Wood and rain

We arrived in St. André under the rain on Friday night but the good news was that the electrician had been and we had lift-off in the mezzanine. Jules was eager to sort out his speaker system and Sky box. At first the Sky box was telling us there was no signal which could have been a disaster but luckily Jules has several spare boxes and when he switched it for another one we had signal and Monty Don was showing us how to plant bulbs! Then after some tricky fiddling from Jules the speakers came to life and we have surround sound. They are pretty good I have to say and the way we have placed the back one means we can listen to UK radio downstairs in the kitchen. We moved a few pieces of furniture upstairs so that we can sit up there and watch TV. The radiators and wall paper still need to be done but this will be well into next year now.

Mezzanine, early Oct 2013

On Saturday morning we had a rude awakening from the wood man. We knew he was coming to deliver 2 stères of wood but we did not anticipate that he would be coming before 9am! We were still lazing in bed were still lazing in bed when he rapped on the downstairs bedroom door. We lept up and swung into action. The wood man backed his camion only slightly into our back yard as he had put the wood into a trailer and couldn't get further in. He then dumped the load just into our land. It was also starting to rain which wasn't great as the wood was lovely and dry. We put a plastic bache over it and whilst Jules wrote a cheque I started to carry the logs over to the covered part near the new stairs. For 122Euros we will be able to have a lot of fires. Although it is a bit of work to stock the wood I find something very comforting and special about being able to use a natural beautiful material for heating. Once we had piled all the wood against the wall I think it looks fantastic.

2 and a bit stères of wood

After all that hard work (today I definitely have aching arm muscles) I was looking forward to a hot shower but unfortunately it appears that after the plumbing work the water is no longer running hot in the bathroom. I emailed the plumber who replied he will check next week. It must be something to do with the changes he made to the boiler. Given that the wood man had come early we were able to go out in the morning and we decided to check out the Fête de la Pomme in Cluny. The weather was pretty awful but luckily most of the fête was inside and we looked at a display of a huge number of different types of apple. There were also pears and some weird and wonderful looking pumpkins and squashes. We went to the food area and had a plate of boudin, fried apples and chips which was quite nice. I think I prefer English black pudding though. Just as the band were about to play it chucked it down and the tents were letting in water so we decided to leave.

We went back to the house and did some more cleaning and I managed to plant some tulips and narcisses in a brief period of non-rain. However, the weather was really bad and since there was no hot water for a shower we decided to leave just after 5pm and come back home. A shame but the house is always there so we can go next time the weather is drier.

Agnès at the Fete de la Pomme