Mr Angry

I don't complain. If someone stands on my foot getting off the bus I apologise; if there's a fly in my soup I will say nothing. I am spineless. Anything to avoid confrontation. Anna, my wife, does the confrontation (she's Scottish). If the lunch we ordered hasn't appeared after 50 minutes...Anna will go and enquire. 

But last month the worm turned...twice!

We have nearly finished renovating a small house in the beautiful village of Saint Loup with a view to Airbnb. The town's folk were having a 'guinguette' (we thought this was the name of the group playing), so this was an ideal opportunity to immerse ourselves in village life by drinking far too much at the guinguette, staggering back to our abode to have a good night's sleep. 

The first part we managed successfully; music, dancing, drinking and a ' wee pook a chaps' as they say in Scotland. Even the staggering back was achieved, but a good night's sleep...?

The little house is next to the church. We can hear the organ playing, hymns being sung, and the bells ringing throughout the day it is enchanting. Call us naive, but we didn't realise the bells rang through the night as well. TWICE! That is 96 dongs (and we heard most of them), then at 8am they throw in an extra peal just in case you weren't aware of the time. 

We love the bells during the day (I don't understand why they ring twice; surely by definition time only happens once. If I was Jean De Florette toiling in the field I would be sure to count the bongs first time round), but throughout the night...and twice! 

I wrote a polite letter to the maire asking if there had ever been a proposal to stop the bells ringing throughout the night. I know some communes switch them off. In his reply he said '...it is rural life. As sure as the cock crows and cows shit (his words) the bells will continue to ring'. Very progressive. 

Our new French neighbours have two dogs, very sweet, but they are barkers. We are not dog haters, we love dogs, we had one! But every time we take the wheelie bin out or go to the mail box they go nuts. When the couple go out, the dogs bark continuously until their return. After considering my options (throwing a poisoned pork chop over the fence, etc.), I thought I would write them a letter. 

This does sound spineless, but my French is poor and I wanted to make sure nothing was lost in translation so I wrote them a friendly letter informing them of the constant barking when they go out and is there anything they can do? On my return home the other day there was a man with an accordion singing French love songs sitting in their yard, I don't know if he was a dog whisperer or just a friend of theirs but at least the dogs were quiet.