Quietly busy

Wednesday, mid afternoon, my time is my own. More or less. La petite coquinette is spending her second day (first full one) downstairs with her young neighbours and la nourrice. Dropped her off this morning and sidled out when she wasn't looking. All has been quiet since, even when I stopped briefly on the landing to wistfully listen on my way in and out of the building. No doubt I'll wean myself off that eventually.

Not that I've been twiddling my thumbs and pining (not too much, anyway). Notice of a £100 penalty from HM Revenue & Customs for failing to file a tax return in time saw to that. Fined for neglecting to inform them that they owe me money for the last tax year seems a bit unfair, that's the UK tax office for you. A phone conversation with a distinctly unsympathetic Geordie jobsworth informed me that I had no choice but to pay and appeal. 'Rules is rules' apparently, so a letter of appeal is already on its way across the Channel. Don't hold your breath…

Another bit of paperwork out of the way is a letter to the Syndic (our building management company) to accompany the cheque for the latest charges, pointing out that last year's AGM still hasn't been called yet (technically due within the first 3 months of the year), and that the last set of accounts approved dates back to 2009. I politely asked them not to cash the cheque until the AGM has been held and the previous years' accounts closed. Not holding my breath on that one either.

The weather in Lyon continues to be fine. It was sunny over the weekend but rather breezy. The pushchair was almost blown over during a walk along the river and into the park on Sunday, and watching OL end a 4 game run without a win (including the limp exit from the Champions League in Cyprus last week) against Lille on Saturday evening was rendered a rather chilly experience with the Mistral whistling through Gerland. Today the wind has dropped and temperatures up into the 20s, where they are forecast to remain for the next few days, which might have the whole city holding its breath and noses soon because the bin men are on strike in protesting at the privatisation of the service. Not sure how effective the strike will be with the council bringing in interim workers to collect rubbish, but then that's only going to harden the attitude of the unions…

On the wider political stage, with the countdown to the presidential election now below forty days, the various drama queens are all warming up nicely. Front National candidate, Le Pen fille, now has her 500 nominations. One suspects the FN was merely making political capital out her of potentially being prevented from standing for president, although one political commentator on TV reckoned it was the ruling UMP party deliberately making her sweat by withholding permission for local maires to sign her nomination until the last moment. Meanwhile le president-candidat himself has been trying on more and more of Madame Le Pen's clothes in a bid to drain support from the far right, a tactic which has made up some ground but so far not enough. A recent poll put him ahead in the first round, but still losing the second round to Hollande.

Warming pictures

What a difference a week makes. La belle-mère comes to visit bearing gifts, and suddenly things are looking up. Unseasonably warm weather and plenty of sunshine for the long bank holiday weekend, and a warmer glow to the football season too.

mardi 9: l'AG continued. After some confusion over venue and indeed whether the meeting was taking place at all, we troop upstairs, listen to the man from the syndic report on progress made on various issues and eventually decide to give him a second chance. Contract extended for 18 months.

mercredi 10: collect la belle-mère from the airport after a fruitless drive through town in search of a petrol station. Usual one closed down, next one closed temporarily by road works. Which are currently all over Lyon. Sufficient fumes in the tank to make it to the garage at the airport.

jeudi 11: jour ferié, the sun is shining, the day mild and we take advantage with a stroll round the park to test the newly presented toy. The leaves are falling, the colours fading, but plenty of pretty pictures to be had before the clouds roll in.

vendredi 12: bridging day, so la bienheureuse is off work again. The exception to the good weather theme. Overcast but dry, so the ladies go shopping, taking a break to meet meet me for a nice pique nique en ville. Roast lamb and a rather palatable Côtes du Rhône for dinner.

samedi 13: stunning day. 20 degree sunshine in the middle of November can't be bad. We jump in the car and eventually find our way to the domaine de Lacroix-Laval, a large area of parkland just outside Lyon. Another opportunity for more autumn snaps with the new appareil photo reflex. Lovely stroll through the park and grounds of the publicly-owned château, then home for a late lunch and a lazy afternoon. Defrosted fish dinner, tasty fare even so.

dimanche 14: still very mild, but very windy too. The sun is less in evidence but we venture out up to the Croix Rousse for the view and a stroll through the market. Home to wolf down lunch in time for a rather more satisfactory visit to the pub, leaving la bienheureuse et sa mère in the kitchen. Second battling away win of the week. The boys are toughening up. Roast chicken awaits my return, then I fly the coop again in the evening, this time for live football. OL grind out a 1-0 win in the wind.

lundi 15: end of the fine weather interlude. Rain all morning.

Guillotine motion

Yesterday evening the event that we look forward to with great anticipation every year took place chez nous. Spot two false statements in the previous sentence, the second of which is that it takes place every year. I'm referring to the Assemblée Générale, the annual meeting of apartment owners in our building. Annual in theory - the last one took place nearly two years ago, which is a demonstration of the competence of our syndic, the property management company that is supposed to handle our building. Further proof of incompetence came with initial notice of the meeting lacking several agenda items and specifying a date, time & place (their offices) that suited no-one. Then the corrected agenda had the wrong date, and finally the corrected date specified the general whereabouts (our building) but not exactly which apartment. The latter mystery was resolved the evening before when our upstairs neighbour knocked on the door and asked if we could host it. Cue a two hour frenzy of belated spring cleaning and tidying up yesterday afternoon.

