Our builder, Joel, phoned this morning. He’s a great guy, friendly, bubbly, even lends us his tools so we don’t have to pay him to do some of the jobs for us! However, he talks at a rate of knots and is difficult to follow even face to face; so when I hear him on the phone, my heart sinks. After the first few moments of this morning’s call, I asked him, as always, to slow down as I hadn’t understood a word he’d said; as always, he laughed, said that was fine and continued at precisely the same rate! My technique is that every time I hear “ça va?” or “d’accord?” I agree and we sort it out when he arrives and I can understand better. So by the time I put the phone down and Nick asked what that was about, I had to admit that I didn’t really know; except that Olivier, who’s doing the chape liquide, is coming round this afternoon to do his bit and something about 5 or 10 minutes and drinking coffee???????? Joel never stops for coffee, so I haven’t a clue – we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I’ve put a pot of coffee on, just in case.

Next I need to phone the people who are doing the under floor heating to tell them they can start on Tuesday; that’s an easier call as Felana speaks nice and slowly for me. The boys removed the plasterboards and insulation and took the French doors out yesterday, cut away 6cm of the lintel and put the doors back in; temporarily, so they can adjust the height when the floor is down. Of course, the other slight hitch now is that the balcony will be lower than the kitchen floor, so we might have to do something about that. We’re also not sure if the kitchen tap will now get in the way of the windows opening, so we may have to rethink where the sink goes.

Olivier turned up a little later; we think just to tell us he’ll be here this afternoon and to drink coffee. So at least I’d understood something!