The Storm by Mr L

Var Storms
After a day when the sky was blue and temperatures reached 33c we had guest for dinner, the other evening, and were happily eating on the terrace with thunder rumbling above us when an Oak tree 3 meters from the table was struck from top to bottom by a lightning bolt!!!
This initially hit us as a shockwave that almost blew out our ear drums and then we saw the smoke coming from the tree and leaves falling.
On further inspection we found pieces of wood from the tree in the pool which is 40 meters from the tree. It then dawned on us that we had lost the lights and on further inspection we discovered that one of the fuse boxes was fried. A call to our local electrician, out of hours, was oddly received by” I will be right there! “Very strange in France as normally they say they will come next week but rarely do!
The electrician temporarily fixed the box but said we had lost one phase of our electricity supply. He rang EDF the electricity company and they arrived within 30 minutes! We could not believe the service!
We are now finding the problems caused by this lightning hit! The garden lights have all exploded and in fact the control box was blown off a wall. The electric gates are out of service, we lost our phone lines and the Wifi router is burnt out!!
Now I have to struggle with France Telecom to try and get a technician to come, never the easiest of feats. After that I need to get the IT guy to set up a new router and discover from the Insurance company if I am covered for my damage,
I certainly did not like it when the Electrician shook his head and said I had better contact the Insurance company as this was a major job! Looks like he will make the most of it so I am dreading the Devis (French version of an estimate but much bigger!!)
Well as the above is all I have to sort today I will spend the morning taking my sister back to Nice airport and think about all the phone calls (on my mobile, of course,) I could have made to try and sort this out!
In the meantime I have no access to the internet so I cannot connect to my business in UK or indeed add to the Blog. To make things even worse, the internet in my other house is down too!
It never rains but it pours or in this case storms.
Oh the joys of French Living!!
Oh joy! French Telecom arrived 2 days later, as promised, and after charging 300 Euros, because the blown equipment was inside the house I now have internet! The next thing I found out was that even though I had bought a new router the internet card in my computer was blown! Hence I am using my lap top.
Mr.L, July 2009