Reflections on home exchanges and the difficulties of being devoid of technology.

Doing home exchanges has its own problems no matter where we go but we are usually able to adapt and find alternatives to the things that we find wanting. Sometimes the problems are to do with getting and leaving keys. In this case the keys were easily accessed even if I had to retrieve them from a container (under a pot plant) with 2 inches of water - at least they were in a plastic bag. The idea was to leave the keys in the same place for the owner. However, we now have a difficulty with that. When we got up this morning, Jim noticed that there was the pot plant - GONE! (The rubbish had been collected the previous night - so had the binmen thought the plant was for dumping? I have to admit the plant was a rather sorry sight and the binmen could have been forgiven for ridding the street of the unsightly thing! Or did someone else decide to rescue it and give it a  more caring home?) The container under it had been left and had the appearance of  being a late night pee receptacle. Tant pis! Now what do we do? No doubt some arrangement will be made.

A second problem here is the lack of wifi and, most of the time, any mobile coverage. I do own a French dongle but have failed to find a shop in which I could succeed in getting my dongle in dingling order. How did we ever manage without this kind of technology? A constant refrain is “I could find that out on my tablet for you Jim if we had wifi”! We had been told that there was free wifi to be had in the library but they had omitted to say that I should be looking, not for the bibliotheque, but the mediatheque. We have finally found it and I was enrolled with no difficulty and equipped with a document that says I can avail of free wifi for one and a half hours on the day that the Mediatheque is open, which, sadly, is not every day!

Intermittent mobile coverage is extremely frustrating! It makes contact with family very difficult and can be a source of miscommunication with missed calls suggesting that there is some urgency about the call. Making important business calls (as we discovered later) is virtually impossible as one no sooner has managed to identify which button to press than the coverage is gone and one has to start all over again! When the mobile coverage goes after one has finally got a human to talk to, starting all over again invariably gets one to a different human and so it goes on and on!

We are also rather disappointed here in Calvisson that, apart from the roof patio which is a long way up rather precarious steps, there is no outdoor area where we could relax and read a book. But I chose the place so we just have to put up with it!

As a later experience will prove, it is essential that the person with whom one is exchanging provides a list of people (and their contact details) who can be contacted in the event of an emergency. Another set of keys should also be made available with one or more of the people on this list. As we have discovered over the years, it is rare that contact has to be made with these people but it provides a security should something untoward occur.