The finished article

St Edith

Yesterday's weather: Gorgeous again!

Since I've been banging on for weeks, nay months, about the blasted chalet I thought you might like to see the finished article.

7 weeks to deliver, plus another two and a half weeks for the floor to arrive. Three days to erect. A couple of days to tidy the outside, build the steps and paint it. Finally we have our little garden room. Actually it is quite a big garden room. At present in there we have a double bed, chest of drawers, side table, bedside table and there is still room to swing a cat (no I haven't tried it - yet).

What it doesn't have yet is a name. It may be called Les Pommiers as it sits between two apple trees but it will probably change with the wind.


So the last week has been quite a week. Chalet built, windows installed, seven stitches in my foot. I'm looking forward to a quiet week this week. Whatever will I find to blog about each day? Especially as I can't get out until the stitches are out. Ah, well, I'm sure the muse will attack me each morning. You'll just have to come back to see!

Sad news

St Bertrand
Yesterday's weather: Sunny, coolish. Perfect for chalet building

We woke up this morning to the sad news of Pavarotti's death from pancreatic cancer. Although he was already a huge (in more ways than one) success on the operatic circuit, he should be credited with popularising classical music amongst a new generation and a new audience of soccer lovers because of his getting together with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras to sing at the World Cup Finals in 1990 in Italy. Although my personal favourite is Domingo, Pav's rendition of 'E lucevan le stelle' from Tosca always had me reaching for my Kleenex. I'm sure there will be many tributes and concerts in his memory over the coming days.

The chalet is coming along nicely. We have put in place the floor, walls and roof beams. Today we will be putting the roof on and covering it, and putting up the veranda. Must push on, there's a hammer with my name on it somewhere in the garden!

Back to normal?

Ste Raïssa
Yesterday's weather: Warm, sunny, cool breeze

Happy Birthday to Jack. 6 years old today. Lots of love to you xxxxx

Crikey! I'll need to keep an eye on the garden if this keeps up. It's only 2 degrees above freezing this morning. The figs on the tree outside our kitchen window look rather shocked, but it is warming up quickly now that the sun has popped his head over the hillside, so I hope they will soon recover and continue ripening.

The best news is that, finally, the chalet floor arrived yesterday afternoon only six weeks late. Unfortunately it didn't arrive in time for us to erect the chalet for our visitors to sleep in as planned. However, it will be ready for next summer. Actually we hope it will be all erected before this weekend as we plan to get going on it today. We need to get all the wood off the grass before it gets damaged by water or frost(!).

It feels rather odd now that our little flurry of visitors have left. The cats are looking round to see who is sleeping where and finding no-one. I spotted Figgy wandering into the tent this morning to see if he could wake Joe up. No-one is expected now until the end of October (unless you know differently) but at least it will give us the chance to get on with some decorating. That is assuming the replacement windows turn up in the next 10 days or so - but I should really know better than to assume anything here now.

Finalement

Ste Rose
Yesterday's weather: Wet

It would appear that Castorama Direct have found our floor. They say it will be delivered within 2 - 5 working days. They don't tell us where it has been since it wasn't delivered last week, but at least we have something on the way.

I haven't telephoned them, I've been communicating via e-mail and I must say that they have been very good when I have contacted them. I did have to chase them up a couple of times when I didn't get a response immediately but when I told them off for it, they did at least come back with a message saying that they were looking into the matter for us.

I have also heard from Amazon France who had also managed to lose something they were sending us and another copy of Le guide de la Méhari is now on its way to us. They too were very pro-active when I contacted them.

We hope the chalet floor turns up closer to 2 than 5 working days from yesterday because we only have a week to erect the whole chalet before our next guests will need to sleep in it! I don't know how much time I'll have for blogging next week. And we are praying that the rain stops soon.

Three drowned rats

St Christophe
Yesterday's weather: Read on...

I said something was bound to happen yesterday. The sand, gravel and paving was delivered just after lunch by Zinadine Zidane. Well, he looked very much like ZiZi so we didn't upset him since we didn't want to be head butted.

ZiZi was a master with the crane and managed to get everything off his lorry safely without bringing down the phone line which is not best placed. We planned to work off the large pizzas I had made for lunch and set to filling the chalet base. Jon and our friend took it in turns to shovel and wheel barrow loads across the garden and I was tasked with raking it all into place.

