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.