the bathroom is ready for tiling

The carreaux de platre were finished last night (and so was I). The tiling will have to wait until January






which is when the next blog is likely to be - I'm off on holiday.

proper building?

I've been back upstairs (and downstairs, and upstairs, and ..) with the "plaster tiles", carreaux de platre, starting to build the second bathroom and trying to avoid the many mistakes I made with the first. Somehow this feels much more like really doing something than putting up ceilings. Maybe it's the way you start at the bottom and build up?

Here's the general view of today's work. It would have been more if my back hadn't been hurting - you can just see the edge of a small stool, very useful for working while sitting down. Well, maybe I wouldn't have done that much more, as it's probably best to let the cement have time to set before doing the second layer - something is sure to move if you don't wait.

I'm hoping that forming the bases of the alcoves first will make getting the "shelf" on top level a bit easier, as it will provide a slot to put the main supporting slabs into.

The 5cm slabs weigh 17kg each, and I've been carrying them two stories up from where I heaved them out of the trailer into the ground floor yesterday. I'm not entirely looking forward to collecting the 7cm ones tomorrow (24kg).

And through the round window

.... yes, it's the bath. I'm making the surrounding edge 10cm wide, partly to make it a useful surface, and partly because at that width it's easier to support the edge of the bath, which otherwise tends to flex (and break the grouting). The two carreaux already in place are 5cm thick, and outside them there will be (tomorrow I hope) a further 7cm thick slab, providing the builders' merchant has managed to get them for me. Nearly all the work today has been in the thinner slabs.

The weather is cold and damp, and we've been in a cloud most of the day. I've only been out to clean the tools (it's best not to put too much cement down the sink). And Proust finally ran into the buffers today - Time was finally Regained. The last book telescopes a long period into a short (um, fairly short) narrative, a striking contrast to the others. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it.

still putting up ceilings

This week I was finishing off the main downstairs room, and working with a friend putting up the ceilings in the two bathrooms and the workroom. This is a substantial improvement as I didn't clean any of the beams in all the rooms, because I knew they would eventually be covered up. They were very dirty - a mixture of the original limewash, dozens of coats of it, and spiders, straw, old nails, general muck. In fact, like this (readers of a nervous disposition should look away now):



That's the one remaining room that's not yet done, the boiler room. So it's a good thing that the rest of them are now covered up. This is one of the bathrooms, take careful note of the elegant light fitting (work still in progress....)



We were lucky in finding that it was possible to run the plasterboard right into the window alcove. The top of the alcove, two or three heavy oak planks, was another insect habitat of considerable age and extent. Of course, the gaps in the board need to be filler-ed and smoothed, and the board painted, but this is the worst part of the job.

As I shall shortly be telling the mairie that the work is "finished" - and I think it must be as we are now living there - I took some exterior shots all round yesterday while the sun was shining to show what the present state of the building is. The guardrail on the balcony is still awaited.

North:




West:

This view is always a little odd as it is quite steeply uphill, and just a bit closer than I'd like. But if I take a step back for a better view I'd fall off the plinth that I've built at the end of the garden to take the solar panels (one day).


South:

The spoil heap shows a bit more than I'd like, but the ground there will (one day) be built out a bit further and grassed over to produce a more or less level terrace.



And the front door:



It's curious looking at the pictures just one day later - it feels as if it has been grey and raining for weeks, but it clearly wasn't yesterday morning. Those colours haven't been adjusted either - or not adjusted by me, at least: I have no idea what the camera and the computer does without me knowing.

worth 999 words, anyway

the last of the bedroom? I don't think so

For the last few weeks I have been working almost exclusively on getting the bedroom ready. I cannot quite believe how much time it has taken - put up the plasterboard, add filler between the gaps, add more filler when it's dry, sand the filler down so it's level (a job that would be better done wearing full scuba gear, as the dust gets everywhere) then paint the walls and the ceiling, masking tape all round. After two or three coats (more than 30 litres of undiluted paint, and the first couple of coats went on with a substantial addition of water), pull off the masking tape and then sand the beams to remove the excess filler and clean the new white paint off them. At this stage I discovered how dirty the inaccessible side of one of the beams was (a very narrow gap between it and the wall, so it hadn't been done with all the rest) and I then covered myself with old flaky limewash - straight down on my face of course, as it always is when you're working over your head.

Still, now it is done it looks pretty good. It's hardly worth posting a picture, as almost everything is white - a bit like a child's picture of a polar bear and a white kitten in a snowstorm - but nevertheless, here's the most difficult bit, restricted access, incurving beams, extra dirt, the lot. The surfaces here aren't quite as smooth as elsewhere, but it's a lot better than it was.



And this is a general view - the dark speck on the wall is a (taped over) plug point.




The bottom of the wall looks slightly odd as there isn't any skirting board yet, and I didn't want to paint right down to the flagstones. A skirting board is indisputably needed as the floor is heated, and has an expansion gap at each edge. That's a job for later though. I have yet to find a source of skirting ("plinthe" as the locals say).

I managed to find a bit of free time while the last bits of paint were drying, so I'm now just starting on the final volume of the Recherche du Temps Perdu. Luckily the AbeBooks supplier came up with the improved version just at the right time (today). The other books are the original late 1920s Alfred Knopf versions, all translated by Scott Moncrieff, but he had died before rendering the last volume (I'm not sure he even saw it in French), and his successor, Stephen Hudson, is regarded as having done a poor job. So what I have is the Mayor version, as successively revised by Kilmartin in the 1980s and finally by Enright in the 1990s, and I'll be able to make my own comparisons and see. I have, contrary to my expectations, come to be gripped by the narrative, and the last volume - largely written much earlier than the preceding ones, and possibly left in a better form by Proust - promises a lot. I was mildly surprised to find that the last eight or nine pages of "The sweet cheat gone" appear as the first few pages of "Time Regained", and I wonder what happened here (and indeed whose translation it was, as it is visibly the same as the Scott Moncrieff version, who gets no credit for it in the modern version).

I'm (almost) simultaneously getting into Updike's Bech books, which I had not read before, and they are well worth the read too. I have always enjoyed the four "Rabbit" books, but I'd seen dismissive criticism of the Bech ones, so I had never opened one.

It's a curiously mild (and dry) autumn here - the temperature in Aurillac today was 19 degrees at 4pm, and the grass is growing still, though the leaves have fallen from many of the trees - the beech and the oaks are still showing a lot of colour though.

down from the ceiling

I put up the last bits of plasterboard this morning - the last bits in the two larger rooms, that is, there are still the two bathrooms, the boiler room and the workroom to do - and it looks a bit of a mess. But the next stage is to finish off the filler (which Caro has been working on) and then paint, and then sand the paint and the filler off the beams, and then - that's it.

