Tres chaud!

Spring has sprung here - well actually you could be forgiven for thinking summer has arrived even - we had rain last week when I was away which was convenient - this means everything is bursting out of the ground and you can just about see the grass growing before your eyes. It has been about 22 degrees plus every day for quite a while and looks like it's staying around for a few more days to come - yay for us..

Well I think it has been nearly three weeks since I have last blogged. I know I have been getting very slack on it but we have my mum and dad here still and don't have any internet in the barn where we are back ensconced in, so that's my excuse and I am sticking with it. I promise to not be so late next time. The first week they arrived we had them out putting up the horse fence. And stripping our new front door. They spent a good day on one smaller one with the scrapers before we found that the heat gun worked a treat so they had the other larger one done pretty quickly.

Dad has done two of the horse paddocks but the last one has been put on hold as one of the boundaries is a little bit under dispute. We need to get our farmer neighbor to come over and have a chat as where the boundry is - where it looks to be on the map is about 4 metres out to where he has been mowing to. The mairie (town mayor) suggested we get the surveyor in but we aren't that worried about it yet.

After a week or so I went with them on a bus tour of Switzerland via a day in Paris. This meant a very quick tour of the Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Champs Elysees and of course the Eiffel Tower. I still love Paris - it is easily my favourite city - can't wait to be there with Gabby in May! Switzerland was lovely - luckily for this time of the year it wasn't completely covered in snow - lots of beautiful lakes and mountain scenery. It is super expensive though. Most of the places I felt like our little group looked majorly scruffy compared to the locals who all looked like they had just stepped off the pages of Vogue. Surprisingly the other people on the bus weren't all out on day passes from their nursing homes like I had expected. Odd but not old haha. Not my preferred way to see a country but I have to admit having commentary on the bus trip meant we found out a lot more about the place then if we had just driven through. Here are some lovely pics I took of the place - including one of Mum and Dad enjoying the sights on the Glacier Express train through the mountains ha.

Whilst we were gone Paul missed us terribly. Well he would have if he was actually ever at home. I think everyone thinks he is incapable of making a meal for himself as of the 8 days we were away I think he was home for a total of 2 evenings! He had a great time. He also went to his first French language school class - which is also his last for a while as he quickly discovered he was a little more behind in the text book then he could cope with. So he is having some remedial private classes from now on and I am going to go tomorrow for my first class. Will be good to do something constructive about our awful French. Paul is still off to the museum each week and loving it. He is meeting more people every week and I am sure it will be helping with his language skills. He even went to the AGM for it on Sunday - the meeting was half an hour long and the meal went for four hours ha - got to love France! He amazingly got quite a bit of work done as well - this is the second floor with lots of wall framing done.

Since we have been back we have been getting stuck into making a garden area - I did a stone wall around and Mum has made a lovely path to make it easy to get to it to water etc.

Dad has been digging in the trench for the horse paddock water. All I need now is a horse! I am working on that although I don't want to rush in and get something I am not happy with. Here is Dad getting our old wheelbarrow back into shape.

We took them for a walk to L'Abbaye on Saturday - last time Paul and I went we got lost - however I think the right way home was still about the same amount of walking - three hours later we made it back. I think we all slept pretty well that night!
Tomorrow is Mum and Dads last day - I am off to my French lesson in Gourdon - a menu du jour somewhere I think will be on the cards for lunch. Thursday we are taking them down to their flight in Toulouse - I am sure they are looking forward to getting home and having a rest!
Paul and I, with the weather warming up can get stuck into doing some of the jobs that you couldn't do in the cold like the walls in the living room and kitchen. It freaked us out a little last week when we realised we have some other friends coming to stay in about 10 weeks. We had hoped to have the lion share of the reno done in the house by then - looks a little bit unlikely at this stage. Oh well we know of plenty of local friendly B&B owners :)

Printemps c'est ici??

