Time machine required, smash mystery and who are the couple in the camper van?

Thursday 24 September 2015
24 degrees sunny

Up early to prepare paperwork for visit.  With 20 minutes to spare, dashed down to the market to find materials to make poppies for group poppy appeal.  Discovered a small boy's shirt in red material with red buttons, small red buttons and red and green ribbon.

Arrived for visit 20 minutes late and both the owner and the client were waiting in the Place. Cant say it was the most successful of visits.  The client started saying NO as soon as she saw the minuscule patch of grass.  And she didn't like the fact that the bedroom was upstairs.  What she actually wants is a single level accommodation with balcony for 140000 euros with notaries fees included.  She alas may need a time machine also.  The owner wouldn't give me a mandate because he said it was 'virtually' sold.  Lady bought me a hot chocolate and we enjoyed a chat in the sun.  Alcoholic father of the owner of the house very nearly bought by the US lady was there, 10 am and nursing a glass of wine.  He was extremely offhand.  The son has just asked me to market the property again....

Back home and quick lunch and then to the coast to look at some cars.  Very disappointed with the C Max automatic - very small inside and there is a lag in take up on the automatic gearbox.  Then tried a Citroen.  Like a tank and rolled around all over the place.  There was a Scenic for 17k with 10k fewer kilometres fewer than the one in the town near us.  

The salesman hid for as long as he could in his cubicle but finally he emerged and we had a look at the interior and it was spacious and not as fussy or full of buttons like the C Max.  We started to talk price and OH took a tough line and the salesman kept on bashing away at his calculator and seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears.  I wonder if this is a technique I could employ?  Said we would come back on Saturday for test drive.

Out into the heavy traffic and found Ikea with the hope of getting some food but of course it is France so there was nothing out of restaurant hours apart from some dried up cakes and packs of strangely named biscuits.  Bought some lingonberry jam and packets of rye crispbread and frozen meatballs and mashed potato and sauce.  Back home and walked dog and left OH to try and figure out how to turn the white extruded potato sticks into something that resembled mash.  He added a little water and butter and it was fairly dreadful but meatballs were good.

Met the young couple from the camper van which has been parked on a patch of grass up the road for absolutely weeks.  From the Medoc.  They have bought the land to plant fruit trees.  They were rather creepy.