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323woods and the pharmacists had pictures of which ones you could eat. If in doubt you could take it in to be identified. Even so, people did occasionally poison themselves. Chapter 28 The plan after retirement was for me to go to France and crack on with the renovations. By that time the roof over the barn part of the house was leaking badly with several broken tiles. And so, a few days after retiring I set off to France with Harry and a very full car. We drove down to the Channel Tunnel where a small area had been marked out to exercise dogs. It had only become possible to take dogs abroad the year before and so everything was a bit unsure. Once at Calais we had about another 7 hours of driving and so I guess we must have arrived in the dark. Getting in, switching electricity on and finding some bedding must have been a bit difficult at first but, we eventually got it down to a fine art. Harry loved France, we had quite a large field for him to run about in and sniff out voles. Unfortunately, it was not fenced at first and so I had to tie him to a long lead to keep him in. It took him a few minutes to chew through the lead and then he was away. I was worried that he would get run over, but he usually went across fields away from the road. He did go far and wide until I had time to fence the garden which took a while.I had taken my topper sailing boat to France and sailed it on a nearby lake. I had quickly realised I could not lift it onto the car roof and so had bought a large trailer to move it about. This proved invaluable for moving all the building materials that I had to buy. I had been at our house the first year for a couple of weeks or so before Louise arrived. She decided that as I was a man, I could not possibly cater for myself and started bringing an evening meal around. After a couple of days or so, I gently and politely told her that I liked cooking and did not need feeding. Each summer she gave a lunch for various ladies who lived