We had a few visitors during the first week but nobody since. The most interesting lady took up the offer of a tour of the house and reminisced about her childhood days here.
She is around 70 now I’d guess and talked about living here with her parents, who had the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, she had the middle room (to be our bathroom, sorry - salle de douche) and grandparents in the big bedroom while her uncle lived in the bungalow.
She said the floor tiles are all as she remembered and also the wallpaper on the stairs and the snapped ropes hanging from the barn roof were part of her old swing.
The bottom barn was used to keep pigs and her father butchered and roasted them in the corner, which explains why there’s a flue pipe on the wall. Can’t imagine the thoughts going through the heads of the ‘currently un-butchered’ pigs as they watched from the pens alongside, I’ll assume someone took them out for a walk while the deed was done.
In the top barn they had cows through the right hand door and two horses on the left. Somewhere, crammed in among all this life, she also had a very small pet goat.
All interesting stuff.
..At least I think that’s what she said. With my limited French, she might have been wanting to borrow a cup of sugar.
Anyway, kitchen is still progressing with tiles on the wall and hob installed. In parallel to that I’ve been rewiring the bathroom upstairs and filling the walls ready to decorate (still doing things in reverse) before the real work of installing the pipe work, shower base, tiles and stuff.
Fishermen have done another full day. More big hole and now some pipes. Note how theirs aren’t delicately layed on a bed of fine, washed sand like ours are..
They’re pulling ahead in the race again.
French opening times and patterns continue to fox me. I had a cunning plan to out-fox them by photographing the signs and consulting the photo before a trip. Checked the dechetrie opening times shot yesterday morning, loaded the van with carefully sorted land fill and timed my arrival at the gate for five minutes after the 9:00 a.m. opening time.
Shut.
Because yesterday was Mardi, when obviously they don't open until after lunch and I had lost track of which day of the week it was, convinced it was only Lundi. I now need to develop a cunning system to keep track of which day it is.
Stupid. Unlike a fox.