Saturday

After a busy week I could really do with a rest, it seems however that Matt didn’t feel like leaving me to sleep in till the afternoon as he was using his not so subtle wake up call – driving the lawn mower around outside the window. Obviously therefore my first job of the day was to take stock of the garden. It’s good to see the corn coming along, that’s exactly why it’s one of my favourite things to grow, and I’d recommend it if you have kids, it shoots up so quickly. The chillies and tomatoes are still looking very small. I wonder whether they’ll actually work or not, well of course I’m sure the tomatoes will given time, I’m just not very patient – it has been a whole week that they’ve been in. The hollyhocks have also started to bloom which is lovely.

I’m not really sure that the rest of the sweetcorn are quite ready for replanting yet but equally potting them up may just slow them down. I’ve decided however to take the biggest of them and put them in. The others are a bit smaller and there is no way that they will keep their heads above the mulch so they are going to have to wait a bit longer. There’s also a few final chillies that I just can’t wait any longer for, some Anaheim foot long. Again, only time will tell what the haul might be like but there’s hopefully a long summer ahead to give them a fighting chance.

A quick standard French lunch, cheese, pate etc that Matt had just picked up and then off to do some shopping, mum’s favourite thing. Matt had seen a garden table on the front of the Centrakor magazine and had done a lot of research but it looked like a pretty good offer. Before we went there however we thought we’d best do a quick trip round Weldom, Rural Master and the Brico’s to check. Everything we’d seen was pretty rubbish to be honest, however I did manage to pick up a new dhalia at Gamm Vert and few little Osteospermum at Lidl so the trip was doing ok if you asked me.

At Centrakor there was no sign of this table and chairs that had been advertised and the others weren’t great, so I had to go and ask. Seems that we’re in luck. They have one left out back, possibly the demo model, but they’d let us have a look at it. We went back to the delivery/loading bay and they showed it to us, it was just what we were looking for. Unfortunately they didn’t have the matching grey chairs from the picture but if we wanted it we could select from the range of other colours that they had. The table actually looked really good, even mum agreed. The mechanism for adding the central panel is simple but reasonably robust (and something we could probably 3D print if we needed to). It’s definitely a win, much nicer than anything else we’d seen and a really good deal. Now to the chairs. You get 6 with the table but at full length it seats 12. Matt chose 3 blue and 3 green – good call. However then Mum stepped up and offered to buy us the other 6 chairs so that we had a full set. Again we couldn’t get another 3 of each, so decided to go with a rainbow selection, 3 red and 3 yellow. If we’d have got 4 blue and 2 green it would have looked like a compromise, this way it’s clearly a choice, and a good choice it was.

Of course, with 3 of us in the car we couldn’t fit the 6 chairs in and we had to come back with the trailer to get the table anyway so no point trying too hard. This all meant however that our ‘drop in’ to J&C wasn’t going to happen as we now had another 40-60min round trip to add in, but hopefully they’ll forgive us. Mum decided that a trip up the road and back to collect a table probably wasn’t on her bucket list and she’d be more use staying at home and making sure that the new pool didn’t make a run for it while we were out. It was pretty easy thankfully and it’s heavyish but not crazy heavy, we also have a really big trailer which helps.

Well doesn’t that look good, rainbow was definitely a better choice than grey anyway, much more of a fiesta feel and much more ‘summery’ so mum says, I can’t say that I disagree. It’s BBQ time, chicken, with tomato and mozzarella salad (not mum’s favourite). The chatting and drinking went on for a while so I went to get mum a light cape – I’m not sure that this was what she was planning but she seemed to get on board with the awesome!

Relaxation and bed for most, while I get the blog updated.

[11 June 2022]

Sunday

I almost got to sleep in till 12 but not quite, I am still a bit on GMT anyway but refused to get up until I’d watched an episode of Doctors [not loving the new evening and once a week rubbish but saved myself a few for just such an occasion].

Matt has been working on the pump for the water cube in the veg garden so that it will provide the automatic watering when we finally get away for a bit, there’s no way I want to lose all that work this late in the day. Meow has also been ‘helping’ to nurture some of the plants… Thankfully however the Oleander is a bit big for her to sit on but flowering beautifully.

