Jimmy Comes Tomorrow

Jimmy is our new favourite man about town.

On Friday, on the quest for a better sleep, we all headed out on the city bus to a commercial part of Avignon that we were told had furniture stores. We trotted around in the 35 degree weather checking out the mattresses in the first couple of stores that we came to, with disheartening results as the mattresses in these stores were priced well above what the budget of 2 teachers on an educational leave could afford.

Feeling discouraged and very hot, we serendipitously stumbled upon Jimmy and the "Literie Discount" store. What a find - mattresses that were of the modern era that we could afford to splurge on! We tried out a few, and even asked Jimmy to drag one off of the wall storage unit to try it "par terre". He set it up just by the front door and, after trying it out, I asked my Mom to lie on it and give me her opinion. Just at this moment, a French couple entered, and the lady was obviously quite taken aback to have to walk around a lady lying on a mattress right at the entrance. I later heard her tell her husband "Ils parlent Anglais", perhaps to try to explain away the strange behaviour.

After we had enthusiastically chosen a mattress, Jimmy offered Barry his delivery truck to drive it home ourselves. Barry actually considered taking him up on his kind offer, but after what we'd observed of the streets in the downtown area, he was convinced by his family to let Jimmy deliver it for us. Then, as if we couldn't be more thrilled, Jimmy threw in free delivery! When Barry went back the next day to also purchase an inexpensive bed frame, he and Jimmy had a good laugh about the expression on the other customers' faces when they saw his mother-in-law lying by the door. Jimmy said "Pourquoi ils ont ete surpris? C'est un magasin discount!".

Later, feeling buoyed by our mattress success, we wandered a little further, having sent the girls home by bus with the grandparents for ice-cream. We stumbled across the very large "Castorama" (think a French Home Depot). We were quick to find out that instead of the Home Depot's slogan "You can do it. We can help", at Castorama "You can do it. We'd prefer not to help", would be more fitting. We purchased some cheap plastic drawers and other household items that we needed to make storage and homelife a little more convenient and taxied our purchases back home.

Yesterday we visited "Casino", a large grocery store less than a 10 minute walk from our apartment; so convenient and AIR-CONDITIONED. We stocked up on some groceries and bought a few more items for the house; including a toaster oven (we have no oven in the apartment) and a kettle.

So, within 2 days we have come far in making our new place feel a little more like home.

And, only one more sleep until Jimmy delivers.