So I spent an afternoon creating what I hope will not come to be called "Komputer Korner". It's temporary, really, it IS temporary. I've got much better plans for something permanent. But it's a useful space and now it's done. Solid too.



Shows what you can do with an old pallet and some lino offcuts.

Some of the tiling is getting near to done. Compare this one with the 14th September picture of work in progress. We ran out of tiles so it's still not quite done, but it's much more like the way it should be.



And upstairs the lino is down in the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms is very nearly finished - still a small amount of tiling and some grouting to do. Here's the bathroom, where the tiles and structures are all my own work:



I've managed to get some solidly cemented carreaux de platre supporting the bath, so it doesn't flex when filled with water (and hopefully the grout round it will stay watertight as a result).

And this shows the lino:



The pictures were taken at night with a flash, but when the sun is shining the whole effect is warm and (er) colourful. Pity about the invasion of wasps. If I can find where they are getting in I might be able to stop them. I did find and (temporarily) fix the appalling draft by the computer desk.

hitting the ceiling

For the last few days it's been the downstairs ceilings: plasterboard up between the beams. As the beams aren't straight, each bit of plasterboard has to be shaped to fit. And I've been adding metal rails as cross-pieces to strengthen the boards at the ends and where they join. This might not strictly be needed.
Here's one in progress:



It will also need a round hole for the spotlight (that's the conjectural spotlight which will eventually replace the bare bulb)

And this below is a bit that's been done and is ready for painting (well, almost - it's no doubt best to sand it a bit smoother first). I am hoping that a good thick coat of white paint over everything will make it all look a bit better. At present you really can see the joints between the boards (Caro has being doing all of these, loads of filler in all the many gaps I left) and the wall where the electrician cut a channel to take the conduits for the plug point below. We will find out shortly, one way or the other, as very soon this corner is going to have the wardrobes installed, and it has to be painted first.

Not much else to do - it's been raining hard today. And still is.



You can see how the beams slope, but the plasterboard (which is level with the floor above) sits nicely horizontal. But it looks crooked (and always will I imagine).

Finally, at last, enfin .... back on line

After the long saga of the dying Dell laptop, I finally bought an HP desktop and set it up - still slightly hard to believe - in the barn. Of course there wasn't any internet access there, ossibly a consequence of the thickness of the stone walls in the farmhouse and in the barn itself. So I bought Orange's patent "Wifi Extender" and after a lot of trial and error plugged the remote end into a socket in the outside workshop, where the signal (just) penetrates to the computer. I think in principle if I could find a socket in the barn using the same electrical phase as the one in the fermhouse, I could bring it indoors. But the many trials around the barn yielded only a similar number of errors.

Which is all by way of saying that in the intervening three weeks since the last blog, the electrician finally put the circuits into use, and the plumber got the kitchens, bathrooms, and heating all going properly. So as winter gets going we have a warm and well-lit home where we can do everything except wash the dishes and sleep. The dishwasher has not worked once (thanks, Bosch), and the bedroom is still work in progress. I'm plasterboarding the ceiling. The plasterboard goes between the warped and knotty beams, so each piece has to be hand-carved to a rough shape. Most of that is done. Then filler has to be applied in substantial quantities (this is all to do). Then it has to be smoothed off and painted. After that the wardrobes can be put up and then - only then - can the bed be moved in.

But the lino upstairs is in place, though not quite fully laid. The installer is waiting for the seam-welder to arrive, so the joins all show quite a lot. And correspondingly when the family came to visit for the chestnut fair, they couldn't go into the upstairs bedrooms. The farmhouse was full. And the weather wasn't very good either. Of course, directly they went home, lovely warm sunny autumn weather - over 18 degrees this afternoon.

Pictures of work done recently will follow. This post is really to celebrate the internet connection. Proust has got as far of book two of Cities of the Plains, and this is quite an entertaining stretch too.

excuses, mostly

My computer finally died comprehensively, and of course at the most annoying time. So I've not been able to get back to my blog very easily.

However, the work has come on most impressively (depending, I suppose, on how easily you are impressed). The plumber and the electrician have now finished all they can do, and the main services are all working. For my part, I've almost finished the upstairs bathroom (a limited area of grouting and a few more tiles to do), and I've started work on the plasterboard ceilings downstairs. This involves fitting the plasterboard between the old barn floor joists. All of these have twisted and warped to a greater or lesser extent, which means that each bit of plasterboard has to be cut to fit. And then when, inevitably, it doesn't quite fit, it has to be shaped with a stanley knife to get it around the knots and bulges in the joists. As a result it is slow work. I don't yet have a cordless drill either (it should arrive next week) so it is all a bit of an effort using rather a heavy mains drill, designed more for holes in concrete than sharp screws into plasterboard and wood.

I've done about a third of one room so far, but this understates what has yet to be done. At one side of the room there are no joists to screw into - just a cement block wall. I'll need to find a way to get a support for the boards onto these walls. But I'll do all the rest first while waiting for inspiration to strike. And then there's also the area below the hearth on the next floor, where there is concrete rather than wood. And where the levels are all wrong too. More inspiration needed.

Perhaps Proust will help? I'm now close to the end of the Guermantes Way, having just read Charlus' insane outburst to the narrator. Oddly, my copy of this second volume of the GW is very roughly cut, as if the first reader was using anything except a thin knife - the edge of his finger, perhaps - in his haste to finish the volume. And I can see why (sometimes). The narrative of this book is rather like Jane Austen meets Samuel Beckett. Undeterred, perhaps? the next stop will be the Cities of the Plains.

still an Indian Summer

..... whatever that is. Opinions vary. But it's warm and sunny and dry and ... well, you get the picture. Or you would get a picture if I had a camera, but it too has died on me. So nothing to show, either in the line of late summer days, or shots of the building work, still continuing. No sign of either the plumber or the electrician, but who knows, maybe tomorrow. They've only got a couple of days work to do, and then the barn would be habitable.

I've been repairing the front edge of the silo (the former rainwater cistern) in front of the barn, which one day will be a tiled terrace. I've sliced off the decayed bit with the big angle-grinder and a diamond disk, and I've cast in place a new strip of reinforced concrete. I uncovered some of the old reinforcing rods - over an inch in diameter, lord only knows where they got those from - and I've tried to link my rather thinner reinforcements properly to the old ones. It looks good, and even fairly flat. But what's really difficult is not removing the shuttering too soon. Two weeks would be OK, and longer would be much better if I don't want the edge to break away when I take the wood off. But it's like having a scab to pick. You know you shouldn't, but it just itches so much.