Unfortunately there has been a problem at border control with Anya and it turns out that Tonia and Anya won’t be joining us. Mum is very disappointed as apparently Anya made a great ally and excuse to go for a walk – to the lake and drink wine, which is I understand fine if you have a dog but not at all on your own; am I now the replacement dog I wondered?! Either way, with the plants from yesterday finally potted up Mum wants to go out and we’re off for a walk.

Of course, nothing is quite what it seems when you have your mother with you. The aim was in fact to ‘sus out’ all the potential accommodation that people (notably the Smiths and her friends) could stay in for the wedding. So we took in as many of these as we could find on the walk, while I got distracted by plants and gardens.

At the lac it seems that we’d missed the lunch session and the restaurant is closed on a Sunday evening and Monday. Thankfully they were still serving crepes and beer so we muddled through as you do, strong upper lip and all.

Matt spotted the clouds closing in so time to head back. It started to spit on the way but thankfully we’d left just in time before the heavens opened. Big thunderstorms and pretty impressive. As a result however it meant that dinner would be inside this evening. Burgers, ceasar salad with chicken and anchovies, quiche, there was plenty of food.

With dinner done Matt was tired and read his book upstairs (in peace and quiet) while mum and I found a rubbish film to watch. It was after midnight by the time we finished but I still had a blog to update so mum went to bed while I finished off and followed behind.

[12 June 2022]

Monday

Day 1 of ‘non-working’. Update 1 – I’m not very good at it. There were still a few bits and pieces outstanding that I hadn’t managed to finish up and so I felt obliged to get a few of these out the way before doing anything else. Of course it was about lunchtime by the time I was finished. It was a bit overcast so mum was just reading her book in the kitchen, I’m pretty sure she’s now read half of it to me.

Matt is super busy with work today anyway so wasn’t planning a big day, and there’s not much open on a Monday anyway. There were also lots of left overs from last night’s dinner to be eaten so quiche and salad was the order of the day.

Matt had bought a new clipper set for the tree so was keen to give it a quick go while I took mum to do my favourite thing, take a walk around the garden. I have to say that it is more fun with Matt, we look at and identify the wild flowers, mum tells me what needs to be done – and there’s a lot, of course. She’s very anxious that it won’t be done in time.

It still wasn’t great but had cleared up a bit so maybe time to go and see what other people have to offer. We’d done Marignac yesterday so this afternoon we are off around Cierp Gaud to see what we can find. We found a bar/hotel, the hotel had sadly been closed for 6 years but at least the bar was open. We also found a few other bits of accommodation that I am sure she’ll report back on.

Back at home and it’s definitely time for a dip, it’s now getting hot [35 maybe]. Mum decided to make the most of it and read by the pool. I was out with her and in the pool to do my lengths, >100. Matt is playing self-driving cars – the online version of the AWS machine learning thing he won recently – so best to leave him to it. Once my laps were done I realised that it was getting late and I’d best get some food on rather than wait for Matt to do it. Baked camembert and bread seemed like a good starter at least so Matt had something for when he finished. He then cooked up some of the sausages and we had those as a snack.

Back inside and time to relax. Had a call with Tonia and then blog updates and time for bed.

[13 June 2022]

Tuesday

Work’s not finished yet, my new Exec Dir needs to have a meeting with MedCity about something apparently. As with everyday, work never sleeps so they say – but I do wish it would at least have a lie in and watch some Netflix or something. I’d promised mum a trip back to the lac though so as soon as I was done we were off. It was very early for me to be going for lunch, I don’t usually eat until about 3pm but while we knew from the other day that it opened at 12 we had no idea what time it would close, however I was guessing that it would be around 3pm.

We were driving today however as the plan was also to go and look at the options in St Beat. Compared to the last time we went there was one fixed menu [two options for starters and mains]. There wasn’t a lot of choice, a beef dish with ananas (one of the most fun French words – it means pineapple) and peppers; or a beef dish cooked ‘au pot du four’ – my best translation was ‘hot-pot’ although it’s not entirely accurate. We both went for the second option as our mains and mum had the cheese tart while I had the tomato and mozzarella salad. The beef was cooked beautifully but there were still layers of soft fat which were a bit off putting, super tender though. Sadly the whole thing was missing a huge amount of seasoning and maybe a jus to give it a bit more flavour and not the lunch experience that Matt and I had last time we went, I’m definitely minded that the weekend menu is better than the one during the week. I couldn’t finish all my main but did manage to squeeze in a little vanilla ice cream.

