Today was our second-to-last Saturday morning market. It was quite a warm 20 degrees and we could see blue sky. Before the market though I needed to watch the Crusaders play the Blues in the Super Rugby at 9am our time. Unfortunately the sound didn't work on that particular TV channel but at least I was able to catch up on the blog at the same time.
The market was pretty busy, with crowds in the square below us enjoying lunch in clear weather for the first time in a while. We bought some lovely fresh fruit from one of the stalls, with apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries and strawberries all in full swing. The price of cherries is now down to 6.50E/kg.
John spent a little time on the car, giving it a bit of a polish up. We have spare oil, oil filters and washer fluid to give to the new owner when it's purchased.
The rest of the day turned out to be very frustrating. I was receiving all kinds of texts, calls and emails about the car, but I'd already said to the first guy that I'd hold it for him until he arrived in the afternoon. In the meantime I was busy trying to put other people on hold, one after another. Finally the first guy let me know he wasn't going to be able to make it, so that opened the bidding again and I had to let the others know it was back on the market. I set up a visit for somebody from Latour de France at 11am the next day, meaning they'd have to leave around 10am. There is also the difficulty of getting paid, as we don't want to release the car without the money, and no doubt they don't want to send money without the car. Getting large amounts of cash in France isn't easy - the banks only let you have so much at a time, or over a day, or over a week. Most of the rest of the day was spent waiting for people to contact me for rendezvous times. Another guy had said he was ready to jump if the first one fell over, and kept delaying his visit, then went incommunicado. So annoying.
Next morning another message came in - a guy from Ceret itself wanting to see the car in the morning. I set up a meeting at 9:30 so I had time to cancel the Latour lot before they left. Next morning - Bingo! He had done his research and was happy with the make and model, as we had been when we bought. He did a loop around Ceret and was very pleased. I wasn't prepared to drop the price so he agreed on our asking price, he gave me a cash deposit, with the transfer to be made on Wednesday after his bank transfer would have gone through. All very simple and a big relief to us, as much to be able to ignore all the incoming messages as anything. We would also be able to keep a lunch appointment out of Ceret, which was going to be very awkward by bus.
So that was the last major on our list of things to be sorted. We still have to close down various insurances, hand back the fibre router, empty our fridge and freezer, drink some of our alcohol (we know we will fail to drink it all!) do our final packing and then actually leave.
To unwind from all the hassles of selling the car we took off on a 7km walk into the fields. Very pleasant and a nice change from hanging around home waiting for calls.
A rather lovely 20cm fungus on our walk
The rest of Sunday was enormously more pleasant than Saturday. We got a little more packing sorted, then had friends around for apero and offloaded some bits and pieces on them. All very satisfactory.