I've also been deafening myself with the thicknesser. It isn't all that noisy when all you're planing is pine, but these are 100-year-old oak planks, and they are as hard as nails. When I went down this evening for a litre of milk from the farm below us, everyone commented that they had heard me at work. Time to get ear defenders I think. For me, that is, not for the neighbours.

And we had a visit from the previous owner: quite a milestone this, as he has previously said that a visit to his old home (the house where he was born) was too painful an experience now that we are living there. We showed him round and said how much we liked living here. And we now think he'll come again.

sickly computer.....

I've been unable to post for the past few days as the computer eventually crashed in a definitive manner. I shipped it off to the local IT shop, who kindly wiped the hard drive and reinstalled a load of software I don't want. On the other hand the computer is now working. On the other, other hand, directly I turned it on I got the blue screen of death, so whatever the problem was hasn't necessarily been fixed - possibly it actually is a hardware problem. We'll see.

In the meantime I have been busy honing what passes for my skills as a tiler and general bathroom installer. I've put up the carreaux de platre round the bath and along the wall, tiled the floor and almost all the rest of the room, and all I have to do (a mere nothing) is grout this bathroom - and start all over again on the second one. Oh, and wait until the fittings are installed, and box in the pipes, and tile over the boxed-in pipes, and grout that, and ....... you get the picture I'm sure. My back certainly feels it's been working, and I've got those nice clean tilers' hands (a week immersed in cement, tile adhesive, and grout - it's a very effective exfoliation treatment). However I do quite like the results in the bathroom - I'll post pictures once the grouting is done, probably after Thursday afternoon.

The weather is wonderful - clear skies, light winds, warm sunshine, no rain, lovely sunsets - I couldn't ask for better. And my figs are ripe too - the first I've had off this tree.

I've got as far as the first part of The Guermantes Way - the fifth volume in the Proust edition I have. As some modern authors' first editions are more valuable if you can find one that hasn't been signed by the author, this first (English) edition turns out to have uncut pages. The ones with cut pages are probably more valuable, as few people get around to reading this far into the Recherche du Temps Perdu (my copy has a previous owner's rubber stamp in the back - and so, Mr M.M. Toland - what was YOUR excuse for not reading this book which you bought 84 years ago? But all the same,his name is a curious echo of the character in A Dance to the Music of Time, Powell's frankly more readable attempt at rivalling Marcel)

not really a blog today

The last few days have been spent working with the tiler and as a result we do now have a bathroom that is finished. "Finished" is a relative term here, as we ran out of some of the tiles (my inability to use a tape-measure) but it's all sufficiently finished for the plumber to install the fittings. Regrettably this won't be until the week after next. We'll finish off the tiling later.

In the meantime I've started work on the upstairs bathrooms, hoping to remember to do things the way our professional showed me. So today it was creative work with "carreaux de platre", and the effect is that the bathroom now looks really rather odd, with mysterious cavities where eventually there will be tiled surfaces. It's a good thing that it's best to wait until the cement dries before trying to put the horizontal slabs on. Because I haven't got any - they are on order at the builders merchant, and should arrive on Monday afternoon.

After months of dry weather the rain has arrived - an impressive thunderstorm last night, and rain on and off today. But it hasn't been a lot of rain - the ground is still quite dry below the surface.

Still reading through Proust (now in the middle of the third book), after a brief digression into Jasper Fforde ("The Fourth Bear"). I found a small link with Ernest Sheperd, another near contemporary of Proust's. Proust mentions disliking being taken "bathing" at the seaside, and mentions the man whose job it was to dip him. From Shepard I knew this simply meant a succession of duckings for the child, firmly held by the bathing man whose job it was to do so, after wading out into the sea, sometimes with a child under each arm. No wonder it wasn't regarded as fun.

still tiling

Our tiler was back today and so we got on with - er - the tiling. No real point in putting up any pictures until it's looking a bit more finished. Right now it's just messy.

I finished both Edgar Wallace and volume 2 of Proust (I wonder how many other people can make that claim?). Bulboro was in the end a bit of a disappointment, though I quite liked the fulsome praise for Mr Harmsworth (Wallace's employer at the time). The book remains something of a puzzle. As far as I have been able to find out it was first published in 1918. But all the internal evidence suggests it was written at some time between maybe 1910 and 1914 - a precarious Liberal government where the loss of a single seat in a by-election could cause the fall of the government. And where the by-election in an industrial town, shortly after a strike by mill workers that is immediately followed by closure of the mill (and the loss of 3000 jobs), is fought solely between the Tories and the "radicals", ie the Liberals who are then in power.

Proust is less of a disappointment - well, you might say it is almost a pleasure. Though I am worried about the nice young man who is telling the story. He seems rather too much attached to his mother, he can't sleep at night without a goodnight kiss from her and goes to any lengths to get one, he has a keen interest in the details of women's clothing, and is said to be "much too good-looking for a boy". I am anxious about what he might grow up to be.

Rain is forecast. There has been virtually none - barring the odd short thunderstorm - since June. But it hasn't arrived yet.

Monday and it's back to work

so it's just like not being retired, in fact.

Our tiler turned up at 8am - just as he had said he would - so I had to get out of bed pretty quickly and go out and say hello. I managed to have a bite of breakfast before starting work with him, putting in the "carreaux de platre" round the bath. As before, he did all the skilful work and I carried the heavy stuff, cleaned the tools, made coffee, etc. What are carreaux de platre you ask? It's a lot easier just to post a picture:



On the left of the bath there will be a flat surface at bath level, with a small cubby-hole underneath at child-accessible level for shampoo, bleach, rat poison, caustic soda etc (just joking). In the left foreground are a couple of the carreaux, which will eventually (tomorrow?) form the tiled surface there. On the right we've left a gap so that there will be access to the taps and drains afterwards. It will have a removable tiled panel there, held in with magnets. We are now making grandiose plans for the extensive use of this newly-discovered material upstairs: tiled surfaces, shelves, boxed-in pipes - just about everywhere, in fact. As I plan to be doing it myself we can possibly expect something a bit rustic.

Here is the hearth, as finally finished. The tile propped against the wall shows what colour the terra-cotta was before the layers of linseed oil went on. And maybe the grout stained it a bit too. The tiler said it was OK. Now all we have to do is get the stove carted back from Sellindge to France and installed here.



The electrician was hard at work all day, and - almost a miracle after such a long time running everything in the barn from a single extension lead - we now have working plug points in two of the rooms, lights in the same rooms, and a power supply to the kitchen too, all of them fused and safe. The rest, he said, will follow fairly soon: he didn't want anything live before fitting lamps, spotlights, sockets in the appropriate places. But as he's now gone off to lay a 200 sq meter heated floor elsewhere, we shan't see him for a while. On the other hand the boss turned up unexpectedly to see how the work was going on - and, I think, to apologise for the heated floor interruption to it all - and we were able to get him to agree to install the cooker hood for us. That was good news.