After lunch we had a nice walk around the lac and I showed mum where Matt and I like to go, a little off the beaten track but it’s cool and beautiful. I think she liked it too. Afterwards, rather trying to find all the random AirBnBs however I decided to do a drive-by of the chateau options nearby.

Back at home mum was straight in the pool to cool off and I wasn’t far behind. The new smoker arrived so of course it had to be put together immediately. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to entirely take on the director role for this one and had to get a bit more hands on, but we managed to get it together pretty quickly.

I went to water the plants and came back to Matt out with the clippers pruning the cloud tree. Since it’s getting the barber shop treatment I’ve decided that it needs a name and have called it ‘Jean Cloud’. I also did a bit and I think Jean is looking pretty good if you ask me.

Matt’s next plan is to start on dinner, using his new smoker of course. Beercan chicken apparently is the order of the day. I didn’t manage to get any pictures as the thing needs to be closed most of the time and I was pottering about doing who knows what. It was super juicy though and I was roped in to do the salads etc.

Another super hot day, another thunderstorm so back into the house and time to unwind.

[14 June 2022]

Wednesday

Matt’s workload is a bit lighter today so we have decided to take an even longer lunch than the French and go Spanish – to Spain! Cressida came over at 11am and then we were off. Being early season there wasn’t masses open so we decided to eat in the main square, it was sadly a poor choice. One of the waiters was particularly grumpy, apparently he doesn’t like English people for some reason. He softened slightly with Cressida explaining that she lived in France but was learning Spanish, and was ok with me just speaking to him in French – I don’t speak Spanish as you know.

The food was deeply average but hopefully with our best French and Spanish they hadn’t spat in it – Cress’ words not mine. The next stop however was the key thing for the trip, going to the Supermercardo to pick up a load of meat, it really is so much cheaper in Spain that back at home.

Time to head back after our shopping trip as Matt has a 4pm meeting. Was a good outing though as got so spend time with some of my favourite people (not all of them but some of them). Cress had to head back to Jonny, and she had to drive, so mum, meow and I were back by the pool.

It clouded over a bit later on and we had plenty of leftovers so just a quiet evening and early to bed, tomorrow is a big day.

[15 June 2022]

Thursday

Reasonably early start to the day today as we are off to Tarbes to the wedding dress shop. Traffic appears to be bad today so going to have to leave a little earlier than planned. Also, I’m driving ‘on my own’ [i.e. without Matt – I’m not actually on my own of course as mum and Cressida will be there]. On the drive we couldn’t work out how to update the maps – I was too busy concentrating on the road and so the easiest thing was to call Matt. He was able to update the route remotely straight to the car – very clever boy.

At Tarbes it took us a slightly circuitous route (most likely due to a mad 1 way system around central Tarbes). Thankfully there was a bit of queue for payment machine, I was off taking a picture of the car reg while mum and Cress queued up but it wasn’t clear apparently what you needed to do. The lady after us however was keen to help us move along as quickly as possible however so kindly helped us operate it. After a quick toilet stop we were only a couple of minutes late so they forgave us pretty quickly. Of course I couldn’t access the pictures of dresses that I’d saved so another call to Matt to ask him to log onto my laptop (which I’d left behind) to send them to me.

I tried on three dresses and liked elements of two but neither set me on fire thinking ‘this is the one’. The third was a flat no, nothing I liked about it at all so I didn’t even bother to show the other two. It turns out that this is not the best time to shop for wedding dresses. They’ve already had everything in and sold it ready for the summer weddings and next year’s collections won’t be ready till Sep/Oct/Nov. Rather wish I’d known that before but wouldn’t have stopped mum wanting to go and have a look. The old couple that ran the shop were absolutely lovely, they’ve been doing it for 50 years! They finally also had a look at the pictures of dresses I’d seen on their website and recommended Justin Alexander (thought that might make you smile Vicky – this was the designer we’d discussed before). If there is anything specifically that I want to try from the new collection (when it comes out) then I can call and ask and they can order it in for me.