At that point the heavens decided to open wide and pour gallons of water over us. It didn't stop until after dark so we worked for three hours in the rain. It may sound odd to say that all three of us really enjoyed ourselves and had a great sense of satisfaction when it was done. I have been feeling very sorry for our guest that he has had awful weather and we haven't been taking him out and about to see the area, but he claims he has been happy as we have fed him well (apparently) and he has finished the book he brought with him.

Still no news about the missing floor though. I'll have to chase it up again all day today. And it's raining again.

Excuse me if I scream

Ste Mylène
Yesterday's weather: Lovely

We had a lovely morning yesterday. It was market day so we joined the many thousands of others in our little local town - sitting in a traffic jam. The first since we left the UK. We should have known better on a Saturday in August, but we wanted to show off the area to our visiting friend. We did eventually park and, after a quick tour of the market stalls and realising that if I bought anything (cheese, fish) it wouldn't enjoy the walk we intended to do, we set off up the hill to the viewing platform at the top of the town. From here, you can see for many miles in every direction. It really is a stunning view on a beautiful clear day, which is was. Back down in town we bought the few things we needed for lunch and returned home.

After lunch we tackled the pile of wooden jigsaw pieces that is our chalet, planning to check the contents and then move them all over to the prepared site on the other side of our land.

The floor of the chalet is missing.

I have contacted customer services and we are waiting for a reply from them when they have been in touch with the haulier who, of course, don't work on Saturdays or Sundays. Meanwhile we will sit and twiddle our thumbs. Not patiently! We have already waited six weeks for the chalet to be delivered and can't do anything without laying the floor first. We are all set and ready to go and had planned next week's work. Now we are so frustrated and I just don't feel that my French is good enough to have a real rant on the phone. I mean, I could rant away but then I would be so wound up that I won't understand whatever they say in response. I just want to go to the bottom of the garden and have a good scream like I did in the old days when we had three teenage girls in the house. (Sorry girls).

This morning the boy has got me up bright and early again. I wish it was bright. It's pouring with rain - weather to match my mood.

In the twilight

Ste Hélène
Yesterday's weather: Bit grey, bit sunny, bit warm. No rain.

Yesterday evening around 6.30 I was furious. Depsite the promises of the other day we still had not received the chalet. Then the phone rang.

'Bonjour, Madame' The voice at the other end of the phone gave me the name of a delivery company. 'Oh, here it is.' I thought. 'Excuses and delays again. How many more weeks?' 'I'm in Brive' he explained 'and I have a chalet to deliver to you. Should be there about 9.30 is that OK?'

I thought he must mean 9.30am tomorrow but no, he wanted to deliver at 9.30 last night. Well, it was going to interrupt the curry meal we had been preparing for two days and would disrupt the first evening of our friend's visit, but there was no way I was going to let the delivery slip. Who knows where they might take it and how long it would take to get it back, so we agreed 9.30. His final question was 'Is Madame certain that a large lorry would be able to get close to the house? Oui, Madame is quite sure (again).

We had just finished our poppadums at 8.15 and were thinking of going on to the main course when we heard a large lorry coming up the driveway. It had no trouble turning around and parked next to the gateway. Out hopped two short weedy men and one tall weedy man, two with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, one had a severe limp. 'I'm wounded', he explained as he shook hands with us all. The other two shook hands too. Now, I'll pause for a minute here. When did the Tesco delivery man ever shake hands with every member of the household when he came to unload the toilet rolls, tins of baked beans and cat litter? Not in my recollection. Nor the electricity meter reader, nor the skip delivery man. Everyone shakes hands here. We weren't too happy about it when it was the chaps who emptied the septic tank but here, c'est normale. Garage mechanics are among the few (butchers included) who don't offer the whole hand. You have to shake their wrist as they don't want to contaminate you with oil or blood and guts. This is a very polite society where you do not address people by their first names unless invited to do so. Everyone shakes hands and children will always address you as Monsieur and Madame and will kiss you on both cheeks when they leave. Swanne even gives Figgy two petit bisous when he has been to visit.

