Saturday

Since the weather seems to have warmed up a little today is going to be a big day on the house. Matt is outside working on the woodshed extension (lean-to) and Rane has come over to give me a lesson in plastering. We’ve been incredibly busy and finished doing the first fixes in Rooms 1, 2, 3 and 4!

When work was finished we had a quick run down to Lidl to pick up a few things.. ok plants, yes we bought more plants.

Back at home and we decided to make a treat that I haven’t had in a long time – Bitterballen! I love these things, they are so delicious. Ok, they were better in Amsterdam and at DeHems in London but for our first go I’m pretty pleased with them.

[4 February 2023]

Sunday

Up and at them. Time to help Matt get the woodshed lean-to finished. I think it’s looking good and should help to protect the rest of the birch that we cut in our first spring here.

Matt has pretty much finished in the pink SdB so after a quick wipe down to remove the loose plaster it’s time to finally start painting. I hate painting ceilings, particularly ones that are over 3m high; up, down, up, down, up, down. It’s absolutely miserable. But it must be done.

Meanwhile Matt is in the cave putting up the wine racks.

I’ve finally had enough of painting and since the sun has come out I thought I’d potter around and tidy up the front porch and plant pots.

Time to make dinner, relax and unwind.

[5 February 2023]

Monday

Busy working all day.

[6 February 2023]

Tuesday

Managed to get a few breaks today to get a bit more painting done. Doing so many layers of white though is incredibly boring. The only good one is the first one and even that wasn’t very satisfying. Meanwhile Matt is working on the electric shutter in Room 1, another job which feels like you should be able to do it in half an hour but takes considerably longer. Finally time for dinner and it’s fish tacos, I was so hungry though I’d almost finished it before I remembered to take a photo.

[7 February 2023]

Wednesday

Busy working this morning and I have some early meetings but we’re off to the hospital this afternoon. Don’t worry nothing serious, just finally got an appointment to transfer Matt’s follow ups to France so that he doesn’t have to keep going back to the UK, and reducing our burden on a plenty strained NHS.

Lots of paperwork as you’d imagine and lots of different desks to log into but it was very smooth actually with very little waiting. The consultant spoke some English but certainly not fluent however we had all the relevant documents, like a well oiled machine, and thankfully a lot of clinical words are the same.

It was only after the appointment and we were trying to find cardiology that I got all excited about being at my first French hospital. I’m a hospital geek and have travelled to many, many hospitals so this exciting. I wish I could say I took the pictures for the blog but I didn’t they were to share with Peter, but I’ll share them with you too.

Since we’re up at St Go Matt wanted to pop into Action to pick up some paint, but I spotted that we were going right past Emmaus so insisted that we stopped to have a quick look. So we bought a load of random stuff, including a new freezer!

Finally off to Action and while Matt buys the things we came for I focused on the stuff that we didn’t, and sharing it with Rane so that I could also pick up stuff for her. Every day is a wedding shopping day.

Quick stop at LeClerc on the way home. Matt accidentally pointed out the bulb section they had in. I said I didn’t want any and then promptly lost him as I ransacked it before wandering round aimlessly having forgotten what we were there for with armfulls of bulbs.

Back home and the car unloaded, the pork I took out won’t be cooked for ages so we settled for pizza. Matt cooked while I packed everything away. I’m gradually clearing the random stuff out of the armoire in the SaM and filling it with all the stuff we’ve bought for the wedding.

Dinner and then my next job is to make a big list of questions for the Marie. I’m going to drop it off in duplicate so that I have a copy and they have one in our dossier so they know everything that’s been agreed. We’ve also received the Declaration des Temoins (witness declarations) from Tony finally, so I’ve done what I can with the Mum/ma’s but still need their final documentation to complete the dossier. Hopefully I can get it by tomorrow and do one big hit at the Marie. However my computer stopped and just started showing the circle of death forever so I went to bed.

[8 February 2023]

Thursday

I tried to start working but the circle of death was still whirring away on my computer. Thankfully some remote support from Matt (he’s two stories up, that’s a long walk, particularly if he’s on the phone and can’t help). Thankfully he responded quickly and I managed to get it working again. I still have to finish editing those blasted PDFs though, and working out how the hell you add signatures to them. Eventually I got it to work but it had taken hours longer than anticipated.

I was still keen to go to the Marie this afternoon though so I wanted to go through the rest of the guide to see what else we needed to submit. Ugh.. There’s one hugely long form – probably 20 mins if you happen to be French, for 25 year old GCSE French however this was a good couple of hours if not more.

I was about 20mins in before I got an urgent call to Marignac’s Emergency Taxi Service. Bertie is seriously unwell suddenly and needs to get to the vet urgently. Tools down, our favourite puppy is in danger, off to the rescue – so long as I could pick them up from the end of the driveway or I won’t be able to get out again.

Once I got to the end of the driveway Jonny and Bertie were waiting for me. Bertie is hugely unsettled and very shaky, Jonny’s not much better to be honest. Annoyingly there’s some workmen blocking the narrow road with a manhole cover up some cones out. They looked straight at me but seemed to just bugger about. So I do a many point turn and just as I’m almost finished they put the cover back to let a car through coming the other way. I’ve turned around now so we’re going via Chaum.

At the vet Jonny goes in to speak to them while I try my best to calm a very distressed puppy. He’s soon back and taking Bertie inside. While they go in with the vet I decided to go back to the car and watch some Netflix rather than hanging around the waiting room explaining that I’m just the dog’s chauffeur to another receptionist or vet.

Jonny came out and Bertie has had some blood tests but they’re just waiting for the results and then we should know more. A few minutes later and they’re going to keep him under observation for a couple of hours. Not much point sitting here and Jonny was going to need some more shopping before Cress gets home anyway.

Rane, Zia (daughter 1) and her boyfriend popped over as the kids are over to visit and make the most of the skiing, they’ve been up at Peyragudes today and apparently it was pretty good but both slushy and icy by the afternoon. I’d really best start making a move on dinner as we’re having roast pork this evening and Matt is going to be finishing work soon.

Time for me to get some work done finally. I only got a couple of hours done but by 10pm I was over it and time to give up for the day. I’m going to have to try harder tomorrow.

Matt’s gone to bed and I can’t bear to start more work and not finish it so I’m going to update the blog. Of course BBC stopped working so I got some more remote support before he went to sleep.

All working again so I can get back to the blog before heading to bed. Night all

[9 February 2023]