Our friend Nellie is a stained glass maker, she creates the most beautiful contemporary pieces of glass. But if you saw her workshop, you’d wonder how anyone can produce anything in such an environment; ivy and all sorts of greenery grows over the inside of the walls, the roof leaks like a sieve and there’s hardly any natural light. It’s also completely uninsulated and bitterly cold in the winter. At last Hervé, her partner, has decided to do something about it and Nick, along with several other friends, has been working on replacing the roof this week.

The common language being French, Nick feels it has helped improve his grasp of the language, but not before he made a huge faux pas. Someone arrived who I know slightly from when the band played a gig and Nick told him that he thought he knew me; innocuous enough in English, but apparently this doesn’t translate to French in the way Nick intended, but implies “knowing” in the biblical sense. The guys on the roof at the time laughed so much they nealy fell off, leaving Nick wondering what he’d said, until it was explained to him. He corrected himself, hopefully leaving my reputation intact.