Either way however it was a bit of a bust unfortunately. Time to stop at a bar for a drink. Just the soft kind as I’m driving, although I was absolutely gasping. I’d forgotten to bring anything with me and mum couldn’t work out how to change the air con on the drive over so we’d been roasting – it was about 36/37 today. We talked about dresses and Cress gave mum the link to the shop that she’d bought a dress from recently for her brothers upcoming nuptials. We still had plenty of time on the car so quickly took mum to Galleries La Fayette to look for dresses for her for upcoming weddings. We didn’t find anything unfortunately but mum has found something on Cress’ website so not an entire loss. Time to head home.

The drive back was much easier to navigate thankfully and I changed the aircon before we left. Definitely time for a dip when we got back and enjoy the lilies that are out at the moment. Only briefly mind as had to check a few emails before we got onto dinner and relaxation time.

[16 June 2022]

Friday

Generally busy with work in the morning so Mum’s just relaxing by the pool. After work it was time to finally get onto the next job mum has wanted us to do for ages, going to the Marie. Matt’s finished the bulk of his work so has time to come up with me. It was a very quick initial discussion as they are clearly well prepared for such things and had a booklet ready. So we were advised to read the booklet then come back or call to set a date.

Back at home and there’s some prep work to do for another short bid project I’ve been roped into doing providing inpatient weekend services for the Welsh Health Board to reduce the backlog of patients after Covid. I’ve organised a kick off meeting for tomorrow morning so I need to get prepped for it. Meow was trying to help Matt but eventually managed to be distracted by a box.

An hour of that and now time to get my laps in, 100 again. Next up to water the plants which are looking a bit sad, pots and super hot weather aren’t a good mix, while Matt makes the vegetable garden watering work. We still need to drill a hole in the potting shed (4) wall so that we can attach up the pump and run it from inside out of the rain.

Back to the pool, just about anything is hard work in this heat. Only 10 laps though as I have work to get back to. Another hour or so and I’m done, the prep is all sent out for tomorrow’s meeting and it’s time for dinner. Mum’s making some 3 mustard pork thing for us and Matt has made Creme Catalan again (also mum’s favourite desert). Another quick storm seems to be coming through, most of it has missed us but there is still a little rain so best to get inside.

I’ve got some more work to get done, so that I don’t have to do it tomorrow. Matt’s trying to work out how to get the place cool enough to sleep. This weather has been crazy hot, and even hotter to come.

A quick episode of House of Games and they’re off to bed while I update the blog.

[17 June 2022]

Friday

I have a busy day this morning with a Kick Off on a new project. Thankfully yesterday’s prep was well advised and I quickly took over to chair the call. Quite a bit more work to get done on this before I can finish as it is an extra part time bit on the side, I mean it’s not as though we have a lot else to do.

Getting hot though so time to get in the pool. Matt has a couple more afternoon meetings and then another dip before we head over to the Huxtables.

As we are about to leave however I can’t find my e-cigarette. We searched everywhere. So half an hour late, still not having found it, we’ve got a poor replacement but it’s going to have to get me through. I was the first to test out their pool and it was lovely. Not sure what mum was doing though…

Dinner was some ribs on the new egg. Fantastic for a first go and looking forward to ongoing tasting sessions if this is a sign of things to come. We’ve also planned to make a date to go to the Lac de Gery to go and see a band, they sound really good and an electric violin could be awesome, they may even be good enough for the wedding if we’re lucky. A few more drinks and time to get the boy home. Thank heavens he hadn’t been drinking though or we’d have hit the deer in the road on the way back.

Time to get to bed.

[17 June 2022]

Saturday

Another hot night but managed to sleep relatively well after a night at the Huxtables. Wasn’t allowed to sleep too late anyway as the plan was to go up to Emmaus/Troc before a quick trip to Action. Unfortunately we were too tardy to do both so only made it to Emmaus. Not a lot there to be honest but couldn’t pass up a couple of cushions for €1 and some tent pegs.

Unfortunately Action didn’t have what we wanted either so it was all a bit of a bust. A quick drop into LeClerc and at least we’re coming away with a new e-cigarette. Time to head home for lunch and contemplate what we would do with the rest of the afternoon. The plan had been to go down to Luchon, however as we drove past the ambulance station down the road the temp was reading 44 deg. While Matt put on lunch I took the sweetcorn and some other bits to drop them into the garden. Just doing this much however was very hot and I was sweating into my dress so decided to de-robe and finish it in my pants!

