Tuesday Musings

My biological clock is running smoothly now, thankfully. But this was not a day to inspire great adventures. Dark grey clouds were flexing their muscles and delivering an occasional shower.  It was a good day for reflecting on a couple of puzzling things about the French.

One is why they don’t use window screens.  This has gnawed at me for years, especially when I’m staying in the countryside with flying critters.

The knottier issue is shower curtains, or the lack thereof. At the risk of sharing too much information, this is a picture of part of my huge bathroom.

As you can see, I have a luxurious tub, on a pedestal, no less. The shower is one of those windy hand-held hoses. The first day I showered standing up, but didn’t notice that little hose hook thingy above the faucet up by the ceiling. Well of course, despite taking great care, I ended up with water all over the floor — and, especially treacherous, on that step surrounding the tub. So the next day I saw the hose hook thingy, but of course the hose doesn’t attach to it. I concluded that the only way to have a shower is to sit in that seat in the back. Voilá!

I suppose having a curtain would ruin the esthetics of what I now refer to as my Roman bath, but really!

(Please don’t write me about the horrifying mental picture I just created.)

Today I went to Narbonne, a mere 20-30 minute drive away. This was a dry run for when Katherine comes a week from Saturday. Since I’m closer to Barcelona than to Paris here, it makes more sense for her to fly there and hop on the train to Narbonne, where I’ll pick her up.

I wanted to find the train station and scope out the traffic and parking situation, both of which are pretty bad. But there’s a bus that goes from the train station to the historic center, so we’ll try that. The city is really worth seeing, with an enormous daily market. More on that after we visit.

My last photo is the view from my kitchen window at night. Even though I used a tripod, it was too dark by the time the crescent moon was properly positioned over the steeple. I’ll keep trying, and sooner or later I hope to get a really good shot.