Aiming to keep warm

St Jean-Marie

Busy, busy days.

Our friend Mark came over today to organise Jon into sorting out our logs. Actually, he came over to offer a pair of hands for the day in return for some nice pieces of wood we had offered for wood carving. Mark had indulged in wood carving in the past as a hobby until his career got in the way (we all know about that one don't we?) and now he's retired he wanted to get back to it and to have a go at some large projects.

We were more than happy to give him some large chunks of tree trunk, as many as he wanted, but he insisted on giving us some of his time in return and drove for an hour in each direction towing his trailer laden with chain saw, neat tools and the jewel in his trailer - a wood splitter. Wow! Boys toys or what???

So a very busy day of moving, sawing and splitting was had by all.

Well, I say 'all'.

Actually, I did what any girl would do when the big boys toys come out and I went shopping.

Not very exciting actually. I went to the supermarket which was a very unpleasant experience as all the July tourists had been replaced by the August tourists over the weekend and they had all descended on the local supermarket en masse this morning.

I returned to prepare lunch and spent the afternoon once more not by the pool reading a good book but at the computers trying to sort out printers and print all the various pages of evidence needed for our 'application not to put in an application for planning permission' - many, many more pieces of information than required this time last year.

The upshot of the day is that we now have a beautiful wall of logs running across the garden and needing to be moved nearer to the house (Liz, are you reading this and will you tell your husband what his little holiday project might be next week?). Mark tells us that we may already have most of the winter's supply stocked up - and they haven't really scratched the surface of the wood supply yet.

Keeping warm as well as keeping cool!