Yes I am very late with my blog. My apologies to my two readers ha. It is late for several reasons. One, we have actually had a bit of a life lately and been out and about to some social events meeting some locals. Admittedly mostly expats of one form or another but still it has been nice. The weather last week was amazingly good. If you're not a farmer anyway. It was clear skies and positively balmy with several days getting up to 18 and 19 degrees. The area needs rain though so luckily this week we have had a little. It has been back to pretty normal chilly days again now. Makes you happy that spring is on it's way though. I have some bulbs sprouting in my garden that look like they grow a couple of centimetres every day - and my wisteria has shoots on it. Everyone seems to be planting new fruit trees and the vegie patches are all getting worked on so we think it might be the right time to get some more fruit trees and start a little orchard going.

We have also been doing quite a few journeys in our now trusty van. One involved carting some outside pavers for our friends that we worked out to weigh quite a bit over a tonne - Paul was like wheel standing down the road and it was a very cautious
slow trip home. We did have a little hickup a week or so ago when Paul had disconnected the alternator and forgot to reconnect it before we left and so when we stopped in for supplies at our local Lidl it wouldn't restart. It wasn't embarrassing at all push starting it down a quite busy street in Gourdon!! Lucky for me Paul could manage to get it to roll without me getting out so I just sat (or hid) in the front seat and laughed at him.. good times.
We have got some cool stuff for the house from our trips out and about. Including these lovely old doors.

We got them from about 2 hours North of us - a couple of days apart from private sellers. I had seen them online so off we chugged for hours in the van. Lucky they are worth the hassle. The couple we bought some new front doors from were very lovely and wanted us to come and have a coffee with them but it was getting late and Paul finds the language barrier a little scary. He has found a new hobby or interest here that may help with that though as he met some English people who spend their Thursdays volunteering at a local tractor museum - fixing tractors. There are lots of French guys doing it too so hopefully he will start to pick up some lingo from spending time doing something that interests him. They all eat together and have a wonderful very French meal that has been prepared by the president of the museum. Him and his friend Yves went and checked it out last week - didn't do any work but had the cheap lunch and had a great time. He is off early tomorrow so it might turn into a regular thing by the sounds of it as he is very much into that sort of thing.

We also went to another vide grenier or brocante market looking for stuff for the house last Sunday. Lucky we had our French speaking Belgian friend Kathleen with us to help do the bargaining. Although I did lose out on a particularly amazing item because a. I was too tight and b. I was too slow. It was this fantastic antique clock that would have looked great on our kitchen wall but after the seller had told me how much he wanted (150 euros) I panicked a little and went to find Kathleen
so she could help negotiate but when we got back someone else was buying it - for 100 euros! Damn it. Oh well - I could say we'll find another one but I have never seen anything like it before and don't think I will again. Lesson learned..
We did get quite a few other things though.

I am writing this from the familiar comfort of the une petit lit in our caravane. My parents are currently here from Australia so we have made them stay in the attic as we didn't think they would cope too well with the cold French weather - understandable since they have come from extremely hot weather at home. Mind you it is very cosy here in the van with a heater going well it would be if we didn't have a pair of cats coming in and out all night! Mum and dad are well and truly earning their bed as they have been flat out helping out around the place. Dad has been helping Paul finish off the sub floor on the second floor ready to start putting up wall framing. Here is the floor pretty much finished and ready for the next stage.

We did do some touristy things today and I took them to Domme and Beynac castle - the menu du jour at lunch nearly did them in though - four courses can do that sometimes. Dad had a goose stew which was a bit heavy for him - I hadn't tasted goose before and it wasn't bad actually. Lucky we had a pretty hard core up hill walk after lunch up to the castle.

I have finally succumbed and admitted that my jeans aren't just a little bit tighter then when we got here - they are now unwearable! So hence - no more yummy stuff for a while. Not fun when we have vistors but it has to be done. I am also going with mum and dad on a coach tour for a week in Switzerland next week - good luck with staying with the regime then..