Good to see the snow line gradually coming down towards the valley and lovely to watch. I’ve never been around long enough to see it. I should probably have made a timelapse of pics from each day from our bedroom window – maybe next year!

Plan today was to go to Luchon or St Gaudens to hire a van so that we could collect a load of plasterboard and start getting the basement ready for the new power board. Tonia, naturally, took lots of pics of the journey.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Unfortunately, renting a van isn’t as simple as we’d hoped, we abandoned that plan and spent half the day out and about getting other bits of shopping.

• 

• 

First stop at the local Brico (DIY) but sadly didn’t have much of what we wanted available. Maisons du Monde had a few nice bits but rather expensive – I’d rather find a really good fabric shop so that I can make lots of nice cushion covers, bedding etc. We did however find this rather fetching bathmat at half price and a rather less exciting mat for the backdoor so we stop tromping mud all over the house.

More Bricomarche, largely for cheap switches and sockets, most will provide temporary solutions to make things safe in the short term and then be used in the garages.

Yay, Troc next! Matt is keen to get a new footstool and coffee table. My main focus is on looking at what’s been reduced, while Matt was drawn back to some of the same pieces we have seen before.

• 

• 

He selected a couple of matching footstools – also providing another good reason to find a good fabric shop – they rather remind me of the sofas that your grandparents used to have.

I remained unconvinced by the round coffee table that he liked [at 37 EUR] and found a few alternative options. We finally settled on this, slightly orientally styled, option with the carved ships and somewhat gargoyle looking corners. At only 18 EUR it was a good deal and, even if not the long term solution for the living room [once we have a dining room], I am sure that we will find a place for it somewhere. We already have a number of framed Chinese silks that we bought over from the UK that used to be in the lounge at the farm when I was young.

• 

• 

• 

• 

There was also this small round table that had been reduced to 10 EUR that we figured we could find a use for so got that too.

By this time we were rather over shopping but had to go back to, you guessed it, another Brico, to pick up 140kg more gravel to fill the remainder of the large holes in the driveway and 70kg cement and sand to fix the hole in the basement. The car was pretty full, and heavy for the journey home.

Very quick trip into Super-U next door to ensure that we had enough food and wine to get us through the rest of the weekend. Finally, we were home. I was keen to get on with the last of Douglas’ masks but it seems that the sewing machine had different ideas. Another 2 or 3 broken needles and problems with the top thread constantly breaking. We tried everything we could think of – rethreading the bobbin, changing the thread for a new one, adjusting tensions and stitch length, cleaning – nothing worked. Matt and I were out of ideas and pretty fed up with it all. We think we may have solved the needle issue but the top thread just keeps breaking. I tried a few more times and couldn’t bear it anymore. I put it to the side as a final job for tomorrow and settled in to join Tonia and Matt watching our high quality Netflix series – Warrior Nun! [If you think that sounds awful – and would still choose to watch it – I think I know why we are friends!]

[2 January 2021]