Allez Angleterre

England 14 France 9 – What a great result & what a fantastic night we had at the local bar watching Jonny & the boys achieve a hard and unbelievable win and really glad I invested €20.00 in that England rugby teeshirt. There were about 10 English supporters & the atmosphere was fantastic with both country's supporters standing and singing their respective national anthems very loudly (the French national anthem is a real sing along 'tune' isn't it?). At half time the home supporters were very bullish and there was quite a bit of banter going on. Second half things obviously get better for us & there was quite a bit of 'merde' flying at good old Jonny. At the end we were given a big cheer by the locals and asked if we were now going to buy all our French comrades a drink? Wish I'd had a tenner on England to get to the finals, someone said they were offering 25-1 at the beginning of the tournament. Oh and we had a celebrity supporter, Boris Johnson popped in to the bar to support the team. He was in the area filming a documentary on Catharism for the BBC which will be broadcast in May next year. It's not a bad job is it? Wandering round France being paid by the BBC having just finished 10 weeks holiday. Wonder what his constituents back in Henley would think? Work on the roof continues a pace with only a couple of wet days last week and a promise that they'll be finished by next Friday. On the night it rained, and it really bounced down we were woken by the drip drip of water on the tarpaulin we'd placed on the upstairs floor. It was a quick dash round with buckets & pans to stem the flood. The good news was that it was the part of the roof that had not had the new lauzes fitted that was leaking. The rest was perfectly dry. Once again I had to ask them to move the planks from above the satellite dish and was greeted with a smile & Gallic shrug & why are you bothered? Can't wait to see them tomorrow!

We'd popped over to Thierry Roussel's on Friday to collect some scaffolding so that I could secure the insulation to the top of the rafters and when we got back there was a bit of a commotion going on back at the house. One of the roofers had caught a couleuvre and was trying to kill it with a gutter support while the other one was running round terrified of it. He eventually managed to skewer it & was disappointed he hadn't managed to remove it's head, the only sure way to kill it instantly. As you know I'm no fan of the creatures so when they said they'd finished for the day & that I should leave it a couple of hours for the snake to die before I attempted to move it I was not impressed. It was difficult to concentrate on fitting the insulation and by 5:00 I plucked up the courage & donned some gloves, picked up the fire tongues & headed for the cellar where I hoped the snake had gone to meet his maker. It was still alive and getting pretty angry! Although I'm no great animal lover I'm not happy seeing any creature in distress and decided that drastic action was called for if the snake wasn't to suffer any longer. So it was out with the long handled spade & after a few well aimed blows to it's head it stopped moving once & for all. Let's hope that put it out of it's misery had earned me a few brownie points in the snake world & they stay well away from me in future.

Took the Lightweight out for it's first mission on Saturday and collected some timber from VDR. It performed well & the trailer was still firmly attached when we got home. It's not the fastest vehicle on the road but we get lots of looks and waves off fellow Land Rover owners. It's also strange driving a vehicle with a steering wheel on the left and carrying French registration plates, there's no longer that extra bit of leeway given by the locals to UK registered cars.