So, back to the lorry. How to unload two sheds, one terrace, a water butt and a shower unit from a lorry. Well, it's simple. No tail gate, no fork lift. You pass out the water butt, followed by the three component parts of the shower cubicle, then you unwrap the rest and pass it down from the lorry slat by slat. Easy peasy. The weedy chaps from the lorry were remarkably fit despite the fact that they looked as though a sharp gust of wind would blow them over. In no time, the chalet and terrace were sitting in the garden in pieces. There was just one shed left. They shifted the lorry and opened another door. There was some dispute about how to remove this shed from the lorry. 'I'll unwrap it again' said the driver. 'That's stupid' said the smallest man (the one with the limp) as he relit his cigarette and he moved two pieces of wood from the pallet and placed them on the ground. Two of them got under the complete packaging of the shed and Jon and our friend rushed to help them (they would certainly have been squashed because their shoulders didn't even come up as high as the floor of the lorry). The last chap jumped out and one shed, complete in its wrapping, was hauled onto their shoulders and placed on the ground. We checked the paperwork, signed for the delivery and after much more hand shaking they clambered back into the lorry.

They wished us bon weekend laughing that their work was over but just look how much we have to do now!

Oh help! Now the fun will start!

Why dahlias?

Ste Hyacinthe
Yesterday's weather: cooler but sunny

Happy birthday to Joe, holidaying in Crete at the moment.

I'm alone this morning. Jon has gone to Toulouse airport to collect our friend who will be staying for a few days. Unfortunately the weather forecast isn't brilliant. No rain but not particularly warm either. In fact, I thought I detected a sheen of frost on the car windscreen when I peered out at 7am - I do hope not. None of the plants seem to have suffered. Meanwhile, I am waiting here hoping that the chalet will be delivered at last. The delivery company promised to telephone before delivering but said that it would be by the end of this week. So, it's Friday and they don't deliver on Saturdays..... I'm still waiting.

My young friend appeared again yesterday afternoon with a huge bunch of dahlias from her mother's garden. I do hope she asked her mother's permission first! They are just beautiful and it was such a co-incidence that Jon and I had just been talking about dahlias on our way to Brive yesterday morning. We have noticed that many potagers here have a row or two of dahlias growing amongst the vegetables and we wonder if they are particularly good for seeing off any potential pests? We will have to look that up in a book of country folklore or some such book. I know that growing marigolds in a vegetable plot is good for attracting black fly but I haven't read anything about dahlias.

The main reason for her visit, she said, was to check whether Jazz had returned after her three day absence. She had taken it upon herself to tell all the neighbours that she was missing and wanted an update. Luckily I was able to reassure her and she said she would go and tell them all not to worry.

She also asked if we had lost any other cats or if we just had the three as two beautiful white cats had been hit by a car recently. I am so glad it wasn't ours but I do feel for the person who lost them. I wonder if they may have been strays as in recent years we have seen a couple of little white strays cats in the area.

Young Swanne loves to come and ring all our wind chimes. We have three around which can be quite annoying on a windy night but at the same time strangely soothing. Swanne just loves them all and has to make a tour of the garden in order to check them all out. We'll miss them when they return home at the end of August.

Introduction to a Swanne

Ste Marie
Yesterday's weather: hot, sticky.

For the last couple of days Figgy has had a visitor. Not many people pass by our house apart from the neighbours in their cars on their way to work or home again. If anyone is passing they are usually walkers making a circuit from the village through the woods on this hill behind us, or maybe mushroomers after some of the cepes which the locals find a delicacy and we find a challenge. So we were surprised to find a young mother and her toddler son sitting outside the gates playing with Figgy the other day.

I went to speak to them. 'Bonjour', I said. 'He's very friendly, isn't he?' 'Oh, Madame, he is too friendly' said the young mother. She went on to tell me that she had been to visit Figgy a couple of times in the last few weeks and that he had followed her and her son down to the main road. She was so worried that the cat would run onto the road that she tried to frighten him away before gathering up her little one in her arms and running home.

Home for the summer, she said, is a house opposite where she and her son are staying with her parents for the whole of August. She pointed it out and we chatted for a few minutes before she and her son went on their way.

They returned yesterday. I was hanging out the washing as they passed and I waved to them. She asked if it would bother us if they stopped to play with Figaro again, but they hadn't seen him as they passed the gate. I went to find him and they came into the garden to play for a while. She had brought with her a bag of beans and tomatoes from her parents potager with a little note inside saying that it was from our neighbours opposite, Monsieur and Madame L. In a way I was disappointed. We've always referred to her as Mrs Veranda (or Mrs Veranda-Flapper thanks to her 'own' contribution to this blog some weeks ago). Now, I have to call them by their real names. But we were also very touched that her daughter had taken the trouble to collect up a bag of what were, I must say, delicious beans and tomatoes. She stopped a while and told us about all our neighbours that we haven't yet met. They all live behind big fences and have big dogs so we haven't been bold enough to go and knock on doors.