The meeting itself was lively, inconclusive, but productive in the loosest sense of the term. The particular employee charged with dealing with our troublesome building has changed recently, and the new boy was singularly under-prepared and ill-equipped for the haranguing and browbeating he was subjected to for two hours. Apart from approving the accounts of the last two years, which were wrong because an extra 500 euros had some how crept into insurance costs (did I say the syndic was incompetent?) the agenda for the meeting proper was zipped through remarkably quickly and efficiently, mainly by dint of leaving the most contentious issue till last:

Item 10 - changement de syndic: a choice between reappointing the current syndic or choosing one of two alternative management companies; the stick with which the poor chap was whipped into line. He was given one last chance: a month to take action on various contentious issues, or he and his company are out the door. He had no choice but to agree and left looking like a man going to the guillotine. Perhaps he'll spend the next month looking for a new job.

In the world beyond our happy little apartment building, yesterday the demonstrations against the new retirement and pension reforms were the largest yet. Two differences from the previous three journées d'action: the laws against which everybody was protesting are well on their way into the statue book (pushed through parliament over the previous couple of days, just the Senat rubber stamp to go), and some of the strikes have carried on longer than 24 hours. In particular on the railways, in the ports and at petrol refineries. Corsica ran out of diesel last week due to an ongoing blockade of the main port in Marseille, and the region round Nantes is running low on fuel because of a separate strike in the petrol refinery there.

And finally, as the Chilean miners emerge one by one from a hole in the ground, in the Ardèche the rescue of another man trapped underground ended tragically on Monday. The body of the cave diver missing for over a week was found by two British divers when they search the underground river one last time. RIP.

Conflicts, conflagrations and conflabs

La grève continues. And hardens. Tuesday night there was a fire in a depot at one of the main bus stations. 34 vehicles were damaged by what later proved to be arson. Meanwhile, the mayor of Lyon was moved to pronounce that the strike had gone on too long. Yesterday, 70% of services were reportedly running, but the strike retains enough support to seriously inconvenience most commuters. There are union meetings today to decide on the next move. On verra...

Given that my own commuting consists of twenty paces from bedroom to 'study' (a cause for minor regret on a day like today - the spell of warm, sunny weather continues), it's only going to the football where the strike causes problems. La bienheureuse is still walking to work, though yesterday she took the car, but that was because of a meeting in a hotel on the outskirts of town followed by a social evening learning about wine in the Beaujolais. Left at home alone, I contented myself with watching overpaid galacticos fluke a 3-0 win over les marseillais. The previous evening we hadn't needed to budge from the sofa as for once I got the chance to watch the glorious Gunners at home, in both senses. Domination brought eventual reward. Meanwhile, on the subscription channel we don't get OL were strolling in a Hungarian park.

Earlier on Tuesday evening we had a co-owners meeting in the apartment of one of our neighbours, which not uncharacteristically went on long enough to leave me sweating about dinner burning in the oven and missing the start of the big match. Typical meeting - lots of talking at high speed, most of it by two stereotypical French madames: nineteen words to the dozen, two dozen words used where half a dozen would have sufficed; atypical outcome - decisions were reached. Perhaps because we have a new neighbour who is unusually calm and decisive. And she doesn't talk too fast to understand.

The first concerned the syndic - the company charged with administering the building. Our own syndic is singularly inefficient, not to say inactive. For five years we've talking about changing, and finally we all agreed to do so. At least those present at the meeting did. And we still have to decide who to replace them with...

The main reason for the meeting however, was to discuss the rubbish bins. Yes, a subject of much concern, believe it or not. A lot of protocol is involved in the use of poubelles in French apartment blocks. Our particular bone of contention is with the restaurant that occupies the ground floor. According to building and city council rules, restaurants are required to make use of specialized outside companies to dispose of waste generated by the kitchen, rather than using the daily rubbish bin collections. Of course this costs money, and not surprisingly le resto downstairs prefers not to cough up and just uses the bins.

Our bins.

They do apparently have one normal rubbish bin, and one recycling bin allocated to them, but of course a busy kitchen generates much more detritus than two small wheelie bins can hold, and so they stuff all of our bins every day, leaving us poor inhabitants nowhere to dump our rubbish. Quelle horreur! Not only that, but their bin has a large crack in the bottom through which kitchen waste often leaks, leaving a smelly, slimey mess all over the floor, which then gets trailed out through the lobby when the bins are emptied.

Another thing about the restaurant that gets our neighbours' backs up is the noise at night. The restaurant often hosts parties of one sort and another, sometimes involving loud music, which keep our first floor neighbours in particular awake. Music they don't have a license for. All these issues (there's another, involving deliveries, which I won't go into), have at one time or another been taken up with the restaurant management by one of our neighbours or another, with varying degrees of politeness. Much is always promised, nothing is ever done. So, it was decided to send them a polite but firm letter, pointing listing all these points, pointing out all the rules, and informing them that if it's not taken, the next time we will be forced to have recourse to the law. On verra...

Water skiing?

There was a minor shock chez nous this week. A letter, written to the syndic (building managers), appears to have produced results. Following the great flood of 2006, amongst the least of our resulting concerns was the flaking and crumbling of the rendering on the wall outside the our front door. About 15 months ago, once most of the work inside the apartment was over, I reported it.
"Yes, we'll get the insurance expert to do a report and get a quote for repair."

Since then nothing. So, two weeks ago I finally got round to writing and asking when it would be done. Nothing in reply until Monday when I hear noises on our landing, and lo and behold there is someone redoing the rendering. Same day we receive a letter from the syndic saying they are giving the matter their full attention and pointing out that the rendering in the stairwell on the first floor was done over a year ago. Quite what the relevance of the latter was I don't know, as the damage there was due to an entirely different water leak (disturbingly common problem in our building). Anyway, it is now done and that is hopefully the last word on the famous flood...

We're off skiing this weekend, the annual company 'sports' weekend at La Plagne. The sporting part consists of a giant slalom on Saturday morning, though the forecast for Saturday (much like today - warm and sunny) suggests we may be water skiing instead, so whether it goes ahead remains to be seen...