I'm going slightly mad...

For those of you who don't know, my wife and I live in a small village in Normandy, France. By chance, our village is wicked quick for the internet due to the telephone exchange being here.

For that reason, we are having all our electrical and phone feeds changed from above ground to below ground. We will also be getting fibre optic feeds, but that's going to be happening later.

We were informed some time ago that work would begin in September and true to their words, the work began last week and some of the houses and the school round the corner, got the new electrical boxes mounted on the outside of their buildings.

Ours began yesterday, so for about an hour, the man cut a appropriately-sized hole in our wall, to set the box into, his big Kango demolition hammer rattling a number of chunks of plaster off the wall in our kitchen/dining room behind where it will be placed.

We didn't mind, as it was only a small amount and when we spoke to the man himself, he promised that today he would come and repair it. Well, a couple of hours after he saw it, a larger chunk fell off and repairs have been postponed until tomorrow as he didn't have enough plaster to fix the huge chasm that had been exposed.

Meanwhile, work continues and they started next door, working their way up the road and the other buildings. It seems that whatever the next door's facade is made of, he can't get through it and so, from 08:30 this morning, with a ten minute break for coffee about half ten and lunch hour - or portion thereof - the bloke has been trying - unsuccessfully, I fear - to create the recess in the wall to fit the new box.

This means that whilst I have tried desperately to work on the two websites I have to complete, I cannot. For five straight hours - minus the all but brief respites for coffee and lunch - I have been bombarded with the sound of the power tools rattling the walls, floors and windows.

I cannot escape.

Fortunately for Penny, she has had to work out near Gorron, leaving me to here - alone.

Work?? Huh! Fat chance.

You know the sound of the dentists drill? Well this is worse... much worse and much, much louder. Worse still, who knows when it will let up.

The cat's gone bonkers, while I'm just go slightly mad, chewing my fingernails back to my elbows. I'm beginning to feel like Goldie Hawn's character in 'Overboard', wondering whether I too will be going "bub-bub-bub-bub..." by the time Pen returns.

Oh wait...

It's all gone quiet.

Or after five hours and twenty minutes of ear-splitting, teeth rattling noise that could in all likelihood wake the dead, have I gone deaf?

No, it's just quiet.

Hopefully, that will be an end of it, but I'm not counting my chickens...

Yet.