Bringing You Up to Date

We've been busy since our last posting and so we felt it best to give you an update.

Our electrician managed to fit us in last week to start finishing off the electrics in the office, salon and third bedroom.  He was with us a couple of days and the office and salon are nearly finished.  It's incredibly difficult for him to sort our what wires run where and what our previous electrician had in mind when he did the prepatory work!  But it's nice not to have lots of wires hanging out of holes in the walls.

Hopefully, he will be back next Monday to continue!

Then, last Friday we flew of to the UK to see Guy and Carla, although I wanted to go to an exhibition at the Tate Liverpool first.

The exhibition was of paintings from the later years of Turner, Monet and Twombly.  It was an extremely inspiring show of contrasting yet similar works by these three artists spaning 3 centuries.  We enjoyed it even more as there was a large group of some 100 students at the exhibition, looking and sketching and we got into conversation with a few of them.  Very stimulating!

We spent a couple of days with Guy and Carla before moving on to our friends Paul and Jennifer for two more days.  We then had to run the perils of flying out of Britain.  We had absolutely no problem getting in to the country from Limoges but it was a different matter at Liverpool Airport.  We had requested a wheelchair for Sue when booking but, on arrival at John Lennon Sue felt she'd be ok.  However she started to get a bit wobbly in the long queue through security.  We were aware of the tight restrictions on 'Liquids' needing to be in a clear plastic bag, but, as we got nearer the head of the queue, that became 'Liquids, Pastes and Creams'.
When it was our turn to go through the security procedure, Mrs. Hitler announced that the bag we had was too big, as stated on all the notices on the walls and I would have to go back and buy one out of a machine for 50p.  This was a problem as I only had a £10 note and the machine only accepted coins.  When I went back to the Security people I politely asked a different lady what I should do.  A this point a sweet young girl infront of us (but they all look sweet and young!) gave me a 50p coin for the machine.  However the second lady official, (who had some shreds of kindness), stuffed my original bag next to my case in the tray  and let me go through.  Needless to say, no-one was the slightest bit interested in what liquids I had in the clear bag, nor, for that matter, for the toothpaste etc. which I'd left in our hand-luggage.

Whilst all of this was going on, Sue was becoming a bit upset but she was then singled out by Mrs. Hitler for a closer scrutiny; she maintained that she had to do this to 1 in every 5 passengers.  However, when Sue began to cry she must have realised that there was a potential problem, maybe even being sued, and she became very comforting and even ended up arranging for a wheelchair for Sue as 'it was a long way to the Gate for boarding'!  We were able to laugh at it all later, but we do get frustrated at the lip service paid to the whole process of airport security.