We’ve been fairly busy at the house arranging jobs, etc. The gardener is working diligently clearing out old dead stuff and trimming all of the plants as needed. You can see a big difference and we’re super glad we found her.
We also got a sweet little painter who was recommended to us by Carlos. She lives in a house across the way that we can see from the terrace. She did the entire lounge in one day, and the exterior of the sun room and laundry room over the next two – she even painted the outside lamp fixtures.
She’s very keen to do the house exterior as well but we’re not sure when we’ll get to that. She really doesn’t speak any english and my spanish still needs a lot of work, but on her last day I discovered that she speaks a bit of italian – it would have made a couple of conversations easier if I’d known that before!
The furniture from Worcester arrived on time and was mostly piled in the middle of the floor of the freshly painted lounge.
The movers were a bit sub-par – the young fellow wasn’t too bad but his girlfriend/partner was a bit surly. They complained about the driveway, refused to even try to get Colin’s wardrobe up to his bedroom and also wouldn’t put the beds or anything else back together (as was part of what had been paid for).
As it still gets pretty cool at night we got a gas-heater that warms up the snug – that’s where we have our morning tea and it sure makes a difference. The days are getting quite warm now – up to 28 or 29 one day so the many loads of laundry we did dried nice and quick.
Sadly we had to leave to return to France and Colin’s doctor. The evening before we left we realized we were just about out of water – the upper tank was almost empty, which implies that the lower tank is completely empty.
Luckily Carlos arrived just as we were about to leave on Saturday morning and is going to arrange a re-fill for us. He’s also going to get the wardrobe up to Colin’s bedroom and re-attach the banisters we had removed for the furniture delivery.
The drive back to France in the campervan went well – we did it in two days rather than the three we thought it might take.
Stopping for a bite to eat in the lower parking area of the mall in the town on the french border we saw an unusual sight. Many folks travel with dogs in their campervans and we’ve seen the odd cat as well – this time it was a parrot eating it’s lunch while sitting on top of his cage outside the van.
Getting around Bordeaux was not a problem – we made good time and arrived back to Mansle in late afternoon. Colin went to his doctor’s clinic on Monday morning and has an appointment to actually see him in two days.
Until then we’ve been taking it easy and not doing too much, other than a jigsaw puzzle…
…and a quick visit with Tony and Joyce. Tony’s done a couple of paintings of Colin’s house in Worcester and they are, of course, beautiful. He’s going to frame them and we’ll likely end up keeping one in Mansle and the other will go down to Spain when we return.
Henry – or Henri as we’re now in France – got a grooming/haircut today and it’s the shortest it’s been. He’s turned from a wooly looking sheep to an almost hairless goat.
I had thought he was getting a bit chubby under his thick coat but with all of his hair gone he’s actually rather trim. I think he likes his new cut as he’s strutting around now as if he knows how cute he is.
We’ve been watching all of the spring classics on GCN – some really great racing happening, and every race we look for the place we were watching from a few years ago.
Sally McKenzie's European Adventures 