You may remember that the people we chose to fit our photovoltaic panels were supposed to start work in March, but didn’t turn up and didn’t reply to any form of contact, but called round while we were in Spain. Kieran wasn’t quite sure what the guy said, but thought it was something along the lines of they’d start in 10 days time. So we waited. Nothing.

I phoned and emailed; eventually we had a reply, explaining that their original supplier had gone bust, the next one they tried had an eighteen week delivery delay, but they’d just found one who could supply the stuff sooner and they’d be starting work on May 6th, at the latest.

May 6th came and went; I phoned and emailed, but what a surprise – no reply. I phoned the Greffe Tribunal de Commerce and was pleased to hear at least that they hadn’t gone bankrupt. So Nick and I went to see them this afternoon. The office was locked up, but their van was in the driveway of their house. I chatted to a man working on a nearby building, who said he’d seen several people come to see what was going on with their orders and he thought they’d simply taken on more work than they could cope with.

We rang the bell – nothing. We hammered on the door and eventually monsieur appeared at an upstairs window so we asked if we could have a word. He didn’t recognise us, but as Nick was in cycling lycra, he could be forgiven. He claims the last piece of the kit only arrived this morning and that their phone and internet haven’t been working for the last few days, but that they will start work next Monday. I’ll believe it when I see it.

While that work hasn’t been going on, we haven’t been idle; we’ve finished the bike shed, applying a coat of crepi (somewhere between paint and plaster) to the walls and painting the ceiling white. I don’t think I’ll ever make a plasterer; I hardly managed to make any of it stick to the wall and the pile on the floor just grew and grew. Just as well Nick was there to do 90% of the work!

He’s put a velux window in the room upstairs that we hope will eventually become a family guest room; in the meantime, it’s going to become a temporary sewing room, largely because I spent a small fortune on patchwork fabrics for a quilt for the spare room last week. Better get on with a design then……