Early start again this morning as we have a planned power cut from 8:45-12, so taking advantage of the fact that we can can’t do any work. We have a long list of places to go and visit over in Pau (about an hour and 15 north west of here).

Obviously we weren’t actually up at 7 but Matt was up at 7:45 and made me tea to lure me out of bed. We were on the road by 8:30 and at our first stop was up in St Gaudens to drop off the healthcare forms – we’ll probably be up there tomorrow but there are a number of other things that rest on us having our registration so we need that ball to be rolling sooner rather than later.

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We’re still at our next stop, BigMat, before I would usually be out of bed. We managed to get some plaster, not exactly the type that we were looking for but hopefully it won’t go off too quickly and make it impossible to work.

Next up was Leroy Merlin, thankfully it was only about 15mins down the road as I had my weekly call with the PS – an hour earlier than normal as he’s now in Italy, straddling the UK and Europe is very en vogue don’t you know!

Call done and I quickly find Matt in the queue. Just enough time to get to DistriMat before it closes at 12 for the traditional 2 hour French lunch hour (by just under 15mins) [it seems to be a day for shops with ‘Mat’t in the name].

It’s big, shiny and this time it is brand new. We are trailer shopping.

We’d thought about the key questions and even printed them out in advance – impressive right. I did the usual intros but there were a number of potential complexities around getting it specced up and insured for 750kg rather than 500kg.  So in the name of expedience and lunch, I gave him the prepared questions. He quickly rattled through them and confirmed that he had the trailer we wanted, the last one too – yay!

A few bits of paperwork, nothing compared to buying the car, but they seemed to be super efficient and despite an initial poor connection to the lights it was quickly fixed and the new licence plate made up, necessitated by the increase in weight capacity.

On the road again and saw what looked like the most random strip joint I’ve ever come across…

Anyway, we are off to Brico Depot to go and collect the insulation for the kitchen. It is a lot of insulation and the rain is hammering down. I’m pretty impressed by our first effort though. We look truly French now with this in tow.

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The weather has been terrible all morning and only just have time to briefly stop at Intermarche for some snacks and wine before Matt needs to be home for a call.

It seems that with the power outage someone at Bouygues may have forgotten to hit the restart switch and internet’s out. We manage to tether off our phones to get our meetings done. Time for some more work but the day has disappeared rapidly so time to wrap up, have dinner and relax for the evening as we have another busy day tomorrow.

[22 January 2021]