Nick’s cycling-mad friend, Glyn, is staying with us for a couple of weeks, so the two of them headed off to the Pyrenees this morning for a few days of serious hill climbing. I thought I’d have a few days off, play some guitar, read a book, watch a few films; Kieran, however, had other ideas, along the lines of “We’ve got to make a difference while they’re away”. Hmmmm…..

So this morning, before it got too hot, saw us starting to cut up and bundle together the huge pile of vine trimmings the farmer left us when he pruned the vines back in March. They’re used to cook magret de canard on a barbecue, and do give it a lovely flavour; but we soon got very bored with that game and only did 2 boxes.

We’ve got some lovely big compost bins, but somebody (who shall remain nameless as he’s not here to defend himself) seems to think it better to simply dump stuff in a big heap somewhere near the bins, so I decided to clear the heap. There was all manner of stuff in it, from rotten apples to lengths of bamboo, ironwork, polybags and tree branches; I sorted it and piled the burnable stuff onto the vine trimmings. Kieran, meanwhile, split into manageable pieces and put on the same pile, the roots and stumps of trees we removed last year. Then came his favourite moment, when he could pour white spirit over it and set light to it all; it was quite a bonfire.

A while ago Nick bought me a present, a wonderful gift and something no girl should be without; I hadn’t used it until today, when I was educated in the finer techniques of starting and using – a strimmer. Yes, my very own, lightweight, easy-to-handle (or so it says on the box) strimmer! OK, so I haven’t perfected the shoulder-wrenching pull start yet and after an hour or so, it feels anything but lightweight, but if someone starts it for me, I’m away!

I’m hoping to be given some time off for good behaviour this evening as tomorrow Kieran’s plans include shifting the mountain of soil left when they replaced the gas tank and clearing all the boxes full of as-yet-unpacked stuff from the floor above the arrière cuisine, ready to remove and replace the floor.

I’ll be glad when Nick gets home!