There will be blood

For the last couple of weeks we have been watching a team drilling into the carpark on the other side of the ramparts. Since then, the drill-rig has been getting closer and closer to chez nous, just round the corner, in fact.

I think it has to do with the project to build a massive underground carpark, in an area where the water table (basically sea-level) is only about 80 centimetres below the present surface of the pavement. Maybe they are checking for soil stability, or something. If not, then it might be oil, with gushers, perhaps, and a sterling performance from Daniel Day Lewis...

Avis de coup de mer

Last night we were kept awake by a shutter downstairs banging in the wind. No surprise, really, as the weatherman had warned of dangerous conditions on the coast. It was an easterly gale, the usual culprit for damage and shipwreck here.



This morning we went for a walk along the ramparts, liberally soused by packets of saltspray coming over the battlements. The sea was churning like a washing-machine, full of tree trunks and assorted wreckage, including, sinisterly, a lifebelt. Not a time to venture out in a boat.



Suitable weather, then, for the AGM of the lifeboat station. Their challenge isn't so much the sea state (they've been out in much worse, and they were out today for rough weather helmsman training) but the financial forecast, with choppy liquidity, along with dangerous squalls in the offing, such as having to replace the batteries, and giving the engines' turbocompressors a long-deserved overhaul. Both are likely to cost a lot. Nicolas Esselin, the station treasurer, on the right, needs all his rough weather training to keep the accounts on an even keel.

Remise en état

Got out of hospital two days ago, sans catheter at last, which was a great relief, both physiologically and psychologically. Passed by the pharmacie to buy all the stuff to prevent flooding, and then went to the urologist's surgery. The aptly named consultant, doctor Py (pronounced "pee" in French), greeted us in the waiting room with a jovial and none-too-discreet "How's things on the pissing front?", then realised the waiting room was full of worried patients at an earlier stage than us, frightened to death at the prospect of incontinence.

To spare them further disquiet, he made us jump the queue, and in private gave me a short lecture on how to pee, and, equally importantly, how not to. Not easy, so far, to put into practice.

Effectively, with the catheter in place for over a month, my body had completely forgotten how to run the taps.

Apparently it will take quite a while before I become potty trained. In the meantime, splendidly be-nappied like our grandchildren, I am enjoying lots of reading, with Murakami's Kafka on the Shore the current page turner.

Eye for Detail

The ramparts of the old town of Antibes, witness to attack from Admiral Byng of "pour encourager les autres" fame, are now sadly incomplete. However, just next to our house is a surviving section surmounted by a very pleasant walkway which allows for a calm stroll as far as the Gravette beach.

Just before the wall makes a right-angle bend to the right to follow the coastline and the Amiral de Grasse roadway, the BH made a tiny but intriguing discovery. A repair to the wall, at chest height, contains a fragment of terracotta, about 3-4 cm long, probably a tile, stuck in the mortar. On closer inspection, it turned out to be carved with a face of a man, uncannily resembling Winston Churchill...

How many people know it is there, who put it there, or was it carved in situ? Click on the photo for a better look.

CPAM Blues

Longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with the saga of my attempts to be registered with the French medical insurance scheme, the CPAM. Without their card, the carte vitale, life (and even death, probably) becomes very problematic.

My two year cover from the UK, via E106, took all of eighteen months to come through at the CPAM end (despite my impeccable paperwork from Newcastle), and, having hardly started, has now lapsed. Did the CPAM, despite my many requests, inform me how to transfer to the entirely French cover? No. Did they inform me my card was being invalidated? No. They left me entirely and unrepentantly in the lurch. The list of their carelessness and callousness is endless.

Given that I am not yet sound enough to endure the long wait, the BH is presently queuing in the grim CPAM building in Antibes, to see how I can get transferred to the most basic, no frills French system (CMU). It will probably take as long again, and in the meantime not only are we financially exposed, but each medical issue is blown out of all proportion by the amount of supplementary paperwork and hassle.

Her first contact with the kind of office that, from my experience, routinely scorns and mistreats foreigners is likely to put her in a foul state of mind.

Bloody Plumbing

That's it! Back from Mougins again, but not sans sonde (catheter) as hoped. My lower pipework is still leaking, as the x-rays they gave me to take home gorily illustrate. So re-admission in a week....

No criticisms of the actual treatment, which was excellent as usual. But the attempt was made more annoying as the hospital informed me, whilst doing the paperwork, that my carte vitale ('vital' is no exaggeration in terms of how indispensable this piece of plastic is) has been unilaterally and without prior warning rendered null and void by the local CPAM, occasioning no end of administrative tracasserie, and meaning that we personally have to foot the very steep hospital and health bills. Needless to say, the CPAM does not respond to our entreaties, and despite plenty of requests, has never clarified my position. We are not alone in being pissed off by them. The victims - mostly French - are legion, and the horror stories are the stuff of urban legend.

Despite all this, it is good to be out of hospital, and the celebratory walk along the breakwater of the quai des miliardaires in winter sunshine was bliss well earned.

Quick Update

Off to Mougins again, to see whether they can remove the catheter. If they can, it only takes a few seconds, but I will have to spend two nights in hospital for observation. If not, then more time in contact with plastic and pipes.

Scrap Metal

For the last two weeks I have been wandering around with a bunch of staples holding my tummy together. Over thirty of them, closely spaced. Monday the nurse was supposed to come and take them out with special, sterilised pliers, but she got the wrong address. There was I, all psyched up for it, and then a no-show. I got a blood test as consolation prize.

Still, Tuesday, she did come, with her black bag of tools and a breezy manner. Boy was she quick! Those staples never stood a chance, and gradually (and almost painlessly) my tummy unpuckered and resumed a more-or-less normal profile.