Traumatised!!!

The week continued as it began with us moving our goods and chattles down the road. It was like trying to beat the incoming tide as the builders literally knocked the house down around us.

In fact this process took four days; how have we accumulated so much in a year especially as we haven't even unpacked? Not everything was transferred to John and Lesley's. In fact most of it went into the pigsty (even though there was a typical French delay in supplying the large pieces of glass needed for one end). Fortunately we didn't have any rain and John fitted the glass on Friday. Ssh--- but I don't really like it, it doesn't look right, but it is waterproof and I will work on redesigning it - probably in year five. No aspertions on the workman, purely a design fault.

Apart from the fact that we have had no time this week to write the blog, we have been incommunicado. The "tidal wave" also swallowed up the telephone connection and consequently the broadband.

Never fear, with a bit of technical advice from our computer guru in the UK John has set up a connection from our ruined house via 75 metres of cable which runs down the road (but only at night and at weekends, in case someone runs over it) and hay presto we have a telephone and internet connection.The wonders of bodging (sorry modern science).

I thought you might like to meet the builders as they will no doubt be featuring on the blog a lot in the future - Jean- Pierre, a real "laddo" of about 28. He is continuely on the scrounge, have I got a cup, the next day it was a knife and then finally he wanted the grill off the barbecue to cook his burgers over the open fire. We made a pile of things to go to the dump behind the ruin, he was soon rifling through this and we got to the stage that we checked with him first before we threw anything away. Apparently he and his girlfriend have just set up home and anyway his heart's in the right place even though he drove his digger into a bit of the wall that wasn't due to be demolished.

Patrick, about 50; we look at him to check the temperature. If he's wearing his bobble hat we've had a frost but if he's sporting his beret its mild. However we are not sure he will make it to the end of the project; he chain smokes, never wears a mask and coughs all the time.

Cyrille - Le patron!

Thiery - the plumber, a smashing chap - the first thing he did was complete the form for us to claim a tax refund because we are installing a condensing boiler.

The electrician - (dont know his name yet) - he is a very quietly spoken man who has a good command of english, we have every confidence in him.

We had a full site meeting on Thursday afternoon and an enormous bomb shell was dropped by the tradesmen. We need to supply full plans detailing where we want all sanitary ware and lights, plugs etc by 8.30 Monday morning. I had an " epi" saying I had no idea where I wanted lights etc. as we had anticpated designing each room as we went along. No excuse, I was to do as I was told as they had to bury the services in the concrete, starting Monday. Guess what we've done this weekend?!!

Just a foot note on Health and Safety - there is none.

We have been told by the builder that all the concreteing will take about 3 weeks to complete and then it needs a further 3 weeks to dry off, so we are taking the opportunity to return to England for 3 weeks. We will definitely miss lunch at the "caff" (have been 3 times this week) but hopefully we will return to a calmer building site - hope springs eternal!