In principle at least it was a good idea. We could get away from all the fun of the post-Christmas sales and have a few days of peace and quiet in France. Roaring log fires, a book or two, warmth and creature comforts including a bottle or two of wine, and a glass or two of port to accompany the remains of the Christmas stilton; even an invigorating cycle ride to the boulanger to collect the obligatory baguette each morning. Happiness!
At the cold and snowy Eurotunnel terminus on Thursday afternoon we realized that quite a number of people had the same sort of idea, and there was a delay while the inevitable backlog was cleared and cars with the letter “H” were allowed to embark.
There didn’t seem to be so much snow around when we eventually arrived in France, but as we neared our village we found that there was in fact sufficient snow and ice to make the surrounding hills (and the driveway to our “maison secondaire”) quite treacherous.
No matter we arrived safely. The house was still standing but quite chilly in the sub-zero temperatures. More so in that, during our four or five week’s absence the house had run out of central heating oil. The wife (particularly with her Scottish blood) and I are made of stern stuff and we knew that this presented only a small problem. You don’t have to have baths brimming with hot water, and steaming radiators in order to survive, and anyway we were able to negotiate a delivery of oil for the following morning.
Friday morning dawned with a furious red sky, enough to have the wife clamber out of bed to inspect it and say that she had never seen such a thing. Sure enough, we were in for quite a day of meteorological surprises. But first (and happily) the oil man arrived with a thousand litres of fioul. “Une heure” he told us to wait before we could restart the boiler. During that hour-long wait the wind started to howl and snow gusted down; I couldn’t get the laptop to work and we seemed to be losing TV reception because of the extreme conditions. Then, with ten minutes to go before restarting the boiler, we had a total power cut. So no heat (apart from one gas fire and one log fire), not enough natural daylight to read by, no hot water, and snow beginning to drift in our driveway. We had a torch or two, candles and plenty of food and drink, sufficient logs to last a few days before we started to burn the furniture, and the car didn’t look a good bet at all.
Three hours later we had electricity back and, after some anxious moments, a working boiler and a return (inside the house) to near normality. Soon afterwards the snow changed to rain, the main effect of which was to turn the graveled area outside our house into a skating rink. Last night enough rain poured down to melt most of the remaining snow and ice and we look forward to finding the area beset by flooding in the near future.
However as I sit typing away on a now-functioning laptop in a warm house, with the sun unexpectedly streaming through the window, it gives me a moment to reflect on the whimsical way our weather system works and, generally, how poorly equipped we are to deal with real periods of extreme weather. Certainly we had logs and candles, working gas cylinders and a good torch. But batteries run down (as do gas cylinders and food supplies). We had taken the precaution of bringing the car battery charger from England, but that is not much use if you have no mains electricity. I think I’ll review our stocks of logs, food and batteries, and maybe I’ll buy a generator on E-Bay which I’ll tow around behind my car wherever I go.