Saturday

You cannot be serious! Who knew that there was a 6am?! Bless her though, mum got up to say goodbye. I appreciated the support, and that Matt was driving, I’m not sure that I should be driving at that time in the morning, my eyes are hardly open. It’s so dark out that the first pictures didn’t work at all!

Sun had risen by the time we reached Folkstone. Also a curious looking seagull trying to intimidate me, thankfully, since I didn’t have any chips, it was fine; charged up and got on the train fine.

Then we spent a very long time driving back through France. The first part was a bit different as we followed a bit of the northern coast before hitting what Tonia calls ‘the big tunnel’. It’s actually quite claustrophobic, it’s low and very, very long, taking you most of the way through Paris – there are far too many underground, railmail, tributaries and other channels through London for us to have one of these. [Incidentally, did you know that Victoria Tube Station entrance hall is in fact suspended from the buildings above rather than supported by the ground below – anyway, that’s another, rather fascinating, engineering story.] Regardless, here’s some pictures of France, including a wonderful pizza stop on the way close to the charging point.

We have some stats and route info but not sure I know what most of it means… It was definitely a long way though. France is officially ‘big’. [The route to the right (East) of Paris was the journey up, and left (West) the journey home.] Matt did a stellar job and if you ever need a chauffeur I would highly recommend him! 😉

[5 February 2022]

Sunday

Yesterday was a long day so we deserve a rest and a good lie in. We’d missed the start of the 6 nations yesterday and unfortunately Matt hasn’t been able to fix the VPN so we were unable to catch up on the games and therefore spent a lot of time trying not to find out the result. Thankfully however the Huxtables missed us and have invited us over to watch the France Ireland game, and to meet Oscar (Cress’ 4th) who is over to visit.

It was a good match and fantastic to see our friends. When we got home Matt managed to find an online recording of the England game, although I may have fallen asleep about half way through; clearly the drive had taken quite a lot out of us so Matt called time and we went to bed.

[6 February 2022]

Monday

Having spent half of last week in face to face meetings I’ve rather fallen behind with all my emails and have a large backlog to get up to speed with. Matt’s also super busy catching up from last week so we’re right in the thick of it today.

We did manage to catch the end of the England game though, and I wish we hadn’t. What a terrible show and to lose the Calcutta Cup again was inexcusable.

[7 February 2022]

Tuesday

Another busy day but Matt has had a chance to do a bit more work on the plaster. Apparently even after a week it’s still not fully dry so I bought the dehumidified up from the basement.

After a bit more work I needed a break and walk around the garden. Still not a lot happening but the magnolia is starting to bud. The apple tree really needs some pruning as do the brambles etc around the fig trees.

Having made some inroads I decided it was time to clean up my tools.

Jobs done and time to check on work. Meanwhile Meow is still trying to define for us the meaning of ‘catfishing’. I’m still none the wiser, is this what they mean?!

[8 February 2022]

Wednesday

Worked before spending some time at the end of the day working on one of the quince trees to thin it out. It’s hard to see the difference with the change of light but it should do much better for it. Most of the work again is to clear the centre, the branches are just growing straight up so we can’t get to the fruit and the centre of the tree is not getting any light or ventilation (once it has some leaves on it).

Matt has been up in the ensuite doing a bit more plastering. It seems to be very slow going.

Carbonara for dinner.

[9 February 2022]