Journal Tuesday 19th August 2025 – moderation has no issue with my content today apparently. Lol.

Morning all. It’s raining!!!! This is good news, and we have about a 10 degree drop in temperature too, to about 23. The storm forecast we had for most of the day has dissipated though, moving into tomorrow, but rain is rain.

I ran round the garden last night, strewing universal plant food granules everywhere with gay abandon so the rain that’s forecast can do the hard work. The Dahlias are flowering at a pace now, and giving them a boost as they go into September is the right thing to do. They’ll flower until the first frost, and even though they’ve taken a while to get going this year, their longevity always feels worth the effort. I’ve also “Chelsea chopped” the lavender because the last of the lilac tinge had turned to grey and we might get another flourish of flowers in a little while. The huge David Austen Princess Marguerite rambling rose had a good dead-head too, and at least this ticks a few jobs off my gardening to do list for the next dry day. I tested a grape, still sour. We’re not there yet.

You’ll never guess what, the bank was indeed not open in Gueret, (surprising no-one, because France and Monday), so we didn’t go. Instead we popped across to visit the doggo-in-laws for some scritches, and then a quick trip to the supermarket.

We have a fully electric car, and we love it, we’ve had it 4 years or so now, and with a range of 420km when fully charged it does 99.9% of the trips we need it to. For any longer trips like when we went to the Rugby World Cup, we hire a car, just because we have this slight phobia of charging stations being needed and getting stranded. We shouldn’t be really, the infrastructure here for charging stations here is pretty great. Our small local town now has electric charging behind the tourist information office, in the market carpark, and at Carrefour for example. Many large stores now have a raft of charging stations as do big tourist attractions, in addition to the ones at motorway services and town centre carparks, but we’ve had this fear of getting ourselves stranded so we’ve not really been brave enough to test the network out on a longer trip. For our impending trip to the zoo, it’s a 4.1/2 hour round trip, and is just within our range on a max charge, (if we don’t use air con or the radio – both non negotiable). It’s also true that the amount of KM left in reserve diminishes much faster towards the end, so we’d never commence the return journey without charging. The zoo has a tonne of charging stations, hotel guests can use the hotel charging stations for free, so we’re not worried about the charging speed because we have the luxury of being able to plug in overnight. Feeling brave, we decided to plug the car in at Carrefour, because you get 1 hour for free – why not. This involved setting up an account via a scanned QR code, linking our Carrefour fidelity card to this account, linking our bank account to this account and then accepting a pre-charge of 29 euros with the bank. A bit of a faff but done. The car was charging, all good. One of the main purposes of this was to see what speed we could get, we’ve never managed to get a fast charging speed when we’ve tried it before. I think we were getting 6.2 kw/h but the station said it went up to 22 kw/h. Ah well, we went to unplug and go about the rest of our afternoon, but upon disconnecting via the app, the screen said something like disconnecting, please wait before unplugging your vehicle. We waited, and waited and waited, and this message continued. We tried to unplug the car, and the cable was locked and couldn’t be removed from the car or the terminal. We sat there some more, for quite a while actually. Craig turned the car ignition on and off to see if it would release the cable, no joy. After a while of this, we re-looked at the message on my phone. It actually says more along the lines of waiting for you to unplug your car…. oops (my bad!). This still didn’t explain why the cable was locked though. Then hubs realised he’d opened the car via the drivers door, and not using the remote which unlocks everything (seemingly including the charging port). Most definitely his bad.

We registered for a card that we should be able to use with most charging terminals on the network and we’re just waiting for that to arrive in the post. Hopefully before we set out on our trip of course. It’s called Chargemap I think.

Just a little footnote, because I know I’ve been banging on about liking and sharing, if you do like any of my posts, the place to like is using the little star at the bottom of each blog post (but of course I appreciate a social media like, that does help). I know this might mean setting up an account with WordPress and I’m sorry about that, but actually, it’s quite a nice way to start the day if you’re sick of the news. Always lots of interesting things to read here on WordPress’s wider site, so jump in, the water is lovely. And yes, I know about Substack, but I’ve been doing this 10 years now and migrating everything over feels like hassle.

TTFN,

V x

“Create a highly detailed, high-resolution featured image depicting a lush garden scene on a rainy day. The focus should be on vibrant Dahlias and Lavender plants, showcasing their rich colors amidst raindrops. A subtle, soft light filters through grey clouds, creating a serene atmosphere that highlights the beauty of the blooming flowers. In the background, include hints of garden tools casually placed, hinting at recent gardening activities. The image should have a sharp focus to capture the intricate details of the flowers and raindrops, evoking a sense of tranquility and gardening success, while subtly incorporating an electric vehicle charging station in the corner to connect with the EV theme”

Or if you prefer annoyance via e-mail, you know what to do.