The little boy is such a sweetie, the sort of child you want to hug to you. He loves Figgy and was amazed by the size of Misty who he followed around the garden as she tried to get away from this child that she hadn't been properly introduced to. The child's name, we were told is Swanne. We've never heard that one before but maybe he was named for his elegant long neck. We are looking forward to their next visit. Perhaps I will wander home with her to meet the Verandas in the flesh instead of by semaphore as she flaps her tea towel over the veranda after every meal.

Delivery update
I had a phone call yesterday from the people who are delivering the chalet, shed and shower. Is Madame sure that a big lorry can get up our driveway to deliver it? Yes, Madame is sure there will be no problem. No, but is Madame sure that there will be access for a big lorry? Yes, Madame is quite sure. OK, then, how do they find the house? I gave directions. Thank you. But is Madame quite sure that the lorry will be able to deliver to her house?

By this time I was beginning to think, like Terry Wogan, 'Is it me?' Yes, there will absolutely, definitely, for certain be NO PROBLEM to get a big lorry up to the house to deliver the chalet and other items. Well, if Madame is sure then they will deliver by the end of the week. This week? Yes, Madame, this week. I didn't quite hear him say normalement but I'll believe it when I see it. He is going to call me when the delivery is imminent.

It wasn't until I had put the phone down that I began to wonder what he would have done if I had said that he couldn't get a big lorry up to the house.

Normalement, Madame, mais ........

St Laurent
Yesterday’s weather: fine but windy.

We went to the builders’ merchant yesterday afternoon to order a delivery of sand and gravel and paving for the top layer of the chalet base. Thinking it would only be a day or so before they could deliver we did, of course, leave it until the last minute. Well, we are beginning to get the hang of the 'mañana' attitude now. Unfortunately their 'mañana' attitude is more practiced than ours and they can’t deliver for another 10 days! ‘Normalement, madame’, he explained they would deliver bien sûr next week but because of the jour férié on Wednesday 15th it will be the week after.

Assumption is another of the religious holidays celebrated by this secular country! In fact there are so many from April through to the end of August that one really doesn’t have much hope of getting anything delivered, finished or sometimes even started; there always seems to be some holiday getting in the way.

Milly Méhari is now an official member of the family. We just have to get her paperwork in order. This entails a visit to the Préfecture in Cahors. Unlike the UK, in France you have to do everything in person and not by post. We have a huge packet of paperwork to take with us: the old registration document, the proof of sale from the previous owner to the garage, the proof of sale from the garage to Jon, the contrôle technique (MOT), copy of Jon’s driving licence, copy of Jon’s passport, proof of address (electricity bill) and finally a form which we completed yesterday which is just a duplication of all the information on the old registration document (carte grise).

We will have to stand in line at reception to be checked in. A nice lady will check all the paperwork before allowing us access to the office where they issue the carte grise, then another nice lady will check it all again before issuing us with a new carte grise in our own name. Then we will have to go back to the garage and give them the new registration so that they can make up the plates. This will take them a couple of days and we will then take the car back again to have the new plates fitted. As they are a funny shape to fit the car and are held on with rivets it is easier to let the garage deal with it all.

Normalement the whole process will take about an hour. In my dreams!

Too much to do

St Ignace
Yesterday's weather: Too chilly for this time of year (but it's looking better today).
Happy Birthday to Lorna

Finally the sun has come out again, so we are going to get on with the chalet foundations today. When I say 'we' I mean Jon. I'll be in the kitchen making sausages. Later on I'll be down along our hedgerow picking sloes which are fat and juicy and just crying out to be drowned in a bottle of cheap gin, or vodka. Then there are the cats to groom, and lunch to make. I'm looking forward to the postman coming because he should have our latest delivery from Amazon, then an afternoon under the tree reading.

Oh, all right then, I feel guilty. I'm off to the garden to help Jon.

Planning frustrations

Ste Elvire
Yesterday's weather: the same as Saturday. Lovely.

I'm at the kitchen table with floury hands this morning. We don't need to go out and the baker is closed anyway, so I'm making bread, and sausages for the freezer, and a nice pasta sauce, also for the freezer. A busy day ahead.

