France in Focus

Two days ago a bloke from Veolia knocked to ask us where the water pipe was on our land. We didn’t even know we had said pipe. It doesn’t supply us and disappears down the hill to 3 other properties.
We have been here 20 years so it was done way before that.
They wanted to create a spur to install a water meter at the gîte next door. There are 3 gîtes and apparently each one needs its own meter.
So 3 young men and a digger turn up. They carve a massive trench in the garden - no sign of pipe. Then the bucket operator hits the spot and we have a fountain.
Panic ensues. All 3 of them running round like headless chickens. Water going everywhere, heading for the pile of working plans they had left on the floor which I rescued.
One lad comes back with an extraction pump but no fuel and when the fuel is finally added he can’t get it to start. The other two lads are a kilometre up the road looking for a stop tap.
After about half an hour, they return and say the water can’t be turned off because the technician in the water tower is cleaning the filters.
After another hour the water starts to go down but only after the intervention of a neighbour with a shovel who cut a slice out of the back into the ditch.
Next they have to mend said pipe. They appear only to have available a rusty tenon saw or a hack saw with a blunt blade.
More farting around ensues. They are all soaking wet and it was jolly cold yesterday.
They finally mended the pipe at 5.30 left their digger and trailer and went home.
Back this morning to use a mole drill under the chemin. The ground is too gravelly and at 16.00 they still hadn’t managed to do it.

I am flabbergasted at the sloppy way this has been done. They don’t know when they are coming back to finish but they have filled in the trench in our garden. I just hope the joints they’ve done and re buried don’t start leaking. No markers to show where all this stuff is.

Good for many episodes of Pat a Mat.

@Headers Sounds like Keystone chez toi!

We've got "works" going on in the street chez nous - no idea what - 3 days now with a digger. Dig a trench, fill it in, then dig up said trench. Still no clue as to what's going on, and I'm too sore from my vax to go ask. The internet keeps coming and going, while lots of water board vans persist in blocking our garage and drive....

Ha .... OH wanted to check our water consumption and went onto the Veolia website. What a surprise, it's been updated and it was a real rigmarole to get onto the new site. In very small print under something else, it says something like connect to new site.
Why webmasters have to make things so un-user-friendly and awkward, I just don't know.

That said, I (finally) downloaded a free musical notation update and was pleasantly surprised to find one of the niggles I have had with it had been sorted out !

Re: digging up and filling in holes, when new sewers were installed in our village, it was a requirement that disruption should be minimised. So for much of the work, trenches would be dug up starting at 09:00 and at 16:00 were filled in, so that workers could get to and from work and the school bus could pass through. This lasted for all but the last 2 weeks of the 3 months work, where it simply was not possible. I assume the school kids living beyond the village had a 25km diversion adding to their already long day.

At our home in the Correze years ago our neighbour turned up with a mate and small digger looking for the mains pipe.
The chap with the digger found it half an hour later with a Hazel stick no mess could not believe it