Yet another morning that starts with an Amazon delivery. Beat him to the punch today as at the door before he even rang me [I heard his van door]. Today’s treats – wire strippers (so that I can fit a french plug to the wallpaper stripper) and Matt’s office chair.

Early meeting to prep for our afternoon branding workshop. Emails and work. Now that we know how awesome my plumbing skills are, it’s time to take 5 mins put the washing on. More work. Afternoon meeting went well and brief catch up afterwards reminded me how good my job is.

Finally time to get the washing out. Our first clean washing!

I’m now ready to swap the plug over and get some stripping happening. I chopped the plug off with the cutters (sharp pliers) but seems we don’t actually have the right plug and I need to go to the store again. Well that’s not happening as I only went yesterday, if only I’d known..

So Matt sent me this link to this upside down fire approach. Well… it sucks. I tried it twice. After over 2.5 hours it is out again, just a very slight smoulder.

The only thing for it is to pull it all out and start again. Problem is that smoulder in the middle of the kitchen becomes lots of smoke so it’s a quick, half assed job while the kitchen fills with smoke. So my freshly washed clothes are now just going to smell of burnt wood – as if I don’t get enough of that smell everyday. I swear all of rural France just smells constantly of burnt wood – believe me, this is much less endearing after a week or two.

Dinner, cheese! Because it is cheese, and it is France. It seems that in a cold room you also can’t eat the cheese quick enough on your own and you have to reheat it half way through. Thankfully the stove is warm so stood over it eating the second half while it cooled. It’s the warmest I have been all evening.

Still battling the fire. The room has been cold all night and it just won’t work properly. I am never trying that stupid upside down rubbish ever again. It’s so bad I’ve put the boiler on and turned on the radiator in the kitchen – I usually forget to turn it on at all until the moment I am about to go to bed.

Another quick rundown with Matt about jobs that need to be done, boring financial paper work that needs completing, more insurances and costs both personally and for my company (we need to engage an accountant to make sure we get it right). It’s just wall to wall excitement. Anyway it’s still not very warm so I’m off to bed.