Reunion preparations

We spent some time this week preparing for our guests. Here's Les nonchalantly washing windows....46 floors up! Next job...the outsides? Haha!
Susanne and Jean are due to arrive on Saturday 5 November, whoopee! One snag...Air France called a strike this week! Hopefully it will be settled and the planes in their correct slots by Friday morning UK time.

I've found a great wee laundry just round the corner so sheets and towels go there now, washed and dried in 2 hours! I'm still a martyr to the ironing but I will ring the contact I've been given and sort something out soon.

You know I love a bargain? We bought a casserole and some serving bowls and collected stamps which we could exchange for towels at 70% off. We needed 16 stamps for 2 towels....we had 15....much counting, re-counting and a hangdog look....the assistant took pity and let me have the second towel even though we were one short! This is a major breach of the rules; mostly over here "rules is rules " and they are seldom broken. An example of this is that they actually issued the stamps and handed them to us, whereupon we handed them back for the towels. A bit of a palaver and unneccessary since the offer was valid on date of purchase only!

A visit to IKEA was necessary ths week, to stock up on napkins and buy another duvet cover . I also bought one of these "over the door" hook rack things, which I thought would be useful in the bathroom Sus and Jean will be using, until Les pointed out the doors in here are 7' 4" high,the rack sits 7' 2" up, I am 5' 4" and Sus and Jean shorter still. I couldn't even lasso a towel onto it! So it has been installed in the store room on a clothes rack and serves as a handbag holder instead!

Halloween is a huge event here, all the shops and restaurants are decorated with pumpkins, ghosts and ghouls and our clubhouse is no exception, with the front desk covered in black crepe paper and wispy spider webs, pumpkin fairy lights and skulls galore.Here is a scene from a street near us. note these have been up now for about 10 days and no theft or vandalism has occurred.


On the social front, I've been to a talk on Sun Yat Sen followed by a visit to his museum then lunch. I've also attended a free open air lunchtime jazz concert, been to the cinema and also heard a talk on the "power of the subconscious mind" . I skipped poetry as I had been to the dentist and felt fragile! But the broken tooth is whole again, although I think nuts are off the menu permanently. On Friday I met a girl who lent me the book I need to read for Book Club on Tuesday, then met Elaine and wee Hannah for lunch. On Saturday, my own copy of the book finally arrived. There's been a lot of reading to do this weekend so our usual Sunday by the pool was very necessary.