And Caro went down to the Tresor Public in the local town to pay our income taxes. She said she was the only paying customer there, which was something of a surprise, as tomorrow is the deadline for final payments for the year. The man behind the counter was really charming and helpful. He even wrote out the cheque for her ("it's not often I get a chance to write a cheque this big" he said, but with luck he was joking). Next year it will be monthly instalments, much less painful.

Edgar Wallace's Bulboro is proving to be a better book than I'd thought, not that I've had much time for reading today. I now find myself wondering how this particular copy got where it was: the people selling it clearly spoke very little English. Next time I buy an English-language book here I'll remember to ask. Or more likely, forget.

a day of rest?

Well, Sunday anyway.

We went to Le Trioulou, just down the hill (and up again) where it's there fete Sunday: lots of boot sale people and professional antique dealers. In fact a surprising number as the commune is very small, less than 150 people, but a good hundred or so stalls. But not a lot worth buying! I found myself some books - French translations of Philip Pullman, Larry Niven, and Frank Herbert, and an old Edgar Wallace (in English), first published in 1918, though this is an undated reprint from about ten years later. I couldn't resist the dustjacket:



And the publisher's blurb was pretty good too, if perhaps lacking in confidence about the literary qualities of detective fiction in general:



It's that "deeply interesting" bit I'm waiting for: Wallace has interrupted his close contemporary, Proust (in the middle of volume two, poor old Swann having such a hard time with that girl Odette, she is really no better than she should be). In a book written in the momentous year 1918, it's curious how Wallace fails to mention the first world war at all.

Another surprise at Le Trioulou was to find our joiner (or on this evidence, cabinet-maker) with his home-made "orgue de barbarie", playing punched card tunes for very little by way of cash returns:



Then, lunch served by the commune's volunteers, surprisingly good, with table service, a lot better than standing in a queue for half an hour, particularly as the wine was already on the tables (the water was too, to be fair) when we sat down.

Finally back to the barn to grout the hearth. And it looks OK, maybe better than that, so hopefully a picture tomorrow after a final clean-up.

Complementary activities

Today I've been making a hole in one wall, and filling in holes in another wall.

We are in a ridiculous situation with the cooker hood. On the kitchen-fitters advice we bought it, cheaply, on the internet. But since he didn't supply it, he's reluctant to fit it for us. He says the hole through the wall (70cm long) is something he can't do. Our plumber should do it, he says, as plumbers have the required long drills. Our plumber says a long drill won't do for a hole that needs to be 130mm diameter: it needs a special machine, which he can borrow, that cuts, from the outside, using high-pressure water. It's true, he says, that the water will spoil the plasterboard on the kitchen wall when it reaches it, and that, as the hole has to be cut from the outside, he can't do it easily. It's fifteen feet up the wall, and he'll need to find a farmer with a tractor and a forklift fitting, to get him high enough. His special machine has to be fastened to the wall before it can start cutting, and he can't work from a ladder. But we know from prior experience with the balcony that a large tractor won't fit down the lane beside the wall where the hole is to be cut, so it's a special narrow tractor that is needed - does one of our neighbours have one? Oh, and would the kitchen fitter please come back and mark precisely where the hole has to go?

I went up a ladder myself, removed a large stone that was conveniently just where the hole needs to go. True, this took a while as it had to be split up with a cold chisel to get it out. After that the rest of the masonry was only held in place with really soft lime mortar - the kind of stuff the man in the condemned cell needs, if he's to escape using only his fingernails - and I had a hole through and reasonably well supported (the rest of the wall didn't fall down) thanks to the large stone having been in the right place. The stones around it formed enough of an arch-shaped hole to stay in place.

This morning I'd fetched from the builders merchant two 35kg bags of white hydrated lime, which I hope will make a mortar that matches in colour and texture what has been used all round the farmhouse. I made a cement-free (lime and sand only) mortar and had a go at repointing part of the farmhouse wall. It has been attacked by either birds or insects - or more likely both - that have removed the pointing to a depth of five or six inches. The mortar seems to have worked pretty well, and I'll be able to judge the appearance tomorrow when it will be reasonably dry. However I've only done a small area and there is perhaps ten times as much still to do later. Fortunately (and curiously) all the worst areas are within easy reach of the ground. Low flying birds?

I also had a go at mortaring-in the metal frame of our electricity meter box, on the outside wall of the farmhouse. It is fairly agricultural anyway (I mean it is a large and ugly piece of galvanised ironwork) and it was also never very well installed from the start. Then successive electricians, fitting first a new earth, then replacing the meters, and finally putting in the three-phase cable for the barn, have made it a lot worse. It looks a lot more secure now. If I am able to get it completely watertight, I may be able to avoid the colonisation by hornets that seems to take place every other summer - a fine surprise when checking the mains trip switch or reading the meter.

Also put a coat of linseed oil on the balcony (and dripped all over the tiles by the pool, oh dear), and two coats on the hearth tiles. They are now dark and shiny (pictures to follow) and it should be possible to grout them tomorrow.

Leontine came to visit, and said she'd been kept awake by the cows. Yesterday her nephew's veal calves had been sold - they are raised outside in the fields around her house, and ours too, but with their mothers, the right way to do it. But the cows were very upset (Leontine said) and they still had milk, so they lowed all night. As they are all Salers cows, with impressive sharp horns, there's no chance of milking them even if anyone was inclined to try. This seemed rather a "Silence of the Lambs" moment for someone we'd always regarded as inured to agricultural life.

Friday and we're still working

Another hot sunny day, and after a trip into town, I've been working on the interior - I laid a hearth of terra-cotta tiles yesterday, and today I treated them with a lot of coats of linseed oil (to seal them) with a view to getting them grouted on Sunday. The last time we worked with similar tiles which we hadn't treated enough, the grout stained the tiles which were still very porous.

The trip into town was to ask at the bank why the money I had transferred to pay my year's French taxes - due next Tuesday - hadn't arrived. An unhelpful man said he had no idea. I asked whether it was being held up so they could do their "money-laundering" checks (a phone call asking me what I intend to spend the money on) - this has happened half a dozen times before. No, he said. But mysteriously the cash arrived in my account later in the day. As it turns out, I wouldn't have been able to pay the tax bill - the Tresor Public is only open Monday to Thursday, so the Republique will have to wait until Monday for my money.

Here are some pictures of the barn interior, complete with builders bric-a-brac and cartons, bathroom fittings, tile cement etc.

The first shows the downstairs entrance, with the shower for people using the pool on the right - the only bathroom tiled so far - and our bedroom door on the left.



