Apprentices are getting older

For the last three days I've been helping the mayor to tile the ground floor of the barn. As tiler's labourer I'm allowed to mix the glue - really a special cement - cart the flagstones around, advise on where to put them, and occasionally use the big water cooled saw to cut the flagstones up - and at the time of writing I still have all my fingers.

I've learnt how to lay out a floor like this, and how to make sure that the flagstones go in the right places. I've also learnt that not all these nice limestone flags are quite the same thickness - so we have to use more glue than normal to accomodate this - and that not all of them have been cut to quite the right size.

But the main thing is that I've learnt how hard it is to do all this for seven or eight hours a day, without a break (and remember, this is just my first three days). The glue mixing is what really gets tiring. I'm mixing about 15 kg of glue at a time, in a bucket using a trowel. It has to be mixed so it is only just fluid: a very dry mix indeed, a bit like bread dough in texture, and, like bread mixing, there musn't be any lumps or dry bits in it.

The good news is that we've been getting on very well, with one room completely paved and the other two-thirds done. It's not grouted yet, but even so it's real progress. I've been able to keep the mayor on his knees most of the day, passing him the stones and mixing the glue so he can keep hard at the difficult job of getting them put down straight and level. With our "opus romain" layout this isn't as easy as it would be with tiles all of the same size.the same size and shape (as he said with some feeling).

We've got a surprising quantity of stones left so I am beginning to wonder whether we've over-ordered. It'll be a good thing if we have, as we can use the surplus outside.

I'll post pictures in the next day or two when we've something more finished to show. But with luck we'll be able to tell the joiner to get started on putting the staircase in next week. It's nearly a year since it was delivered and it would be quite something to be able to get rid of the ladder to the upstairs and have a stairwell we can't fall down.