Moving house, moving country
Writing this from an almost totally empty apartment: Living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and French windows opening on to a little garden … Folding table and two chairs, camping mattresses and bedding, a few pots and pans … that's it! Vast expanse of white tiled floor, clean freshly painted cream walls, while ceiling and woodwork – a real impression of space. Right now I don't want to have any more furniture in here, I like this minimalist living (for a bit), although I wouldn't mind a more comfortable chair. We've made an offer on some antique French furniture, but I'm having second thoughts. Apparently it's heavy, solid wood and I'm not sure if it'll clutter up this beautiful space. We're going to have a look at it on Wednesday. We've organised a French telephone and Internet connection: it's typical of our 21st century that that's the first thing we had to do! It'll be working in another week or so, so in the meantime we're making do with Lebara Pay-As-You-Go mobiles, so I can continue my telephone coaching at least. My books will arrive on Tuesday, the bookshelves and the Brussels furniture on Thursday. Today is Sunday and nothing much we can do, so we'll go off to the beach at Palavas, a twenty minute drive from here. The weather is glorious: some thirty degrees, but the apartment is cool. Tomorrow doing bureaucratic things, like registering at the Prefecture, registering the car in France, opening a French bank account. Gas and electricity was working, so that's just a question of waiting for the first bill.
I'll be here until 19th, then doing a ten day round trip: Brussels, UK, Brussels and back to Montpellier. The main thing is that I will be spending a lot more time in one place, my own, mainly with J, but he has a lot of work in Brussels from mid-October until the end of March, so he'll be travelling more than me. I'm going to try and find some local work here, will try the University of Montpellier and when I'm not working I'll have time to finish my Kiribati novel ….
Happy days! The warm sunny weather is set to last until the end of the month!
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