Jazz, crepes & tractors

Last Sunday we were out for a meal at the local crêperie. The menu is extensive and as long as you like crêpes there's something for everyone. With it being one of the rare decent evenings we've had since we arrived here we decided to eat alfresco. It would have been great had the restaurant not been located next to the river and the balmy evening hadn't brought out all the local midges. The restaurant has live jazz music and the evening went with a real swing (apologies for the mixed music genres).

Been having withdrawal systems from TV for the last few weeks so have taken the plunge and sorted out satellite TV. Not going as far as installing Sky but we'll be able to get all the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Five so it'll be just like having Freeview and apart from the cost of installation it's free for us as well. We just have to wait now until 30th July to see what's happening on 'The Street!'

M. Mazieres has made excellent progress with the pointing and the outside of the house is now looking as good as the inside. There's still about another weeks work to be done and after spending Saturday morning erecting the scaffold, I finally managed to finish off the hacking out of the house just before my hacking out pick expired. In between running back & forth with the mortar I made a start on hacking out the barn but after working on the top of the scaffolding I began to have second thoughts about pointing the it. I think Barbara & I would struggle to erect a safe platform and as I'm not all that good at heights anyway I think we may be keeping M. Mazieres telephone number handy. So tomorrow it's another 7:00 start and a continued loss of beauty sleep for Babs.

On Wednesday we had a trip in to VDR to have a family haircut in preparation for our trip back to the UK & another wedding we're attending. Hair wasn't the only thing we had to organise the cutting of. As part of our plans for landscaping the land surrounding the barn & house we want to develop a lawned area. I'd spent a lot of time strimming it as you've read and now the time had come to purchase a lawn mower and as we'll eventually be looking at an area of approximately 3,000 sq' metres of grass we weren't looking for a small hover mower. After much deliberation we settled on a small ride on tractor mower and started the process of haggling for a better price. We don't have much luck and when the shop assistant says there's a €45.00 delivery charge Barbara nearly passes out. 'We're spending all this money and you're asking us to pay for delivery?' Obviously he could sense that he was about to lose the business and agreed to reduce it to €20.00. 'It's more than my job's worth to do it for free'. Sounds just like the UK and yes he could speak very good English. The mower was delivered the next day and it must be the first time ever that I couldn't wait to mow the lawn. After making some comment to Barbara about boys & their toys M. Mazieres asked me which was the Englishman's lawn? Bearing in mind that his land is next to our very rough meadow and he seeded his lawn there is no comparison. 'It will be along time before you can play cricket on that' was his opinion.

Couple of bits of good news this week. The roofer is planning to turn up the first week in August and work for a couple of weeks before he departs for his holidays. He will make the roof weather proof which means we'll be able to start building the bedroom & en-suite walls. Looks like our planned camping holiday to south of France is cancelled. I also found out that the Landrover Lightweight is definitely up for sale. I asked Thierry to give the owner a call and enquire about the price. That's when the news wasn't quite so good. As I said last week second hand cars in France bring ridiculous prices and I think it's going to take a significant amount of wheeling & dealing to get the asking price down to a figure we can do business at.