The next shows the interior of the bedroom, with the tiler's equipment (and his trousers) waiting for his return after a month's break, hopefully this coming Monday.



The next is a view of the main floor, looking towards the kitchen area (the whole floor is open plan, and we hope it isn't too drafty)



The next shows a view further round to what will be the dining area, and also the hearth that has just been tiled (lots of plastic to protect the floor from cement stains)



Then a view across the balcony: there is no handrail yet but we are hoping that we'll get something fairly soon. It will probably be a bit of rope netting fixed to those temporary builders' posts, but eventually it should be mostly glass.



Finally the upstairs landing. I haven't posted any pictures of the upstairs bedrooms as they are hard to photograph, and they look pretty odd as the eaves slope right down to the floor and none of the walls look as if they are vertical. Stacked along by the rail over the lightwell are tiles and bathroom fittings, which one day, maybe soon, will be in the bathrooms.



The electrician has put in all the switches and plug points, but they are all protected against paint by temporary red plastic covers. The lights and sockets will probably be working early next week: the electrician (Claude) has been getting the distribution board organised today. He expects it all to work first off. I have never seen quite so many wires, but hopefully he does actually know which is which.

down the Lot

After getting back from the long weekend out west near Bordeaux, we have two friends staying for a couple of days. As it was fine sunny weather, we decided that Mike and I would take the canoe trip down the Lot.

It's out of season now, so the operation is a bit basic - just two employees, both at the base at Vieillevie. The first of these has the job of taking your money and acting reassuring. We asked about the time for the trip back down the 10km run of the river, and he said that with the water level as it is at the end of the summer we could reckon on two hours if we paddled hard, and two and a half if we took it easy. The other employee drove us up to Entraygues in a small minibus, and opened up the canoe base there. He found us life jackets, paddles, and canoes, and told us that we were welcome to have one of the many brand new and unused crash helmets, but nobody else used them. He gave us "un briefing", telling us to take the first cataract, the weir, on the left, the next two on the right, though when we get to "La Pierre Plate" we could if we wished go over the top of the flat stone for a bit of amusement.

There were just the six of us, a young couple, and old couple of bikers, and us 60-year olds. We pushed off first. I was in some doubt about getting through without a ducking, as my one previous trip had had me in the water at the first major cascade. This time, though, we were expecting much less in the way of white water so I felt I ought to be confident. We sailed over the weir, no trouble in doing it but I was surprised at the flow of water there. Then we approached the place where I had had previously gone in, and it was pretty vigorous but we stayed upright and got pretty wet with waves over the bows. We reached the Pierre Plate - we could see the rapids but there was no sign of the stone, so we picked a route and went down the roller-coaster, again just keeping in the canoe. The remaining rapids were all pretty entertaining too, but we stayed onboard all the way down. In between, the scenery was a delight, the water was cool and the sun was hot, the banks of the Lot towered above us with low oak woods all the way up (and a very occasional house lost in the trees), and we either paddled or relaxed and let the stream take us.

We got back to the Viellevie base feeling the journey had been quicker than we'd expected, and had a little trouble beaching the canoe as the current past the landing place was quite strong.

The reassuring young man asked if we'd enjoyed ourselves (we certainly had). He then said that when we had left Vieillevie to go upstream to start the trip, the river had been flowing at 25 cubic meters a second, but that shortly afterwards EDF had turned on the electricity at one of their dams upstream and by the time we got back the river was doing 90 cubic meters a second - a good springtime flow. We'd got back after an hour and a half, as the flow was twice as fast as normal for the time of year. Oh - we said. Maybe that was why we hadn't seen the Pierre Plate - it was under a meter of (fast) water. So we'd had a proper descent in good vigorous conditions, and had a really good time too.

Here are the two navigators enjoying a rest afterwards, in front of a couple of inflatables (must be the easy way?):



and here just me, with a gentle bit of the river behind:



I am sure no future summer visitor will be able to escape a canoe trip with me - it was that much fun. On a two-person canoe there's much less by way of paddling hard to keep up with others who are themselves paddling hard to keep up with you. And it's a great way to see the river and its banks in comfort (if it's warm enough) and with the occasional adrenaline rush thrown in.

out for the weekend

Up early this morning and heading west, for Roger's 60th birthday and a visit to Jean.
And still getting on with odd bits of work in the barn, while waiting for the electrician.
On Thursday night we were woken by the sound of horses hooves in the night, and got out of bed to put up the string (thick binder twine) that serves as a gate and sometimes keeps out cattle. It turned out not to be Jean-Pierre's horses, but the Piganiol donkeys instead, who had got everywhere - on top of Jean-Louis P's silo, to his annoyance. I think the main problem is that the donkeys share a field with the cows, so if they start pushing through the electric fence, many litres of milk will follow.
Read an interesting find, Ernest Shepard's "Drawn from Memory", a perfect small book and an example to us all of how to write autobiography - it covers only the author's seventh year (1887). The illustrations are lovely. I'd long known what a crossing sweeper was, but Shepard shows what the swept crossing looked like (in summer). The pictures of the great Whiteley's fire prompted me to sign up in Wikipedia and correct their article. And I've started again on Proust. Last time I became becalmed about four volumes in. We'll see if this time I can manage the lot.

September already

and only four months to Christmas. Will the barn be ready by then? I've no idea...

The electrican came to say that he'd not be starting this week, but next Monday instead. A lively woman came from the other side of Aurillac to measure up for the lino in the upstairs bedrooms, real retro stuff in several alarming shades of yellow, orange, red and blue, but she isn't sure she can get what we want here in France, so she'll also quote for getting a finish on the walls that the Moroccans left a bit rough.

In between times I got a third and final coat of linseed oil on the doors, without scalding either myself or any passer-by, and finished off the glassfibre wallpaper. That was a nasty job so I'm very pleased it's finished.

I'm possibly giving the impression it's been all work and no play lately, so here's a list of what I've been reading in the last three weeks:

Two Niven/Pournelles (Lucifer's Hammer, and the Mote in God's Eye), re-reads, obviously,
Niven's Rainbow Mars - I'd not read this before and I shouldn't have bothered
Two William Boyd's, The New Confessions and Any Human Heart, rather similar in that both are birth to death narratives set in the 20th century - I preferred the second
Griff Rees Jones' Semi Detached (I only later thought of Manfred Man)
Robert Harris' Ghost - hmm, he doesn't think much of Blair, does he?
Floyd V Filson - A New Testament History, very very badly written but fascinating
and a slim book about the J Lyons lithographs

One reason for getting the barn habitable is that it will let me get more books out of cardboard boxes, though quite where they will actually go will depend on how I get on with building the barn-floorboard bookshelves. However, I have marked down for future use (as the front of the computer desk) a large new oak truss, left over from the balcony, just slightly too heavy for me to carry. I'd just better get it inside to dry out a little more - it is supposedly already seasoned.

