Week 23rd - 29th January 2006

Happiness is a full oil tank. Unfortunately this photo was taken in November...it's now nearly empty. Oh well.

Monday: Was the day that the wardrobe was to arrive from England. We got a phone call from Morley Green over the weekend to say that the other part of his load destined for France had not turned up and he did not want to bring over the wardrobe on its own. Should be delivered in about 10 days...Watch this space.

Tuesday: Worked on the ceiling in the morning and went shopping in Coutances in the afternoon. Bought a great toy for Jake to play with when he arrives next weekend.

Wednesday: Ceiling finished, hooray! John Clarke (the kennel man up the road) has a puncture and asked for help as he did not have a wheel spanner. The one from the Mercedes is too small so we borrowed one from Yves (must remember to get it back). Received a visit from a building inspector to check up why we had not completed our building work; you normally get 2 years to complete but as we have completed half of the job everything is OK (see Friday for scary letter!). Went to Gonzague's at 5pm for our organic vegetables. Gonzague's farm is in Roncey, he sells his veg from the Farm on Wednesday evenings and then in the market on Thursday. It's good quality et moins cher.

Thursday: Sharon has finished spray painting the day bed so we brought it in from the barn. It just fits under the stairs, looks good. Went to French classes in the evening but as we had seafood pasta for diner (v. heavy on the garlic) we spent the evening trying not to breathe on anyone!

Friday: A letter from planning people turned up. Very official looking and scary references to fines for non compliance. Waiting for Yves to get home from work so that he can translate. Peter phoned and invited us to dinner on Monday, Jan is cooking a chinese meal; as she learned to cook chinese food in Beijing it should be good.

Saturday: Snow! The weather forecast said bright and sunny, the weather god decided differently. Best make sure I do not run out of oil so I have ordered 1000 litres of heating oil. The grandmother of the man who delivers the oil used to live in this house. I showed the scary letter to Yves - it is horrible. I have used the wrong type and colour tiles on the roof. Looking at the plans I can see where the mistake was made. It says "to match existing". We used the existing tiles as a base and added a few of a similar type to make up the difference. What was actually required was to match the tiles on the main roof. See before and after photos. The planning people were also under the impression that all work was finished rather than just the first phase. I will see the Marie on Tuesday (closed Monday) and Yves will arrange a meeting with the planners in Coutances to see what my options are. Peter suggested I just paint the roof grey.

Sunday: A sunny day. Took the dogs for a long walk through the countryside. Forecast for the next few days is cold and sunny. Hope the weather stay's ok for Matt, Abby and Jake's visit next weekend. For their birthday treat (their birthday's are the 5th and 8th of Feb) we have booked next weeks Sunday lunch at a posh restaurant. It's called the "Auberge de L'Abbaye de Hambye". Can't see Matt eating the snails though.... Jake might. Looking forward to it.

That's all for this week folks!

Weeekend of 21/22 January 2006.

Saturday

What's the worst job in the world? will tell you....it's sanding down taped plasterboard joints in the ceiling. What a pain in the neck. I am writing this while waiting for Sharon to vacate the bathroom so that I can soak in the bath. Mind you, Sharon has also been busy today painting the day bed we bought in the Depot Vente in Coutances. A Depot Vente is a warehouse type place where the French take their old furniture to sell. The price falls the longer it remains unsold, so you can often pick up a bargain, mostly though it is old junk.

Sunday

Finished the sanding down and put up the first coat of paint on the ceiling. Me with the roller, Sharon cutting in. Finished mid afternoon, bright sunny day so we took the dogs for a walk. Long bath, glass of scotch, feeling lazy. No tv as the satellite is unplugged. Roast turkey for dinner. Roaring log fire, finished reading The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn. Not a bad life.

Friday January 20th 2006

Last nights french class was better than expected. It is run as an association "La Diligence" and it is for French people to learn English as well as English people to lean French. It was two hours long with 30 minutes conversing in English, 30 minutes French.

This morning we went to Gavray. There we bought 80 metres of quadrant to edge the plasterboard on the ceiling in the salon. There is an English shop in Gavray so we treated ourselves to some baked beans, typhoo tea, wine gums etc.. We also wet into the newsagent and photo copied the building plans as we are just about to go to tender for the barn conversion.

I spent this afternoon filling the ceiling joints and Sharon was in the barn painting the quadrant (easier that way).

Yves came home from work and told us that the restaurant that we were going to Saturday night was closed. Shame I was looking forward to that. We were going with Yves, Veronique , Peter & Jan Gibson. Peter & Jan live in St Denis La Gast and have a large guest house and cooking school called La Conterie. I did their web site (there is a link on the right hand side of this page).

Curry for dinner. Just put a bottle of Guwurztraminer in the fridge. This is a perfumed wine from Alsace which goes very well with spicy food.

That's about all for today....no wait, good news from England. We have bought a wardrobe (yes another one) and are having it shipped from Bath to France. The story goes that we saw the wardrobe on ebay before Christmas but we were outbid. It's a large Ducal wardrobe that is the same style as our other bedroom furniture. We looked at French armoirs but this looked a good bet. Well, the wardrobe was relisted but we did not bid as the transport company we arranged to use last time had gone awol and we could not contact them. Anyway to cut a long story short, the wardrobe did not meet it's reserve price. We contacted the seller and agreed a price so long as we could get transport. Eventually everything was arranged and I have just got confirmation that the transport company (Morley Green) has picked the thing up ok. Delivery on Monday morning.

Today's photo is of the two dogs chilling out.

The French home of Terry & Sharon Blom

and their two dogs; Teddy and Freddie.

Hi there, this is the online diary for our extended holiday in sunny France.

The house is shown here just before Christmas while Marg, Brian and Kath were staying.

Our latest visit to the house started in early November. The house in England is rented out for six months so we are here for a while!

Visitors since then have been Mike and Carol Higgins, Marg and Brian Holson, Auntie Kath, Paul Barnett, Sophie and Ben. Matt, Abby and Jake Blom are due to arrive on February 3rd. It's Matt's bithday on Feb 5th and Abby's on the 8th.

It has been a non-stop, hectic time as we have a never ending list of jobs to do. I am even multi-tasking! One of the main jobs was to lay foundations for a large shed to house a sit-on tractor mower. We needed the mower so that we could dispense with the services of Andrews Paysage, nice man that Andrew is, he was becoming very expensive. We have started on the foundations but stopped because of the weather. Just at that time Sharon spotted an advert for a mower, which we bought (photo to follow) it even has headlights! Because the shed for the mower is not built we had to clear out the barn - many, many trips to the dechetterie later, the barn is spick and span and is now home to the mower.

Today ( Jan 19th) we have been working on the ceiling in the salon. Late last summer, Justin plasterboarded the ceiling. It now needs the joints taping, filling and painting. I have just finished the taping and first coat of the enduit filler.

Tonight we are going to our first French classes in a town called Quibou (pronounced Kiboo), about 5k from here. We met the teacher (Sally) on Tuesday night in the Salle de Fêtes in Notre Dame de Cenilly where there was the first meeting for the summer pagent - "Le soir où les loups brûlèrent le diable" which will be a masive four day event showing the history of Normandy. Sally is an English lady, been in France for 13 years and works at the same school as Yves and Véronique (our neighbours) teaching English.

I will let you know how we got on in the next episode.