Water

Just when you think you might have an easier day, something comes along to spoil it. So it was today - just one set of guests, out for the day after an early breakfast, a bit of ironing to do, a relaxed lunch and then catch up on some small jobs I'd been putting off.

It was a glorious Languedoc day, an azure blue cloudless sky in all directions. The morning went as planned - three hours of ironing whilst it was still relatively cool. All the linen and towels were ready for the weekend, when we have a blitz of new guests.

Just before lunch, Chris appeared with news of a mis-labelled plumbing part, which meant an unplanned trip to the DIY store and a hunt for the right size fitting - and there is never a guarantee that they will have the stock as we have found to our cost many times before.

On the way we noticed that there were long queues at all the petrol stations - very strange. I later found out that the French fishermen were causing a spot of bother by blockading the ports and it seems that everyone round here thought there was going to be a fuel shortage - well, they made it so - because everyone in Carcassonne was filling up their car and any available jerrycan with as much fuel as they could get - thus causing many petrol stations to put up 'plus de gazole' signs as they sold out of their stock.

I have no idea what the fishermen were complaining about - probably just the fact that they've been out of the news for a while and felt, as any good and true socialist worker should, that they should exercise their right to protest and cause a bit of a commotion just because they can.

As a result, in mid-afternoon I had a phone call from my next guests due to arrive tomorrow. They were sat in Dover harbour with no prospect of a ferry leaving because of the lines of French fishing boats blocking Calais and had decided that they would have to abandon their trip. I've never had any sympathy with strikers who cause mayhem for others (having endured years of London tube train strikes) and at this point would happily have sunk the whole French fishing fleet on their behalf.

When Christian decided to have a shower the afternoon took another turn for the worse. No-one had used the shower in the spare room since Chris went off to the USA in January. When Christian turned the shower on, water spurted in every direction except downwards where it was intended - the whole shower head had come apart and was spraying water upwards onto the ceiling and sideways onto the wall.

We mopped up and took the shower head off to see what was going on. All the nozzles were totally encrusted with limescale and were thus blocked and water being water it had to find an exit route somewhere - the pressure had blown the shower head apart. I guess that shows how much rubbish there is in the tap water here and the lack of regular use had allowed everything to dry up. I took it apart and did my best to rectify things but couldn't get it all back together. I hadn't wanted to bother Chris with it as he has enough work to do up in Denis' apartment, but I was relieved when his natural curiosity got the better of him and he came to see what was going on and came up with the solution for getting the seal back in the right place and re-attaching one broken nozzle - all that was then left for me to do was poke a needle into each nozzle one by one, wiggle it about a bit and re-attach the shower head - all of which I managed without further mishap.

The day ended on a positive note with a further phone call - the fishermen had suddenly got bored and gone home - the ferries were running again and my next guests had hastened back to Dover and were on their way. I hope they've got plenty of petrol!