Gite... work.

Well we've started properly with tools and everything.

Bathroom now has a large hole in it in preparation for becoming a bedroom, with door to the veranda and my battle with the stonework upstairs goes on... and on.... and on.

Visitors, arracher and Coypu

We have had a lovely busy and productive week with fabulous friends who have slaved away for days. We have, therefore, this week stripped the downstairs of the gite and taken up the foul lino and carpet and indeed some of the thin concrete so the place now smells less damp and may start to dry out a little.

We have also started the preperation for the lines that we are due to arracher later, pruning the vines to just the peid, removing the wires and Jill wrestling the piquets out.

The rows look a little sad to me now but will soon be planted with lovely new baby vines, provided of course that we can wrestle our monster amount of forms into submission!!!

On the first day the girls arrived we took the tractor down to the bottom lake and happened to see and entire family of what we think (but to be honest we are not entirely sure) are Coypu... and we've been back several times now and they have not been seen since- typical.

I've had a lovely week full of laughter and crotchet and excellent food and company and as always when visitors have gone the place now feels a little quiet and empty.

mortar or ciment or however its spelt in either language!

This week has seen the start of the new regime in an attempt to get more done and not stay in bed till 10am!

I'd like it noted for the record that I managed all week, P on the other hand made it to Weds when he rolled out of bed at 11am.

This week has been pretty productive with the following tasks completed:

1:Wire brushed the spare room and re-applied dust stopping treatment... hopefully visitors will no longer find bits of stone in their bed.

2:More mortar removed from the gite end.

3:Kitchen floor started to be taken up in the gite.

4:Intention to arracher form completed and M. Labat booked for pruning lesson next week.

5:Windows and doors measured for new ones.

6: Also been census-ed by a very frustrated lady... done for the next 10 yrs.

The girls arrive tomorrow... yay yay yay!

Pompiers

Mid-duster wielding this morning I was interupted by two pompiers (helpfully labled) brandishing their, faintly curious (lots of adverts and pictures of fire trucks) calander.

I had a momentary panic and not wanting to tip them too little it turns out I gave them 6 times the normal amount!

Oh well at least they'll come to me first in the event of a mass fire in the village.... or then again maybe they're just chuckling all the way back to base!

Pitfalls left right and centre.

Happy New Year

Happy new year to you all... and to those of you who have observed, quite rightly, that I have been somewhat slack about keeping this up to date... (Tig and Kate especially) Sorry and I promise to try harder this year!

This week I have to confess to being overexcited about new windows and doors.. 16 windows and 3 new doors to be precise which are being measured on Tues and installed at some unspecified time in February and also the arrival of the crotchet and complain girls next week.... yippee!

We had christmas in the UK and I did more driving than I care to remember and then Lorna came back with me whilst P is cramming as much football as possible in!

Tomorrow I will be continuing with the removal of the old grout and mortar in the gite and hopefully will at least have the wall with the windows in it done before the measuring man arrives.... can you spot a theme here?

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a lovely christmas and new year and I hope to see some of you over here in 2011!!!

xx