Still not a bank holiday

...and still a good hot August day. Our neighbours say that thunderstorms are on their way later in the week, but who knows? The grass is now looking distinctly parched.

Marcel the menuisier was back at work today, and the barn doors are now finished off properly with the fixed upper portion in place.



The upper part hadn't had a coat of linseed oil when the picture was taken earlier today, but it has now. I am not sure how much of a good idea it is to be at the top of a tall and rickety stepladder with a saucepan of near-boiling oil, but fortunately this time there were no problems. It needs three more coats though, so there's still plenty of time to do something stupid.

We spent the morning putting up more glassfibre wallpaper (on the chipboard ceiling). One more day and it should be done, and it'll be a good thing as it's a really horrid job, prickly fibres all over everything. Then this afternoon off to the tip with a carload of cardboard, formerly protecting the new wood floor. The tip experience here is quite different from Ashford, where large numbers of surly council workers try to make you feel unwelcome and resolutely ignore you if you're trying to shift something heavy. There's just the one man at the Maurs dechetterie, and he shakes your hand when you arrive, helps you unload the rubbish, and compares (favourably) the ability of the Dutch and the English with that of the French when it comes to sorting out the recyclable stuff before they get there. Of course, I've no idea what he says to his French friends about the repeated visits made by the Dutch and the English.

But he wishes you a polite au revoir and bon continuation as if he genuinely hopes to see you again soon.

The cardboard might in principle have gone into a bonfire. We consulted a neighbour about having one. He considered the pros and cons, yes it is a bit dry, you'd have to be careful, make sure the grass doesn't catch - only mentioning at the end that in dry weather like this it is actually interdit. That's presumably a minor consideration round here.

Not a bank holiday weekend here ......

... so of course the sun has been shining and it's been a lovely day.

Quite a lot has been going on over the last couple of weeks: we've had Jane come to stay, just back from her honeymoon and still married apparently she says. She's helped out a lot and we've gone ahead with some serious work - tiling and grouting the terrace outside the bedroom, painting the large main room, walls and ceiling, putting up fibreblass wallpaper on the ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms and a whole lot more that I have already managed to forget (it'll come back to me, Jane, really it will).

Here's the finished terrace:



After it was done I discovered that I hadn't quite got the fall of the surface right, and if it should ever rain (I had to simulate it with a sprinkler on the garden hose) there'd be a big puddle right outside the door. So I got out the angle grinder and diamond disk, cut out three of the smaller stones and relaid them a centimeter or two lower as a gutter. This has either solved the drainage problem, or at least moved it somewhere else. You can hardly see the joins.

Then at last the menuisier got his men back on site, and we've now got the balcony in place, with two-thirds of the floor planks down. But there's no sign of a railing round it - that has all yet to be ordered, which is about what we should have expected. Still, we'll have plenty of time to decide what it should look like. Monsieur G has promised us a temporary rail, probably scaffold poles and netting - tatty chic maybe?

Here's the balcony in situ:



It was installed using M Vaissiere's nice new farm tractor. The tractor had to come in via the field and M Espeisse's woods, as it was too wide for the public track behind the barn. Fortunately Monsieur V lives opposite Jean-Louis Carriere, who farms the field, and was able to ring him up and ask permission to cut the fence down. This is how it's done, health and safety please look the other way:



Then on Friday Marcel came with young Sebastian and installed the main doors. We immediately had him take them back off again so we could treat them with linseed oil and turps, and - pricked by our conscience - we recruited Sylvain and Aurelian to help us put them back on, feeling it might have been rather a lot for Marcel to manage by himself on Monday morning. Here they are, and the doors too:



The upper, fixed, section should go up on Monday, and then we might have the "barn door" look we've been aiming for. Four years on and it will look like it did before we bought it, an achievement for sure.

Finally, I had to do something to prevent weeds growing in the wall between the new balcony and the main room. The menuisier suggested concrete, but I decided to use a concrete infill (this helps to hold the balcony to the wall - there are great big bolts embedded in it) topped off with a couple of inches of mortar and some more of our tiles. I liked the result:



I was using up what I had left over, so the larger tiles, which are 28 x 28cms, were cut down from 60 x 40cm slabs, and the smaller ones were offcuts from everything else.

I now feel something of an expert on laying heavy stone tiles. If it needs to be hammered with a heavy wooden mallet into a bed of mortar, then I'm your man. Even the grouting is now something I can make work (funny word, grout, more one of Neasden FC's players than part of the English language. The OED says it was originally a word for a coarse porridge, then dregs or mud, and that the modern usage is only possibly derived from that, noting that there's a Fench word "grouter". Well not round here there's not - it's just "joint" in modern France. Possibly Mr Onions never used grout himself, and didn't see the resemblance to porridge before it sets).

hot and back to normal ..... almost

Why do I always feel the need to complain? It's very hot today, and even more humid, with hotter weather forecast. I think it's because I'd like to be getting on with laying those tiles, but it would be just a little too much. My back is pretty well normal again, and the computer is working - though I have lost all the addresses and e-mails in Outlook, so I'll scrabbling round to retrieve these and maybe this time I'll remember to back them up. Or not, of course.

I'd laid a few tiles on Sunday but used up the last of the sand and cement. So today I went and collected another ton of sand and some bags of cement from Maurs. It was shovelling the sand off the trailer into the sandpit that convinced me that it was too hot to work. I'm not entirely sure that I'm doing it right - I've a feeling that tiles bedded on mortar need a minimum thickness of mortar, and maybe I don't have that. And I can't increase it without running the risk of rain washing into the bedroom. It's probably better to have a few tiles coming loose - they can always be re-fixed, than having solidly fixed tiles that are just that lttle bit too high for draining away the rainwater.

So I am trying to relax and swim a little in the pool, and I'm keeping the shutters closed in an attempt to have a bedroom cool enough to sleep in tonight.

and then the computer crashed

As if my back wasn't enough, when I turned on the computer I had the blue screen of death this morning, followed by a corrupted Windows load - well, it didn't load at all. Eventually I reloaded Windows from the disc that had mysteriously arrived at Elm Grove a few months back (thus erasing all my settings, drivers, software, etc, but not the data files luckily), and after several chats with Simon I reinstalled the wireless driver and got back onto the internet.

I haven't yet been able to resurrect Outlook, though.

Still, it's nice warm weather and my back is certainly improving if I don't spend too much time hunched over the PC.

