Hugo and I started tiling the floor in the arrière cuisine today; I hadn’t envisaged having an assistant, certainly not one whose idea of helpful was to remove all the tile spacers and scatter them around the floor, but he had great fun, also chasing the tape measure as I tried to work out how and where to cut the awkwardly shaped tiles!

Nick assures me that I’ll become quicker with practice, but at today’s rate it will take about 2 weeks to finish:-( He also tells me that he’s given me this job because the floor becomes “ever so slightly undulating” as it reaches the other end. Hmmmm, perhaps it’ll be even more of a challenge than I’d thought! Hey ho; I wanted a rustic finish and it doesn’t sound as though perfection is on the cards, especially as this is the first time I’ve laid floor tiles. Oh well, it’ll be another new skill to acquire and there will certainly be no shortage of opportunity for practice.

Hermione now has a beautiful, hexagonal house with little, heart-shaped windows; Nick and Kieran finished the roof today and I lasured the walls. She didn’t seem terribly impressed, but maybe she’s not a very architecturally cultured goose!

We’ll have to get on with the arrière cuisine soon, as the temporary shelving in there is now groaning under the weight of produce; we made 13 jars of apricot jam today and 10 jars of apricot pie filling. We also need space to put a decent sized freezer; the one we have is minute. I tried making a white chocolate mousse on Saturday, for our visitors. It’s a fool-proof, stand-by recipe which has never let me down before; but the white chocolate that I bought here simply wouldn’t melt, it just went lumpy, and of course, you can’t buy whipping cream here, so I bought something that I hoped would work. After a lot of effort, it looked as it should, but 24 hours later, still hadn’t set! So I put it in the freezer this morning and have taken it out every so often all day today to whisk; it looks a bit like ice cream; any volunteers to taste it?

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if he and five mates, all motorbikers, could stop off overnight at our house on their way to Portugal. We agreed, only realising later that it coincided with the night our friend Adrian’s band had a big gig at Monsegur, at which we’d promised to support them.

Various ideas were thrashed out and finally it was decided that we’d feed the bikers at our house, where they were due to arrive mid afternoon, then Kieran would lead them to Adrian’s while we took the trailer tent,  and Adrian would put up another tent. We would all go to the gig and probably end up sitting around the pool with band and bikers after the gig, playing and singing into the wee small hours. But the best laid plans…..

By 2pm on Saturday the preparation was all done for a six course meal, suitable for hungry bikers; the house was clean and we were ready to roll. We waited, and waited and waited…. They finally arrived at 6pm, having had a hard day’s riding. So we got on with the meal as quickly as we could, only managing three courses before they decided it would be a good idea to take the rest with us to eat at Adrian’s after the gig as it was getting late and they were all quite full.

We all set out in beautiful evening sunshine, but half an hour down the road there was what I can only describe as a cloudburst, with thunder rumbling and lightning flashing all around, so by the time the bikers arrived, they were drenched; they changed and we headed to Monsegur, thinking we’d have missed the band by now, but no, the storm had caused a power cut so the whole evening was pushed back by two hours! The gig was great, but didn’t finish till 2am; so the rest of the band went straight home and the bikers headed to bed, just leaving the hard core sitting up, drinking and chatting till 5o’clock.

The bikers left at 10.30 this morning and the rest of us were unsurprisingly subdued for the rest of the day, watching, or dozing in front of, the telly till it was time for us to come home.

Bonne nuit!

As each day passes, Hermione is becoming more confident and less dependent on Nick; if he’s outside, she still follows him around, but is less unhappy when he disappears. He is currently in the process of building her a house – a hexagonal house! It’s fast becoming one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time; the base and walls are done, but a six-sided, pointy roof involves a lot of complicated angles!

We’re expecting six motorbikers on Saturday afternoon; they’re not staying here, but we’re feeding them and I expect they’ll want showers, so I want the place to look as good as it possibly can, in case any of them want to come back when the gite is a going concern. To this end, I’ve been busy finishing the decorating in the new bathroom; all that remains now is to cut some mirror glass for an old frame that Nick’s unearthed and have a good clean up.

In case you think we may be getting bored or sitting twiddling our thumbs, fear not; we’ve also harvested a load of plums and wild cherries, not to mention kilos of French beans, so I’ve made a batch of cherry jam and some plum pie filling.

On the last Friday of each month the cycle club has a dinner at the club house; it’s always fairly well attended, but the June dinner is paella and is very popular. Each month one or more of the club members prepares the aperitifs, often in the month of their birthday; so since it was mine in June, I offered to do the aperos. I didn’t really have a clue what was expected, but my good friend Maithée offered to help me, so I arrived at her house on Friday morning, ready to shop and cook, only to find that she’d already done the majority of the work, having made pizzas and ham and cheese rolls.

When I arrived, an old friend of Maithée’s husband Pierre was visiting to look through some old photos that Pierre is researching. This gentleman (also known as Jacky) used to play rugby with the Nogaro team in 1953, when they won the French Rugby championship. Amazing to think that a small community like Nogaro, which even today is only home to around 2000 people, could produce a rugby team of such calibre.

Once we’d chatted to Jacky about some of the photos, Maithée and I shopped for melons, cherry tomatoes and the makings of pousse rapière, a powerful local concoction of orange flavoured armagnac and sparkling wine, and prepared the remaining aperos.

It’s impossible around here to reciprocate for the kindness of the people; I took a jar of lemon marmalade and one of chutney, but came home laden with three jars of various jams and a large bundle of rhubarb (part of a bagful given to Maithée by another Jacquie who arrived during the morning).

