Sunday – New Years Day

We all had a pretty good sleep in today and even when we did rise nobody was looking particularly clever. It was a pretty muted day as you’d expect with a lot of lounging about, watching movies and generally relaxing. Sadly Jeff and Vivian are flying back this evening. I can’t say that I envy them, although at least they’d booked the train and SNCF was actually running. The drop off at Montrejeau was fine but I don’t know that Matt or I were up for a drive all the way up to the airport today so we were incredibly grateful.

[1 January 2023]

Monday

After a few days being pretty warm and sunny today is pretty miserable, and since I anticipate that it will again be a bit of a slow burn I decided to stay in bed and watch a bit of TV on my iPad. I wasn’t wrong as when I went down everyone else had only been for a wander around the garden and were now watching the Life of Pets movie.

With poor weather but no snow it was going to be another day of relaxing round the house and having a glass or two of wine. Bit of a damp squib of a day for Lee and Vicky’s last full day here sadly. Even the pub was closed but we had a brief walk at least I guess and got out of the house.

[2 January 2023]

Tuesday

Lee and Vicky are heading home today and everyone was up early what with the builders coming this morning. Once they arrived Matt went to get everyone up and move Lee and Vicky out of the first floor while I chatted to the builders and made them coffee. It wasn’t much fun, but at least they didn’t come yesterday which had potentially been on the cards as it wasn’t a bank holiday in France (weekend bank holidays aren’t rolled over to the following Monday if they fall on a weekend).

Time to get out of the house and get some fresh air. We decided to take a walk over to Cierp-Gaud, up to see the old church, across the base of the mountain, and then loop back round across the rugby pitch. What do you know, we’d only just entered the village as we found Ed chilling on his front porch with a glass of rosé. You will be very impressed however that we didn’t stop and got on with our walk.

It was a lovely wander around though and we managed to go further round than we’d managed before. The last downward part was pretty treacherous so I was pretty impressed that we actually made it down without anyone falling, I was hoping it would be Lee 😉

Back at the house and its time for lunch, baguette, cheeses, pates etc.

After lunch it was time for the kids to get their things together again and get packed up for the journey home and to drop them off at the station. We’re sad to see them go but work has to start again for all of us and all good things have to come to an end. Hopefully they will be out again soon, however since Vicky can’t ski this year I’ll have to hope for a long weekend sometime.

Mountains are still here though. And, eventually, Lee and Vicky finally arrived back at home despite the tube and rail strikes back in the UK. I bet Lee is secretly pleased that Vicky booked a cab last night.

[3 January 2023]

Wednesday

The three captains of industry are all up and working on different floors (that’s me, Matt and Tonia in case you weren’t clear). Meanwhile there has been a huge amount of plasterboard and montants/railings delivered which are now stacked up in the hallway. They have a pretty fancy scaffold that I’d rather like, it’s got wheels and everything, can you imagine how much quicker we could get things done with a fancy piece of kit like this?!

Ceiling mountings and insulation going up quickly in Rooms 3 and 4.

[4 January 2023]

Thursday

It’s a very early start to the day as we’re off to the dental surgeon to go and get the first part of Matt’s new tooth implant done. I tried to wake Tonia up before I left but we’d only been gone about half an hour and the doorbell rang but no sign of it being answered on the camera so had to call her. It seems that the doorbell isn’t so loud by the time you get up to the second floor. It was a pretty uneventful trip in many ways as I just sat in the waiting room tethering off my phone to work while Matt went into theatre. We were probably only there for about 45 mins all up. I drove home though as Matt felt a bit weird on his left side after the local in his face, better safe than sorry.

Back at home I have a deadline today so going to be busy finishing everything off. Matt and I managed to find time for a quick wander around the grounds though and spotted something, it looks like some sort of budleia but I’m not sure that it’s the traditional one we’re used to.

I had a quick check in with the builders and everything seems to be going ok so back to work. Before checking on the work that they’ve been doing upstairs. Seems that they’re cracking along with it which is great.

Back to work. When I finally finished Matt was grumbling about not sure what he wanted to eat so I made him some special scrambled eggs on toast before making pasta bake for Tonia and I. Hopefully Matt will be able to eat some of it lukewarm tomorrow as a break from eggs but hard to think of huge numbers of things you can eat that are both soft and cold.

Matt’s off to bed very early as the pain is clearly exhausting so I stayed up to write the blog while watching TV with Tonia.

[5 January 2023]