Last night it was Stephanie's (35th) birthday, and I joined about 25 other adults and a dozen children (though I may have been counting the same ones more than once) for drinks and a barbecue. I should have known that if I got there at 7.30 - as Didi suggested - the food wouldn't be served until 10.30, so there was plenty of time to chat. Too much of it spent listening to Jean-Pierre, but not understanding very much - summer problems with the weather I think. The children had a new kitten, which tolerated being carried around by the smaller children remarkably well. But then Leontine's dogs went for it, and it retreated under a car with a great deal of hissing and spitting. And THEN it retreated inside the engine bay, where it defeated everyone's efforts (including its own) at removal, until eventually Didi dismantled part of the engine shielding and got it out. Prior to that it could be seen inside the grille on the front of the car, walking back and forth and mewing loudly, and occasionally sticking its paws out through various small openings. After that it was confined to the house....

It was nice to meet Didi's and Stephanie's parents - the former a lot older than the latter (is Didi a youngest child and Stephanie an oldest one?) - but really the entire neighbourhood was there, so all in all a pleasant way to spend a summer evening.

work suspended

Not the best day yesterday. A lovely morning, clear skies, warm, sunny, as usual (I shouldn't say that), and I got ready to tackle the tiling on the patio. I'd ground down the excess cement round the existing tiles, chased out the gaps between them so I could grout later, and generally had everything ready to start.

Then, just as I got up from kneeling by the edge of the patio, a nasty pain in my back and I find I can't bend. It'll be a few days I'm sure before I can touch my toes again. So I had to force myself to an idle lifestyle, lying down and reading, and enjoying the peace and quiet.

Well, a quiet night (as they all are) with clear skies, and as I woke up about 4am, I went to lie down by the pool to watch the perseid meteor shower ("the Tears of St Lawrence"). It was a good (but not spectacular) show, as the moon was bright and quite close to the radiant. I might try again tonight, but the moon will be much the same: it'll depend on whether I wake early.

This morning feeling very slightly better I went to Calvinet for some painkillers in the car, then off to the supermarket, naturally leaving the shopping list behind. In fact walking about seems to make my back feel less painful, so I plan a short stroll this afternoon.

Getting hot but yes it's August

Hot sun all day today. First thing, though, while it was still cool, I went for a run - just the short loop round by Lestrade de Gales - it was the first time for I'd guess nearly a year. I can't say it was a real pleasure actually out pounding the roads, but it was nice when I'd finished. I'll give it a day or so before going out again.

My first job was to prop up the peach tree. It's now slung from the wall of the barn, using the now redundant electricity barckets. The slings didn't seem quite enough, so I cut a heavy crutch in the woods, and that's also holding it up. It's now just about possible to get in the door without bending impossibly low. Regrettably while coming down the stepladder, a brief wobble led me to speed up my descent, and I cracked my knee on the ladder quite painfully. What have stepladders got against me?

Then I grouted the tiles I'd put in yesterday and afterwards went to have lunch with Tony and Anne. Cheese souffles and nice chilled rose. We commiserated ourselves about the absence of M Goutel and the lack of progress on our respective bits of joinery: T&A are having to put up with some fairly rough temporary handrails on their stairs and balcony. But I think there's a good chance of getting Mr G back and working after the 21st. We'll see.

In the afternoon I shifted the patio tiles off the patio ready for work to start putting them down. It now really looks like a dauntingly large area to cover, but maybe that's just because it's so hot today.

Here are the tiles as they are today.



The picture makes the area to be done look fairly small, but in fact it's about 25 square meters. And ideally it would all be done at the same time (for better cohesion of the mortar bed), so I'll try to get all the preparatory work done, and the sand and cement in place, before starting up the mixer. But when I do the upright ones round the edge I should also be able to do the cut stones by the main door first, as these too need to be glued rather than cemented. That'll give a slightly smaller area to cover.

Monday evening

It's one of those magical evenings. The sun set about half an hour ago, and there's not a cloud in the sky and the colours blend from copper over in the west through progressively lighter then darker blues over to the east. A few lights are twinkiling down in the valley but the first stars are not yet visible. There are almost no sounds to be heard - perhaps a distant donkey, and the occasional voice wafting up from the Piganiols' farm down the hill. No birds singing, no dogs barking, not even a cicada. The air is just cooling down and the first bats are appearing.

Yesterday was a day off - overcast and cool. I went out to lunch with Peter Graham and Charles Barr - a delicious and well-sized duck, followed by Charles' blackberry fool and perhaps rather more wine than was entirely good for me.

Today I took the trailer to Rodez and collected half a ton of paving stones - 30cm square limestone flags. They'll be going onto the patio outside the bedroom, hopefully in the next few days. As the picture shows I split the load between the trailer and the back of the car.



The 120 tiles look suspiciously like quite a small load (it felt heavy enough loading them on at Rodez and then off at Lessal), but each tile weighs a little more than 5kg. I weighed a selection first before deciding to take the trailer.

The triangular gap between the lower and upper paved area has been niggling me for months. If our Moroccan builders had managed to get the end of the paving for the pool at right angles to the wall of the barn it wouldn't be there, but as the main paved area needs to be square there's a long thin fillet of bare concrete that has been asking for the treatment.

And today it got it. Here's before and after:




And the sun came out to show the difference. It's odd how the new tiles look as if they are set crookedly compared to the ones on the left: in fact they are all straight lines. Maybe it'll look better when the grouting is done (maybe that'll be tomorrow if I can find the grout).

By the time I was done it was nearly seven, and as I went for a shower my mobile beeped (this was very unusual in that the phone was switched on and I noticed the message). It was Janey reminding me to look at the Positano webcam where she and Mikey would be waving, slowly, as the webcam refreshes only every five seconds. And after a bit of an exchange of texts I could make out two small white specks (six pixels?) which were them - and it's a lovely evening there too.

Now at ten it's getting dark and the cicadas are chirruping away - so many of them it's a constant blended tone - and the stars are coming out too.

Warm today

I clearly shouldn't have mentioned the rain. It was back to temperatures in the thirties, clear skies, and not even a hint of rain. I was reduced to putting the sprinkler on in the hope that the grass outside the farmhouse hasn't died completely (that's what it looks like, though).

I spent the day doing little things punctuated by frequent cups of tea (there are three kilos of loose lapsang to be got through). So I improved the cover on the sand and gravel store - in time this will be the compost bin, really it will - and cleaned the pool, then swam in it (I had to check that the water was OK), dead-headed the roses - two of them look like they have a fatal disease - and then watered them just the same, cleaned the willow leaves out of the gutters - assisted by Aurelian, who clearly thought that me and ladders were a bad combination - I'd noticed the gutters were blocked when the storm arrived, evicted the redstart and her last remaining chick from the barn (now just outside the window, possibly complaining), thought about propping up the peach tree (there's already a branch broken on the apple from the weight of the fruit), hmm, that doesn't count as something I've done, does it?, read the rest of the appalling "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer (don't get me started on how bad it is. In fact I wish I hadn't bothered getting started on it myself), and took the wedding beer down to the Piganiols.

