Life in rural France

[Biggles87]

We have spent the last few days burning piles of brambles which we cleared from a patch of land which was given to us by the local farmer when we bought a field from him a couple of years ago. Although we have a reasonable amount of land the actual garden is not very big, so we will be able to extend it by about 200 sq. metres and put in a decent patio which will be shaded by the surrounding trees in the summer. 

Todays job is to remove the dead parts of an oak tree which is threatening to fall across the road through the hamlet with one of our neighbours.

Stay safe everyone.

 

John

[Biggles87]

A man with a mini-digger arrived this morning to clear the remaining brambles and tree stumps from our new garden extension, and prepare for the laying of a new patio in a couple of weeks. During the course of clearing the land we have discovered a well, the remains of a dry stone wall, and various pieces of ironmongery both domestic and agricultural. 

Stay safe everyone.

 

John

[Black Knight]

Who ya gonna call? Call in "l'équipe du temps"!

[bentwaters81tfw]

Nah, the Time Bandits.

[Mick4350]

and Archibald " Harry " Tuttle

[Biggles87]

Who?

[Biggles87]

I had my second anti-Covid vaccination yesterday and was told I might have a bigger reaction and to take Paracetamol for a couple of days. So far, apart from a sore arm again, nothing, so perhaps it was just a placebo!

 

John

[Tzulscha]

On 01/03/2021 at 10:00, Mick4350 said:

and Archibald " Harry " Tuttle

Do you have your 27b/6 forms filled out properly?

[Biggles87]

OK, I’m with you now in ‘Brazil’ 

 

John

[Biggles87]

Been feeling a little less than 100% for a few days, permanently tired and generally weak and feeble and this morning I woke up with an egg sized swelling on the side of my face.Being Saturday our doctors surgery was closed, so we went down to the pharmacy in our local town to ask M. Hazard ( great name for a pharmacist ) where the nearest emergency doctor was, which was in a hospital in Limoges which I wasn't particularly happy about. He asked if we would like him to call and make an appointment, then better than that he arranged for a prescription for antibiotics to be faxed through to him after checking for any allergies. What a nice man, but typical of the kindness shown by  health professionals in rural France.

 

John

 

[Vince1159]

I was put onto Rivaxaban about six weeks ago after being on Warfarin,see's the doc for a second prescription and gives it to the pharmacy on the way out on a thursday saying is that ok i'll pick it up on saturday,that's fine i'm told....I go to pick it up and am told "we have run out but we could order some or you could try another pharmacy"....

[Biggles87]

Went down to feed the horses at daybreak and as I came out of the stables looked up to see a deer in the field opposite, the grass was frosty and it was trotting about and doing little jumps. It was either full of the joys of Spring or perhaps it’s little feet were frozen and it was trying to warm them up.

 

John

[Biggles87]

 

Set off for a walk with the dogs this morning on one of our regular routes which includes crossing two fields. On the path which leads to the field entrance I thought I saw something run into the hedgerow about 100m ahead and was just about to tell SWMBO who was behind me when two animals broke out of the hedgerow and shot off up the path leading towards the fields, fortunately none of the dogs saw them. We decided to continue until we could see properly into the fields and saw that the two animals, which I had thought might be hares, were in fact small deer now running across the first field heading towards the second one. While we were watching, something smaller ( possibly a pine marten ) crossed the far corner of the same field and disappeared into a small copse on the other side.

At this point, the dogs had the scent and were getting exited so we decided to turn around and go home the way we had come.

French wildlife 1 - Golden Retrievers 0

 

Stay safe everyone.

 

John

[Mr T]

On 4/10/2021 at 3:34 PM, Vince1159 said:

I was put onto Rivaxaban about six weeks ago after being on Warfarin,see's the doc for a second prescription and gives it to the pharmacy on the way out on a thursday saying is that ok i'll pick it up on saturday,that's fine i'm told....I go to pick it up and am told "we have run out but we could order some or you could try another pharmacy"....

A bit of a surprise as Rivaxaban is fairly widely prescribed. Pharmacies are either chains or small businesses and it is very patchy. We always had problems with my mums pharmacy with them not having stuff, not always easy when she lives 150 miles away. 

[Vince1159]

11 hours ago, Mr T said:

A bit of a surprise as Rivaxaban is fairly widely prescribed. Pharmacies are either chains or small businesses and it is very patchy. We always had problems with my mums pharmacy with them not having stuff, not always easy when she lives 150 miles away. 

What annoyed me more was when i went to the other pharmacy they gave me two weeks of tablets instead of four....

[Mr T]

Ouch!, that is poor. As you are no doubt well aware, Rivaxaban is a drug you have to be a bit careful with in terms of not missing doses etc. I was on it for awhile post PE and Mrs T warned me about being careful around it (it was not a drug I came across when I was in clinical practice as it has only been around in the last ten years or so) 

[Vince1159]

12 hours ago, Mr T said:

Ouch!, that is poor. As you are no doubt well aware, Rivaxaban is a drug you have to be a bit careful with in terms of not missing doses etc. I was on it for awhile post PE and Mrs T warned me about being careful around it (it was not a drug I came across when I was in clinical practice as it has only been around in the last ten years or so) 

Personally i'd rather have stayed on Warfarin even with the INR's to check the blood,i can't understand how this stuff works without having to have checks like you do with Warfarin...

