My head hurts

An exhausting couple of days preparing for and in meetings, culminating with a tender analysis and pre-contract meeting this afternoon for a project here in France - all in French of course. My French is pretty good (but a bit rusty at the moment), but after 4-5 hours of discussion my brain just wants to shut down, especially with strong regional accents and technical language to contend with. A bit of a headache this evening!

Tomorrow some more drawing revisions, some DIY and a rest before departure on Friday.

Susie has her dance showcase "SPRUNG" in Totnes tonight. It's the first time I've missed it since I met her. Good Luck Darling.

Back to France

Usual Pyrenean spring weather with April showers and sunny spells. No worries as it's always lovely to experience the incandescent green when all the beech leaves burst open! The fields are starting to fill with the lime green of starwort and the usual succession of wild flowers. There were chevreuil playing in the meadow and the garden this morning, practising for the rut and trying to remove the velvet from their antlers.

 Early purple orchids

Squill

Lots of architectural work to do this trip, but still time in the evenings to hunt for the last of the morels (if there are any) and a bit of DIY.

And finally, the bigger they are the harder they fall...this tiny (bodied) spider clearly got the better of the big hairy beast it's currently eating!

Seals at Start Point

In between work appointments, we tidied the allotment on Thursday afternoon and then the garden this morning. 

With the weather sunny and warm we snuck out to Start Point and watched a couple of seals playing the sea. A spot of fishing at Mattiscombe bay, but lost my spinner after an hour or so, so we retreated to Slapton for a half.

Home time

 Just time to finish the white paint in the bathroom then it's back to (rainy) UK. Called in on Minsou, who is well and having her roof re-slated. She told me that Michelle (AKA the Suisse) found lots of Morels at the weekend...grrr! Seems I've missed them.

The new tram terminal under construction at Blagnac

New door to bathroom made and hung - needs to be sanded to get it back to clean wood, then oiled to bring out the grain (which is actually very nice, plus the wide boards are book-matched). I used the other brass suffolk latch that I got in Totnes market, and managed to mend the broken lever with a piece of cut down brass hinge that I soldered into the stub.

Bathroom is also sanded, caulked and painted. It's been a productive week all in all.

Bathrooms again

This one needs a bit more sanding and fitting tomorrow

Rain continued most of the morning and into the mid-afternoon. I had to wait a couple of hours for the man from the ERDF to arrive to discuss the devi for Gilbert's grange in La Trappe, but then I pressed on with the oak joinery working under cover of the entrance canopy. The upstairs bathroom window and door reveals are fitted and there was enough left over to replace the painted plywood shelf in the downstairs bathroom. I have two remaining book matched boards which with a narrow board between, will make a lovely door for this bathroom too - replacing the one I made from left over floorboards, which has always been warped and a swine to shut.

All done by 8pm. : )

Bathroom works

The hot wind continued to blow yesterday, so I continued with bringing down more hung up trees (the not so threatening ones), though they were still challenging trees to bring down safely. Ian arrived in the late afternoon with some oak for the bathroom and I headed over to his to help unload his wood and stay for supper.

Overnight some wet weather has arrived, so today I cracked on with plasterboarding the bathroom and plastering the joints. I managed to get the first first of the oak in place (the window board) but the continuing rain called a halt to proceeding before I could do the window and door reveals (I have to cut and plane the timber outside).

Sandrine and John over for Dinner tonight.

Architecture work in the morning, the last of the dangerously hung up trees in my fields brought down, logged and branches burnt in the afternoon and an evening stroll in the hot south wind.