Jon is doing the preparation for painting the last few windows and the next job will be the foundations for the outdoor room. I've just heard back from my application to be exempt from getting a planning application that I haven't supplied enough plans. I have now to do another, three-dimensional plan of the area we want to put it on complete with all measurements. Pain in the backside! I've never drawn anything like that before, so it'll be a first. It certainly won't be totally accurate as we can't get to our boundaries to measure them exactly. Too many brambles and nettles in the way. In fact, the chalet that I submitted planning for isn't the one we have on order, although they are roughly the same size. Now I'll have to check that we have the measurements of the other one stored somewhere!

Jazz decided to take a night on the tiles last night but she hasn't been home yet today, and it's almost lunchtime. I'll have to take a walk and find her later on. The latest she's been home after a night out is 2pm, so I won't panic until then.

It's very hot again but more cloudy that the last few days. There's no rain forecast during the day so I'll have to get out with the watering can to try and keep my remaining plants alive. The unblighted tomatoes are cropping madly now and we are promised a good crop of green peppers - I'm keeping a close eye on slugs and crickets to make sure we don't lose anything else.

Birthday boy, reading and more dust

St Benoit

Yesterday's weather: Will it never stop raining?

IT'S LEO'S FIRST BIRTHDAY TODAY. HAVE A LOVELY DAY, LEO XXXXXXXXX



I finished a book yesterday. It's The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. I won't give anything away but I struggled a little with it. I still can't make up my mind whether I enjoyed it or not.

I joined a reading group recently. We all live quite some distance from each other so the plan is to meet up every three or four months to discuss the books we have been reading. Soon it will be my turn to select the book of the month and I'm not sure how to go about it. The books we've read so far seem to have been picked at random from Amazon's top sellers, so I'd like to be completely contrary by selecting something different. Maybe Five go to Smuggler's Top by Enid Blyton - that's pretty different. I always liked George best in the Famous Five, but I think I secretly wanted to be Anne, the girly girl who had to be looked after all the time.


Jon is reading all the book group books too and we have time to discuss them between ourselves before we get to say anything to the others. Jon is way ahead of me in our personal reading list. This is partly because I am a sudoku addict - and also because I write the blog. The good thing about sudoku is that I can buy them here in France because the rules are the same!



Jon finished off the window this morning. We hope that we will soon be at the point where we can paint the kitchen but there is more work to do in there first. Of course now that the window has gone in, the hall and stairway need painting again too. They lead into the lounge so that will also have to be done, and I haven't even started on the bedroom yet. I'm still supposed to be renovating the wooden floors but I lost heart again yesterday when my nicely waxed floors went pink with all the brick dust. I'll get back to them again soon, especially if it never stops raining.

The pink hue around the house is still there, even though we had another thorough clean yesterday, and the dust still feels as if it is in our every pore. No wonder the cats don't appear to want to stay home much at the moment - three pink dusty cats, we would only be able to tell them apart by the miaow!

An update on the shed/garden room/bedroom, second shed and shower purchase is that I did hear from the bank that I could set up a transfer if I added another function to our bank account for a further four euros a month! Needless to say I told them what to do with their additional functionality. I contacted the company we are buying from and eventually we decided that I would send them a cheque. They should have received that now and the goods should be with us in three weeks - but watch this space! We still don't know exactly how they will be delivered, whether the sheds are in panels or slats so we don't know how long they will take us to put up, but hey, every day another challenge!

Aliens in the sky, party time, and consumer frustration

St Raoul
Yesterday's weather: Better

I woke up this morning and my eyes hurt. I couldn't understand it. Every time I tried to open them they just wouldn't work. Eventually, by turning on my side and facing the wall I could just about open them without them hurting. I got up and wandered around the room.... looked out of the window and noticed something very strange. There seemed to be a big ball of fire in the sky!! I just don't know what it could be! I seem to remember something similar happening a few weeks ago but I think that some wet stuff falling out of the sky put the fire out again.

Anyway, we got up and had breakfast (toast and Marmite, we're not totally weaned yet) and the big ball of fire is still there. I don't know if anyone else is suffering from this phenomenon but if so, please take heart in the belief that it won't last long and normal rain will be resumed shortly.