[Mr T]

Warfarin works by blocking Vitamin K which is needed to activate certain blood clotting factors in the blood (blood clotting is a cascade mechanism which is dependent on a number of factors being present and follows a sequence. Tbh I have largely forgotten the sequence, which is quite complex) and so inhibits clotting. It needs careful monitoring as it can last a relatively long while in the body and interacts with a lot of other commonly used drugs. 

Rivaroxaban directly acts to inhibit one clotting factor (factor X) interacts less with other drugs, is predictable and has shown to be stable across a wide group of patients.

It is being used more as its higher cost is largely offset by less side effects, no need for regular INR tests and wider patient suitability. 

Mrs T says drug availability is always an issue for one reason or another even before the Bword happened.

I hope you get it sorted. 

[John_W]

The GP has just cut my Naproxen dose from 500mg to 250, as I found that now I am driving an automatic the knee is much better and I was only taking one tablet a day. 

My chemist was really good, as I got a prescription for 100 paracetamol at the same time. Sold me 96 over the counter, as it was cheaper, and since I had a prescription for it I wasn't limited by the "32 rule".

[Biggles87]

I was talking to the local farmer at the beginning of May who was seriously concerned about the lack of rainfall this Spring, and we’ve probably not had a completely dry day since! The upside of this is that the ground is now soft and my annual  fence post renewal will be easier, the downside is that the grass and weeds are now knee high and my mower is kaput. 

Our newly reclaimed garden was originally covered in brambles and we’re also beginning to see how many we missed when we cleared it so they are now being dug out individually with a hoe/weeder implement. I am not the world’s most enthusiastic gardener and have to admit that the lion’s share has been done by SWMBO but I’m keen to get it finished before the weather becomes too hot, when this current grey and wet period ends the temperature will probably doubly in two or three days and the pool still needs to be emptied, cleaned and refilled. 

It’s a hard life being retired.

 

John

 

 

[bentwaters81tfw]

Borrow some goats.

[Black Knight]

Wot he says. Best investment I ever made when I had a small bit of land.

When I took it over it was well over grown. My b-i-l measured it up and told me how much was overgrown. I bought a couple of goats for £5 each. They only took a couple of months to eat back the brambles and weeds. B-i-l measured it again and reckoned I'd gained about 30% more useable ground. Plus the brambles started to give a better crop of blackberries. Goats were nannies so we got goats milk as well.

[Biggles87]

Found myself sitting in the kitchen with a frightened dog at 3AM this morning. We’ve been getting forecasts of thunder for a couple of days, but fortunately most of the storms pass E or W of us but last night we were under the southern edge of a cluster of cells stretching to Poitiers ( about70km to the north ) and about 50km wide.

Poor Blanche gets upset and will only settle in the kitchen next to or under the table with some human company, the other two are not bothered at all and we’re probably more concerned that I had woken them up and then not fed them.

More storms forecast for this evening and through the night but we’ll just hope for the best.

 

 Stay safe everyone.

 

John

[Bullbasket]

18 minutes ago, Biggles87 said:

Found myself sitting in the kitchen with a frightened dog at 3AM this morning. We’ve been getting forecasts of thunder for a couple of days, but fortunately most of the storms pass E or W of us but last night we were under the southern edge of a cluster of cells stretching to Poitiers ( about70km to the north ) and about 50km wide.

Poor Blanche gets upset and will only settle in the kitchen next to or under the table with some human company, the other two are not bothered at all and we’re probably more concerned that I had woken them up and then not fed them.

More storms forecast for this evening and through the night but we’ll just hope for the best.

 

 Stay safe everyone.

 

John

Yes, here as well John. The first rumble started just before 11 pm, and went on until gone 2 am. A really intense storm that we've not seen the likes of for several years. Swmbo was terrified, so the pair of us were sitting on the veranda at 1.30 sipping tea and watching a spectacular light show. Sadly, we don't have any canine friends any more, but when we did, neither liked the storms, although in their last years, neither could hear anything anyway.

 

John.

[Biggles87]

The local farmer has had some of his cows in a field next to our horses for the last couple of weeks and they usually just ignore each other but a few days ago I went to check that the horses were OK and not getting too hot in the current heat wave and when I got to the gate I saw that our boys were close to the far fence and a bunch of cows, mostly youngsters, were watching them eat.

I went and got a camera and as I approached them, the french horse lifted his head up from the grass and noticed the cows so he strode off purposely towards the fence and they all ran away, but not very far. Having shown them how fierce he was he turned around to resume his grass munching ( always has his priorities right our Frenchie ) and this happened;

 

I suppose this it what you'd call a nosey cow.

Stay safe everyone.

 

John