Then as twilight arrived and the day just began to cool down, I reheated yesterday's pork stew with home-grown apples (it's always better the second day - maybe it's the wine you have to add?) and - note for the future - just don't try cooking broccoli while writing up the blog. It'll be overcooked.

Back in deepest France

9am on Friday morning, and I've just had breakfast and unpacked the car. While I've been away it has hardly rained at all - the grass is looking very yellow and thin - while overnight and this morning there has been a spectacular thunderstorm with lightning on the hills all round the house, and heavy rain. Now it's daylight the thunder is still rumbling but the lightshow has finished, and we're up in the raincloud with no visibility beyond the nearest hedges.

11 hours driving yesterday and I was hit by that curious evolutionary (?) problem, coming over really sleepy between 2 and 4 in the afternoon - the heat of the day on those African savannahs, and the best time to lie down. Really difficult staying awake, and then it simply passed off entirely and the rest of the drive was so easy.

The wedding went off perfectly (and I'll write about it later) but now it's back to Mourjou and its builders. Three of them promised to work while I was away, but of the three only M Bouquier actually did: so we do have a kitchen, though as the plumber wasn't on site it isn't yet connected up and can't be used. The electrician hasn't shown up at all, while the menuisier, who positively assured me he'd be hard at work on the balcony, also hasn't set foot anywhere near here. But on the plus side, M le Maire has made a really good start in tiling the bathrooms, and he'd made no promises at all. The downstairs shower room is pretty well finihed - the one part he hasn't done is clearly waiting for us to say what we want him to do.

The weather has had a startling effect on the peach tree outside the front door of the barn: the large crop of peaches are twice the size they were before, and the tree is bowed down with the weight making it hard to get in the front door. The peaches are however rock-hard at the present, so it'll be a while before we start enjoying them.

On getting back late last night I knocked on Leontine's door and we had a chat about the wedding and the grandchildren, but didn't stay long as the house needed opening up. Lots of cobwebs (one of those fun jobs for later this morning), and the bats seem to have moved out of the kitchen window and into the attic. Everything else seems absolutely fine, which is distinctly encouraging, and no sign of the flies which can sometimes provide a field sport for the flyswatters.

This morning Jean-Pierre was filling jerricans of water for his cows, which he has moved to a field at Leynhac (not enough grass here), and the field next to our barn is only occupied by his pretty brown-blonde horse and her foal.



This might explain the absence of flies. Jean-Pierre helped me unload the bandsaw from the car, as it is too heavy for me to do by myself. Everything - particularly the grandfather clock - arrived safely and undamaged, and the clock is now ticking away happily in the room next door. It can't yet go into the barn - it will have to wait until the plugpoints are fitted and the walls are painted. Next week? Or next year?

We'll have a bit of extra decorating in the barn as the redstart has raised another brood in the barn, and the signs of occupation can be seen on absolutely every flat surface, but particularly - of course - on the wooden staircase that we sanded down so carefully. The (single) chick seems to be sufficiently large to be evicted, so I'll try to flush her and her mother out, and then make sure the windows stay closed as much as possible.

Jane and Mike's Wedding

After spending the weeks before the wedding helping get the garden ready, and getting the Austin ten not just MOTed but actually ready to drive (and I have the scars to prove it) the most vital task left was to get the beer in. Some very nice (they tell me) Pullman bitter from Hepworth's brewery in Horsham. I hope it had enough time to settle.



Finally Saturday arrived, threatening rain, but it held off till late in the afternoon.

I'd been practising with the Traction - the pedals seemed rather close together - and I was able to get the bride to the church in what I hope was real style. Jane looked lovely, and I felt very proud taking her up the aisle. Will's sermon was - shall we say - idiosyncratic: the first time anyone present had seen the preacher produce a real iron anvil in the pulpit. And by the end of the service Jane and Mikey were well and truly married, and back on out to the Traction.

Luckily Lydia's white umbrellas came in useful, and the guests had a bit of time to enjoy the garden. Mikey's two latest rockets whizzed into a darkening sky, and - I am sure this is a good omen - for the first time ever the retrieve parachute opened and we all saw the controlled descent.



Then into the marquee for drinks, a treasure hunt, goldfish (all safely swimming in the pond now) a good meal, a few short speeches, and The Cake




Followed - eventually - by the Cosmic Sausages, who were even better than we had remembered from Peckham.

A small step for man ....

Today I finished the step down into the barn - one bit of concrete and tiling that I've done entirely myself. As a result it's a bit irregular. The concrete sloped slightly, so the glue for the flagstones had to be quite thick to make up the level. And the last flagstone isn't quite level with the others. But after grouting it all it doesn't look too bad. In fact it looks better than in the photo, and at last the original tiles put in a couple of years ago by our Moroccan team are grouted and cleaned up, and match the others. I'm hoping that the grout will keep the rain out too - it used to get in under the doorframe.

If I had to do it again I'd know how to do it better (getting a flat concrete surface would be a good start). With glue this thick it'll probably take a week or so before it's fully hardened.

This is a very minor part of what's been going on over the last few weeks. The spring weather has kept me away from the blog - hot sunshine for the best part of a month, with just enough rain to keep the grass growing so fast it needs cutting two or three times a week. But the last few days have seen thunderstorms and rain, and have also brought our builders back. Finally, the staircase is in, and Marcel is finishing off the tricky bits. There are missing risers at the top and bottom of each flight, and these are rebated into the stairs on three of their four sides. This makes putting them in an exercise in advanced woodwork. His young assistant Sebastian is fitting the cladding along the sides of the veluxes in the stairwell. The effect is a real transformation. I had almost stopped thinking the work would ever be finished, and this one piece of work has made everything seem possible again.

The owner of the joinery business, M Goutel, has had some difficulty finding workers to the work he's said he'll do. As a result, he's started training us up for it. I've been sawing off plasterboard ready for the upstairs ceilings to go in, and Caro has been taping up and filling the joints in the plasterboard in the kitchen. he's kindly supplied us with brand new stainless steel jointing trowels/spatulas, and even came along with half a tub of the filler. it occurs to me that perhaps he intends paying us the minimum wage, and then invoicing us for the cost of the work we've done (plus his profit margin).

Still, he's promised us the balcony too, later this week, and that the men will stay with us until the work is all finished. That should be most of June taken care of, then.

The tiles for the bathrooms haven't arrived yet, so we have something of a delay their. We're hoping that Raymond will be able to find the couple of days needed to install the walk-in shower, and enclose the downstairs bath (and tile a bit). After that we'll try to get on with the rest ourselves.