The evening was great, the paella superb and the aperos well received by all 46 diners. We were exhausted by the time we got home after midnight as we were the only English speakers there this time and although it’s becoming easier, 5 hours of neat French is still quite taxing on the grey matter.

Julie, Adrian and their friend John arrived for lunch today, bearing gifts. Not just any old gifts, but Kieran’s and my joint birthday present; a baby goose. She was very nervous and unhappy when we put her in my workshop-to-be, where she’ll live until she’s old enough to be put in with the hens, but Nick and Julie managed to coax her into having a drink and some food. We hardly saw Nick for the rest of the afternoon, but Hermione, as the goose will be known, seems to have adopted him as a surrogate mother. That’s fine when he’s in the room with her, but as soon as he leaves she starts crying for his return! Hopefully she’ll settle in soon and he’ll be freed from fostering duties; we’ll have to build a house for her quite soon and enlarge the hen enclosure. Watch this space, I’ll let you know how we get on!

It’s Tuesday morning; we’ve got people coming to dinner tonight and my back, though improving, isn’t as free as I’d hoped it would be by now. So I send Nick and Kieran to do the shopping while I start cleaning up, in half hour stints, with half hour rests in between.

Once the shopping’s done and lunch is over, the lads decide to install the kitchen part of the VMC, which involves swathing the sink, the cooker and the dishwasher in dust sheets to protect them from flying debris and moving the things that normally live there to every other surface in the kitchen. To my query as to how long this will take, I receive the standard reply; “Oh, not long”; this can mean anything from 10 minutes to a week, I really don’t know why I bother asking the question any more!

3o’clock; I still can’t get anywhere near the sink end of the kitchen, there’s barely an inch of work surface anywhere and anyway, everything is covered in a generous layer of brick dust and rubble, not to mention the crunchiness of the floor. I’m beginning to panic slightly as we know one couple a little, but have only met the other couple briefly once, and their daughter not at all, so I’d like the place to be as good as it can be and for the meal to be OK.

But by 4o’clock the work is finished; we set to, wiping and polishing, hoovering and mopping. We prepare prunes wrapped in Bayonne ham (which takes longer than it should when I discover that the prunes aren’t stoned!), cherry tomatoes, basil and feta on cocktail sticks and other bits for the aperitifs without which no meal is complete here. I make a salade composé as a starter and prepare fillets of merlan, rolled up, to be served on a bed of home made ratatouille and topped with home made tapenade. We’ll serve it with rice and French beans picked from the garden, followed by salade and cheese and a Tropézienne, a light sponge with a filling of crème patissière, bought, I have to confess, from the supermarket as I didn’t think my back was up to any more cooking. Just as well, really, as I wouldn’t have had time anyway!

Fortunately, our guests arrive a little late, as we finish setting the table; Philippa is, apart from Nick and I, the only other English member of the cycling club; Dav, her partner, is one of the top stained glass window makers currently working, and has offered me some of his old, painted glass offcuts to use in my own, rather amateur windows. Alain is another keen cyclist and his wife Corinne owns a clothes shop in a nearby town. Their teenage daughter completes the group; she and her mother are enchanted by Hugo, the star of the evening.

We take aperos in the garden, where the temperature has dropped enough to be pleasant to sit out, then move inside for the rest of the meal and a discussion about the Raide Pyreneen (a cycle ride from one end of the Pyrenees to the other, over 27 cols), planned for September.

In the middle of the evening the phone rings; I’m overjoyed; it’s Joel, our builder, who I’ve been trying to contact for weeks. He’s not left the country after all, and is coming round to see us next week. The icing on the cake of a very pleasant evening.

I know; it was stupid; I should have known better by now; but I never learn. So, after several weeks of non-stop gardening, cycling and DIYing, my back decided it was time for a rest. I’ve spent most of the last 4 days confined to bed, barely able to shuffle about, let alone go to the Pyrenees for the weekend’s planned walk with the club 🙁  It’s improving now, though, as it should; we’ve got dinner for eight tomorrow, a visit to friends’ later in the week, then there’s the bathroom to finish before 6 motorbikers descend in 10 days and the floor in the arrière cuisine to tile….. Hmmm, sounding familiar….!

However, Nick and Kieran enjoyed their weekend. Kieran went for a motorbike ride up the col de Somport in the Pyrenees with Adrian and Julie and Nick took his bike for a ride up four cols, the highest of which was the col de Pierre St. Martin, at 1765m. His companion for the day was Philippa, a very keen cyclist who lives nearby and who is going to join a select band to do a Raide Pyreneen (end to end of the Pyrenees) in the autumn.

It was back to work today, for the lads anyway, as they started to fit the VMC, a ventilation system for the kitchen and bathrooms, as well as shutters for the last two windows in the back wall. As soon as my back allows, I’ll have to lasure them, but perhaps not this week!

When we bought this house, there was a large wine press in the grange. Nick and Kieran dismantled it, but the problem was how to dispose of the 3.5m long, 20cm thick, extremely heavy screw thread from the centre of it; it certainly weighed far too much to take to the local tip! (Kieran estimates probably about half a ton)

They finally decided that it would have to be buried in the grange, so as it was pouring with rain today, it seemed a suitable project. Kieran dug the hole with the digger, but had a slight mishap when one of the wheels “just came off”; a trip to town for a suitably sized socket to take a bolt out, to allow them to fix it, then came the hard part. They tied rope to the screw and lifted it with the digger, but there’s a ridge in the middle of the floor; as the digger went over the ridge, the weight of the screw threatened to tip the digger over. Kieran lowered the screw to the floor till the digger tracks were back on the level again, then turned and lowered the screw into its grave before filling the hole with rubble.

A good day; we’re rid of the screw and a bit of our rubble mountain and the boys thoroughly enjoyed their game!