Planning & Plastering

We were expecting one big party this weekend with the news from Paris that M. Sarkozy had married Ms Bruni at the Elysee Palace but the village bar was devoid of celebrating locals. Like most things that happen in politicians private lives here there seems to be little interest. Anyway congratulations to them both & thankfully it makes his state visit to the UK next month a little easier for Buckingham Palace to deal with.

We're now the proud owners of a fully working bath & I had thought that we'd have a picture of Barbara christening the tub but she wasn't all that keen on the idea. With the bath in place it was time for the Regourd family to finally pack up their tools & leave us to continue plastering the cracks. Of all the jobs we've done over the last 12 months it has to be one of the most laborious. With so many different levels of plasterboard the joins we have to cover are taking considerably more than a couple of coats of plaster. At least the guest bedroom & en suite are now fully emulsioned &, after a visit to Brico Dept later this week, skirting boards will be in place & it'll be time to take some photographs and get the house on the market. There are still lots of smaller jobs still to be done & I'll have plenty of time to get on with them when Barbara heads back to the UK on the 12th.

Back in October we'd organised for the water company to separate the barn & house supplies. We'd filled in all the forms, in duplicate, sent them a cheque and awaited a call from them to arrange a rendezvous. But the call we got was from the people we'd sold the house to back in Bury to say they'd received a letter from France with our cheque enclosed. They were good enough to send us the documents back & we headed to the architect to help us decipher the letter. Turns out they'd got us mixed up with someone else & that if we still wanted to continue with the work they'd have to reissue the devis. It arrived on Saturday & had gone up by €50.00! It's times like this that you wish you could speak the language & get on the phone and attempt to sort them out. We did have a bit more success when we visited the local surveyor to arrange to split the land between the barn & the house. Within 15 minutes we'd explained, in French, what we wanted done, arranged for him to visit & paid a deposit. If only everything in France was that easy.

Tuesday was my birthday & we'd planned to have an easy day. It started well with a leisurely breakfast and a bit of light sanding down and then we headed off to VDR for a spot of lunch. Half way through the meal we got a phone call from Thierry Roussel to say that he'd loaded his van up with the fire wood we'd asked him for and he'd like to deliver it at 4:00. No feet up this afternoon watching day time telly, well not until the logs have been stacked up. It was still an enjoyable day & I'm already looking forward to the next 50 years. Thursday Barbara had been invited out again, this time to attend a meeting at the local salon de thé. It had been organised by a local French lady who wanted to learn English and thought that an informal discussion group would be an ideal way for both French & English speakers to learn each others language. Barbara enjoyed the afternoon, probably because she was able to get dressed up & get away from me and the plastering for a few hours.