unfair, really. I now know that for people up here, grey is not only a colour in itself but can be classified in several shades, going from "oh look, there's a little bit of drizzle, well, fiddle-de-dee, my glasses are foggy" to "uh-oh, the heavens are opening, get home quick". We're in July, people are telling me, so the rain is fairly warm and you can still wear a t-shirt. Hmmm. I see.

As far as the flat goes, things are progressing slowly. A nice seller at a local DIY shop called Leroy Merlin thought about the leaky loo problem and came up with a series of PVC pipes which fitted into each other and could be solidified with some special waterproofing glue. I now have a loo that can be flushed and that does not deposit water all over the floor and down the four floors below. Astonishing. The assorted Ikea products are slowly starting to resemble furniture, but said furniture does not seem to like that very much and is apparently taking it out on me: so far, I have been attacked by a couch, a desk, a tall cuboard, a bed and a couple of storage boxes. There is cardboard packaging and plastic film everywhere. An electrician's son and his apprentice have taken a hammer to a rather cumbersome cupboard in the corner of my (small) kitchen, and ten noisy minutes later, the cupboard had gone. I have slept in the flat and found the downsides of living in a brightly-lit city centre with no curtains, as well as the different but no better downsides to living in a cold area with no electricity.

The subject of electricity is, unfortunately, where a rather expensive mistake kicks in. While I was in the process of buying the flat, I received a sheaf of diagnostics ranging from termintes, lead and asbestos to the state of the electrics in the flat. The estate agent went through it all with me and minimized everything, saying that it didn't matter, that's nothing, you can sort that out in a second, and you know, these diagnostics are done by people with hardly any training, they don't mean anything. I've just re-read the electricity diagnostic, and it's practically flashing red lights at me to say: this is an urgent problem, get this sorted ASAP or the whole block of flats can catch fire. The wiring is as old as the building, eighty-five years old. Somehow there is thin wiring at the bottom of the block and nice thick wiring in my flat, so a big thick wire needs to be taken from the ground floor up to the fourth, winding up the staircase and along the walls. Hardly any plugs in my flat are connected to the earth. The cooker can't be plugged in because the flat is lacking the required 32-amp socket. All of this has to be redone, it's a lot of work and is going to be extremely expensive... and meanwhile, I can't use more than about 2000 watts at any given time (this is including every single electrical appliance in the flat, be it hot water boiler or kettle) at the risk of setting it all on fire. Two electricians have come and left quotes for me, two more are still to come, and the quotes range from 5300 to 8000 euros. I can't do a thing about this because the estate agent and the seller will just retort that I should have gone round the flat with an electrician and a plumber before buying it, and they're right, I should have, but I didn't know, didn't think about it, didn't realize. You live and learn.

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