Demolition In Progress

“Ca va pour demain a 8 heures?” asked our builder when he popped in after work on Wednesday. “Ca va” we said, and do you know, he and his brother turned up at 7.45 on Thursday morning, armed with scaffolding towers, heavy breaking tools and huge smiles. Now, it is sometimes a dangerous thing to generalise but our experience of English builders has mostly been such that when they say, for example, 8 o’clock, we think they mean 10 o’clock, and when they say tomorrow, they mean next week….

As I write to you this morning, the balcony is almost down and they are now tackling the huge steels which held it in place. Next job: the tower! We are impressed with their attitude: they get on with the job, stopping only – as the French do – for lunch and a morning and evening “petit café”. We can already see the difference in terms of light and space in our garden and although the dust and rubble abound, it is truly exciting to see the exterior of this beautiful property take shape.

Eddie & Alfie – now almost fluent in French of course – nose about amongst the rubble, not bothered in the least by the mess. The pigeons however are having to find a new home and we notice them flying across to the top of our Church, no doubt aware that God loves all animals and will doubtless allow them in. We noticed a cat peering out of one of the small windows of the tower this morning, perhaps hoping to profit from the pigeons’ moving home day in some way. Several neighbours look up as they pass by on their way to the boulangerie for their morning croissant, interested to see the works in progress. So we really have set the cat amongst the pigeons. You know, I just couldn’t resist getting that in...

I cannot emphasise enough the benefits of local recommendation. Our builders came to us after a chat I had with our local epicier and we have now found a charming and capable electrician after the couple who own our bar, recently refurbished, gave him a good write up. He spent an hour with us going over what we can and cannot do. Although one can have plug sockets in bathrooms here, they must be at least 60 cm. from the water outlet and cables must be buried in walls to a thickness of 3 cm. He will come next week to install a huge fuse board and will connect enough cables to serve our 2 ensuites and 3 bedrooms: the remainder will be done as we go along. After that Mr. Fix It will be tiling and fixing up lights and those soft towels and elegant soap dishes I have been dreaming of will finally be put in place.

Our bar will be filled tonight with guys from the village watching the France v Uruguay World Cup game. Mr. Fix It is so taken with living in France that he is now rooting for them – although I have a sneaking feeling that he will be cheering England along too once our guests arrive in a couple of weeks’ time. But today it is “Allez France!”

Meanwhile we are blessed with strong sun until late each evening and love the greater contrast of light and shadow which being so far south offers: no wonder so many great painters were inspired to come to this region of France. Mr. Fix It seems to be equally inspired, perhaps the more so because he – and I – take time to enjoy life here, think about what we really want to do and always stop at some stage during the day to look around us.

Alexis

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