It’s Friday, and you know what that means – a barrage of work and emails that everyone has sat on and jobs that have to be completed by Monday – Yay!

Matt was up at the crack of dawn. I came down to find him browsing second hand cars but still not much closer to defining exactly what we need. We have a bit of a pros and cons list but it doesn’t seem to be helping. There is one that may have potential so Matt has emailed to see if we can go and look at it – although not sure if car showrooms are currently open in France?!

Shutter review – Matt’s had a look at all the external shutters and it seems that only 4 are broken and we have 5 here to replace them, which is something. The height of the one in bedroom 1 (the blue and white room) is somewhat prohibitive to try and fix just yet. The two in the living room require further investigation.

He managed to snatch success from the jaws of defeat however. The one on the stairs up to the first floor was just missing a handle and, as it was fully down, Matt was able to climb into the window frame and fix it in relative safety [Muma Camp – I was working and had no awareness of the health and safety assessment that was, or wasn’t, done on this]. I was pretty excited by the result though. Now, during the day at least, the gauntlet of the corner stairs has been resolved and I am (slightly) less likely to fall down them. 

Keen to do something about the vast mass of leaves (rather than the desire to drive around on a big ride-on lawn mower of course…) Matt thought he’d go have a look and get it started, after all the vendors had said it worked.

Nope! Not even all in one piece!

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Seems there is a problem with the starter and someone has started to disassemble it to find out what is wrong. Clearly some sort of an electrical problem so Matt has pulled up the schematic for it (cover image). Hopefully it can be fixed by replacing a simple fuse. If we can find one. After another dive to the Bricomarche and Mr Bricolage we had something that might work [he didn’t seem too sure it would, mind].

There was some excitement on the trip though as I got to drive us home. With 20 years of driving under my belt (lol) it was the first time I have ever driven on the wrong side of the road. Matt was not looking confident even before we left the parking lot!

Quick stop at Lidl to see if they have the sewing machine back in that I desperately need (sorry Doug!) I did see this however which made me laugh and think of Tonia.

Ok, back to driving. I may have put my left hand out looking for the gear stick more times than I can remember; the rear-view mirror was just irritating rather than helpful as I couldn’t see what was behind it; if I wanted to see what was behind me I looked as the driver’s door frame; and I may have been a little far to the right, as Matt kindly pointed out more than once (and all the more so as I pulled into the gates of Mr Bricolage). Home safe though and first practice run done.

Back home and more meetings and calls for me. Matt however was moving on to his next task of trying to connect one of the two TVs to receive French TV. (I can only assume that this was an exercise motivated by how things work as I can’t see him suddenly recommending we watch something in French).

Another failed job however as, after lots of tinkering followed by some research, it seems that all French TV is now in HD and you need a special box to make it work on a somewhat older UK TV.

Cold tonight so probably light the fire again. It may get up to 15-18 during the day but dang it can get cold at night. Apparently tonight is 0.

Ooh… well this is new! One small piece of pizza cardboard on top of the kindling the living room is full of smoke…

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t due to a small piece of cardboard. There was nothing coming out of the chimney but it was certainly heaving out of the fireplace – not the night to be having the windows open either. Put it out, relit it, same problem. Just threw in a whole load more kindling and all of a sudden it seemed to lift. Matt wonders if it was some sort of pressure change due to the sudden and significant drop in temperature, as the even once it was working smoke seemed to come out the chimney outside then drop down and sit as lower layer. Thoughts?

Had planned to call mum to get her view but the internet has just fallen over. Tried to restart it again but no joy. Back to tethering off the phones and minimising video calls until it is back up properly again.

Disaster over it’s dinner time. Hopefully the hob will actually work properly this time…

Matt: so I figured out how to fix the stove

Me: oh?

Matt: yeah, just bash it!

Another pasta dish and some wine, it’s time for a relaxed evening. Bill Bailey and the Mandalorian later. Matt did his best to entice me to get up early by promising me demolition work. It was a strong angle but I countered with a list of exciting jobs for him to do in the morning while I sleep in. I have promised to be up before midday (since I have been mostly living on UK time that means before 1pm).

Night all x