Too hot! Time for lunch and then to join Matt in the pool. He’s not stupid that boy, he’s moved the parasol to the side of the pool to sit in the pool in the shade while I float around, genius! We do need to order some more of these though, they’re pretty good and I don’t fancy fighting over them when we have visitors. Plus we’ve promised to get some for Jonny and Cressida. Mum however had decided to remain inside watching an unbelievable amount of MasterChef.

With this crazy hot temperature all we could do was think about all the work that wasn’t happening inside the house. Our plan there was to keep all the shutters closed to reduce the solar gain and hope that it would be cool enough to sleep later. Of course having all the doors on the ground floor open probably didn’t help.

Time for dinner and Matt had put on a lovely pork apple juice thing before we’d gone out. Clearly the new smoker is doing good things as that pork was amazing. Yum, yum, yum. More swimming and it’s now warmer in the pool than it is outside. We chatted away and decided to call it quits before it was too cold to get out.

I then had to water all the plants, despite the number I’ve put in the ground there are a lot waiting to go around the pool once the terrace is in. That done and it’s blog writing and relaxation time before bed.

[18 June 2022]

Sunday

This is not my idea of what Sunday means. Matt had me awake at 10 – that’s 9am GMT so the start of the working day, on a Sunday for heavens sake. It seems he’s promised mum that we’d leave at 10:30 to go for lunch in Toulouse. Apparently knowing how good the bricos etc are isn’t the same as visiting somewhere.. who knew?!

We had tried to visit Toulouse once before, finding a parking lot with the smallest possible spaces. It was (as so often in France) the wrong day of the week, it was also then during the pandemic so everything was closed. This time we fared a little better. The scan of restaurants on TripAdvisor was a bit of a bust, being election day and fathers day, and a sunday, they were slim pickings. So we decided to make our way towards to Pont Neuf. It was actually very pretty, surprisingly quickly we found a bar by the river that sold Vietnamese food (Matt and I were very happy about this, Mum was less sure). Turns out that mum does like Vietnamese, despite not having apparently eaten it when in Vietnam – that’s cruises for you.

We took a walk around and saw lots of interesting plaques etc, unfortunately however there was a concert planned in the park for this evening and it was all cordoned off, but we took a short tour around some of the back street, picked up a few bits of info and made our way back to the bar. A quick coke and half a beer later and we were on our way to the airport to drop her off. [I forgot to ask Matt to take a photo – sorry.]

Of course since we are out we have to go to a brico. Even with the seats down we can only get in 3×5 sheets of the insulation we need. It’s very specific to reach an R2.7 rating – only 0.3 difference to what ANAH wanted to put in but 12cm difference in depth lost from the rooms.

We then popped inside to get some more hose clips, our current ones really aren’t cutting it and twice now we have found them pop off and make a mockery of my very expensive, future generation saving water cubes. With the car packed we needed to get home. The Huxtables had kindly offered for us to stop by on the way through but the car was almost out of battery, we didn’t have our swim stuff and Matt was keen to be in the pool and stop driving. He has been a trooper as alway and makes sense.

Back at home and realised that a lot of the plants were very sad. I know you aren’t meant to water them at this time – first thing in the morning [nope] or late in the evening [maybe, but I’ll probably forget – so water from below the leaves don’t get scorched and let them literally suck it up.] Nobody’s perfect.

I found another sweetcorn that I’d somehow missed and there was a Zinnia that was keen to be in ground too apparently – it was actually very root bound. Anyway, job done and time to get in the pool.

Clouds came over later but still cooler outside. We still had to move all the furniture out of the way in case the terrace people come tomorrow. We left a little sitting bit for a while as was still hot. Unfortunately however it seems that our plans to go to the concert with the Huxtables in a few days has literally gone up in flames, the wonderful restaurant at the Lac went up last night and the place has been absolutely gutted. Terrible news for everyone and to happen right at the start of the season they must be devastated.

We later moved inside and put on our regular scheduling. It was great to see mum but still lovely to have the house to ourselves again. It’s been a busy ‘break’ though so early to bed and to get ready for a full week of work.

[19 June 2022]