Party boy
A few days ahead of his first birthday, Leo is having a party today. I understand the bouncy castle is already set up and there is a heap of food available. Sausage rolls and party rings (you know, those nice round iced biscuits with a hole in the middle full of E numbers to make all the kiddies hyperactive all night) are piled high ready for the screaming kiddies to arrive. Apparently Leo's Daddy got carried away with the BOGOF in Morrisson's last night.

Have a lovely time, family. Sorry we can't be with you.

Frustration of buying
We've been trying to order the shed/garden room/bedroom. Found what we wanted, added a floor and a terrace and proceeded to checkout where my bank card didn't go through. Back to the start and it lost all the items in the basket. So we found what we wanted, added the floor, terrace, and this time, a water butt too. Went to checkout, tried my bank card again and it still didn't go through. Back to the start, no items in the basket. Found the shed, floor, terrace and water butt again. This time we added another smaller tool shed to the list. Went to the checkout and decided to use Jon's card this time. No luck. So we gave up, decided to take some planning fluid and come back this morning.

So, we logged on. Found the shed, terrace, floor, water butt, second shed and added a shower unit (it's a really lovely one, got hydro-massage jets and all....). Went to checkout and noticed that I could pay by bank transfer. Good idea, I thought, we'll do that and get it over with before we decide to spend any more money! So, we log on to the bank account - no option to add a new account for transferring money. Great. Eventually found that I need to complete a form on line with all the details and then the bank will phone me (when they get round to it) to check the details again and set up the transfer.

I don't know if the bank is working today. We do hope so. We're also wondering when the pantechnicon (big lorry) will turn up with all our stuff. All hands will be to the deck that day.... Anyone fancy a week's holiday doing DIY?????

Forms, forms, forms

Saint Anthelme
Yesterdays weather: I don't want to talk about it (18 degrees). Currently stair rod rain!

It is imperative that one of the first things you do when you move to France, or a new area within France, is meet the mayor. So after 8 years of holidays and 5 months of living here we did just that today (procrastination being one of our character traits since we moved here). Monsieur le Maire is a very nice chap, talks a bit too fast for me to keep up with but as long as I get the main substance of what he is telling me, if I miss a word here and there, it isn't too much of a worry.

We went to see him to find out whether we need planning permission for the shed/garden house. In France you need to fill in a form to exempt you from filling in a form, so we have to complete a declaration de travaux so that we don't have to complete a permit de construire.

We will have to submit forms for both the pool and the shed, separately of course. They are both completed in triplicate with plans of the village showing our location, plans of the property showing where we intend to build the pool and the shed and plans of the shed and the pool separately. Apparently this will take 3 - 4 weeks to be approved but it will be approved, no question. I suspect that it will be normalement 3 - 4 weeks but we will go ahead and buy the shed anyway as it is on a 4 week lead and all should come together at the same time (probably in November).




The mayor gave us some news - apparently the village is absolutely crowded with anglophones..... English, Scots, Irish and we haven't met one of them, so I don't know where they are hiding. But then, they haven't met us yet either and I know where we have been for the last 5 months. He also tells us that there is a soirée quiz held in the village store/bar which is well frequented by the Anglo-Saxons. He then went on to tell us all the social activities planned for this coming season, starting with the big fair for all the local villages in two weeks time. It seems we could be looking forward to a lot of late nights this summer.

Sheds, shopping and lunchtime closing

Saint Prosper
Yesterday's weather: Beautiful - 28 degrees
Message of the day: Happy Birthday, Dave G.

A stormy night - I had to get up at 1.30 and let Figgy in before he drowned. Jazz is still out even now and it is chilly and raining this morning.

We are going to look for our 'garden room' today. We are looking for a cross between a shed and a chalet - or we may even end up with one of each, one for the garden tools and one for the garden furniture and pool accessories. We've been tipped off about a supplier with lots of choice about an hour west of here.

That is one of the problems we have come up against - everything is at least an hour's drive, and most places are closed between 12 and 2 (how civilised, an old-fashioned lunch break). If you don't get up early enough you have to wait until the afternoon to be able to get anything done. Not that we mind, although it can be a little frustrating if I have forgotten it is Monday and the bakers are all closed - that'll be no bread for lunch today then, especially as I didn't get up in time to make bread.....

Hay update

Our friend did go without his Sunday lunch yesterday. He appeared with his tractor and re-whisked all the hay into piles and then came back with his other tractor attachment to roll it into bales. We managed 6 for our small field - it makes ya feel very proud y'know.