The day dawned fine and sunny, then alternated between fine, sunny, cloudy, warm, cold during the day. Monash exams are starting to come in, so it’s back to work for us for the rest of the week. Will probably stay in Moissac to ensure connection to internet to ensure all exams arrive safe and sound. During the day, Saint Louis cruised through Moissac with a bagpiper playing on the deck. It brought everyone out of the boats to their decks to see what was going on, and then applause and cheers of “encore” when she finished playing. A strange sight, but a good omen for the reception that a barge carrying a steel band through port might get in 2014!

Over the past few weeks, the Carte Bleu I got from Credit Agricole has worked with varying success. About half the attempted transactions have been rejected, and lately it has been closer to 90% rejected. As well as being a bit embarrassing, it also means that I then have to use my Westpac Mastercard which has three disadvantages; 1. They charge a fee for each overseas transaction 2. The exchange rate for Westpac is not as good as OzForex which was used to transfer money into the Credit Agricole account 3. The exchange rate has got worse since I transferred the money several weeks ago. So Rita went to the bank to find out the problem. Turned out I was withdrawing too much money from the account (more than a couple of hundred euro per week), even though it is all my own money in the account - they are happy to take your money, and then won’t give it back to you when you need it! However, after talking with Natalie (who set up the previous accounts for us), they found a Mastercard account that would better suit our needs. Higher withdrawal limits, cheque book, and linked to interest bearing savings account. So, we opened new accounts and switched all our money over to them. It seems that the previous accounts were for new customers with unknown resources. When they realised how much we had deposited into the account, some of their fears were allayed. Good lesson for opening a bank account in future; let them know how much you will deposit, and how you want to use the account to make sure you get the minimum of restrictive limits. In the end, we were giving Natalie advice about WOOFERS in Australia (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), since she is interested in coming to Australia in the near future!

After the banking, which took a few hours to sort out, we then went to SFR and got all the phone/internet/TV equipment for the house, then to the Mairie to enquire about the drivers licences (they advised us to get in touch with the Prefecture in Montauban and explain the situation), and then got a couple of extra keys cut for the house. So, in the end, a successful day of administration. Now back to marking exams )-:

In the evening we met up with Graham and Linda (from Effie) and talked about the trip to Bordeaux and other things. Then we took our compost for a walk to the house to put it in the compost bin, did some more rose dead-heading, and generally admired the hydrangeas.