8am Joel arrives, with a BIG digger. By 8.15, he and Nick are repairing the cement mixer, which has a problem, but it was soon sorted.

8.30 The first lorryload of gravel arrives from Sarremejean; it won’t fit through the front gates, so has to use the back ones and dump its load slightly further from where it’s needed. Nick and Kieran are instructed to barrow the gravel into the floor of the new house, while Joel starts laying the blocks onto the foundations. Joel is a man short at the moment, which is great for us as it means Nick and Kieran are acting as labourers – it keeps them out of mischief and our costs down. It also means we get the boss working on our project 🙂

Once the blocks were done, Joel took the big digger to break up and remove the old patio and level the ground to where it needs to be. Kieran was green with envy as he used our baby digger to load the gravel into the barrows.

I was out while a lot of this was going on, having been invited to the “English Ladies’ Lunch Club” AGM and lunch, in order to do a bit of networking. I’ve avoided this group up to now, paying my subs but little else, as we didn’t come over here to spend our time exclusively with the English, as seems to be quite common. However, my teaching English to the French business hasn’t got off the ground yet, but I have been asked to do French conversation classes for English people. I thought TEFL stood for Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, but maybe it’s Teaching the English the French Language!

Once the AGM was over, we adjourned to the restaurant. You must have seen the film of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches”; remember the scene where  the witches are convening for their big meeting? All looking like ordinary women? But when you look closely, and know what to look for, you notice that they’re all wearing flat, sensible shoes (because witches have long toes), that their eyes have a curious purple hue, and that they scratch their heads a lot (they’re bald, and their wigs are itchy). I had great difficulty containing my giggles as I found myself looking at their feet and eyes and trying to see the join where their facial masks ended!

They turned out, however, to be a very pleasant group of people (I hope none of them reads this blog!), who were happy to take my flyers, and several of whom expressed an interest in coming to my classes. So we’ll see what happens.

By the time I’d taught my English class at the CLAN in Nogaro and got home, work was nearly finished for the day and it was getting dark, which is why some of the pictures are rather gloomy. One of these days, I’ll find time to learn how to use Photoshop; in my spare time, no doubt 😀  Nick and Kieran look pretty flattened tonight, but Joel was impressed with the work they’d achieved, saying it would have taken most people 2 days to do what they’ve done in one; I can’t say I was surprised.