Christmas is a-comin’, the goose is getting fat,
I’d put it on the table, but Nick won’t hear of that!
Having done battle with the goose again this morning, when I had to go into the hen run and it repeatedly attacked me, I would be more than happy to serve goose for Christmas dinner. But Nick’s very attached to Herman/Hermione, so I’m not allowed!
The heating man finally turned up last week, drew lines all over the insulation, then covered the lines up with heating pipes; the chape will go down after Christmas. This meant it was time for us to choose floor tiles. It doesn’t sound like too difficult a task, after all, there are loads of tiles to choose from, so we headed to Pau. Three shops later and we still hadn’t seen anything we liked; there were a few that we thought would do, but nothing that really grabbed us.
We decided to go to Spain, where we’d been told tiles are much cheaper; Nick seemed to be under the impression that we’d cross the border and there’d be wall-to-wall tile shops – wrong! After visiting Irun and finding not one tile shop, we headed to San Sebastian; a beautiful town, but so busy that we couldn’t even find a parking space, so we came home, disappointed.
Next stop Mont de Marsan, followed by Condom and Auch; I lost count of the number of shops we visited, but saw nothing we really liked. Well, that’s not strictly true, but as we don’t have €10 000 to spend on floor tiles, they didn’t count!
So back to Pau, where we found another shop, recently opened, and where we found tiles that fitted all our requirements; multi-sized, tone with the kitchen cupboard doors, but a slightly darker shade, hard wearing and within our price range. We even got a 20% discount! At 125 square metres, putting them down isn’t going to be a quick task, but I’m sure we’ll manage eventually.
When not driving round the country, tile-hunting, we had the band Christmas party. Everyone took food and drink; we took mulled wine, a Christmas pudding and a microwave to warm them up in; and had a great fun, if very silly, evening.
To anyone reading this, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
