I'll just give it a wee tap
And the wall came down
25 February 2007
Whilst the winter here in the north of France has been fairly mild we have had a lot of rain and some very severe storms.
Not far from us an old man had his entire roof ripped off by the gale a few weeks back. Our neighbours have lost tiles and we are going to have to repair part of the guttering system which has been blown off.
Our Dutch neighbour Rogier lost an entire section of his barn and part of the outer wall facing the road was left in a very precarious condition.
All of this just after he had burglars ransack his house causing thousands of Euros worth of damage.
Rogier and his mate: Adriaan drove down from the Netherlands the night before and were up at the crack of dawn to get EDF to cut the electricity cables which were still attached to the barn wall.
A local building company from Ponches had been called in and they reckoned that they could knock out the offending piece of brickwork without the entire building collapsing.
They arrived down and as nosey neighbours we all turned up to watch. Guy sat in the car out of the wind whilst Thérèse borrowed a blanket to keep out the chill. She looked rather like an Indian squaw, but Pocahontas refused to dance round the house chanting spells for a successful operation.
I was quite impressed with the way the crew worked quite quickly to brace the inside of the building as a precaution against the roof and outer wall collapsing.
Within about 30 to 45 minutes they were ready to use the digger to knock out the upper section of the wall. Three or four clouts with the bucket arm and down it came.
One of the workmen climbed up into the roof space and cleared away some of the tiles which were looking dangerous in the event of another storm whilst we swept up the road.
And that was our excitement all over and done with for the afternoon. Rogier had to tidy up and then prepare himself for the drive back to the Netherlands.
The next stage for him is getting his house put back into order after his visit from the Vandals.
It's now my turn to get in touch with AXA to see about getting our roof sorted. As it's about 8 metres up in the air and even Peter doesn't have a ladder that high I will have to get somebody in. No doubt the small print on the Assurance will explain that there is an excess fee to be paid. Oh well it has to be done.
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