budget summit

By the time we arrived home last night it was pitch black (apart from the sparks flying between us) so I got the surprise of my life this morning when I came downstairs and looked outside. Not only has the rest of the roof on the mill gone but the whole landscape behind the garage has changed. Where there used to be a steep embankment covered in vegetation there is now an extensive flat area upon which you could build another house. BB has been busy.

Given the "budget issues", we sat down today to re-visit the plans (for the sixth time) to see where we can cut costs. At the moment we have a long, thin ensuite bathroom in one of the bedrooms which BB wants to make two feet shorter - not for financial reasons but because he says he would "get tired walking to the loo" and it would be "part of his life he'd wasted"! This from a man who spends many of his waking hours drinking pastis.

Elsewhere in the village: Nainbo took the opportunity of his wife's absence last week to dig up her favourite tree - so they're not speaking - and Gribouille's wife wondered why the lawnmower wasn't cutting the grass so stuck her hand underneath so see if the blades were turning - which they were - and cut her finger off!!

budget issues

I'd been looking forward to seeing BB after my trip but when he met me at the airport tonight, things didn't get off to a very good start. He said he'd been working every day since I left (?!) apart from Wednesday afternoon, when he'd gone for lunch chez Nainbo, and Friday afternoon, when he'd been "chatting and having a laugh" with the guy who had taken down the old concrete lamppost in our front garden. The first five minutes in the car went like this:

BC: (incredulously) But you don't do Chatting And Having A Laugh! How much did he charge anyway? A couple of hundred?

BB: (incredulously) A couple of thou more like.

BC: (choking on my Azorean cinammon twist biscuit) No wonder he was Having A Laugh! Laughing All The Way To The Bank more like!

But that was just a taster - an amuse-bouche, a horse's h'oeuvre - of what was to come because he then dropped the bombshell that he's asked Monsieur Chatting And Having A Laugh All The Way To The Bank to do the masonry work (putting in the concrete slabs and some walls) - for a price equal to 70% of our budget! To put it into perspective, that's twice as much as we paid to completely re-do the house we're in now!

BC: (speechless - for no words were spoken) !

BB: Ok. We've got some budget issues.

BC: (fit to be tied) BUDGET ISSUES! BUDGET ISSUES!

An hour and a half of silence later.......

BC: So. Did you eat all the PC Dinners?

BB: Yep. They were great. The spag bol was hard work though because I had to transfer it into a pan and stir AND put pasta on!!!

BYOE (bring your own everything)

Twenty of us arrived for Mini-B's birthday party at the écurie clutching our invitations which read "apporter son propre vin" (BYOB), but which should have read "bring your own table and chair and cooking implements too" because nothing had been done and there was no sign of Mini-B - just a freshly-killed wild boar (shot by Roquin) and some veggies on the office table. He does this every year - announces he's going to have a party then disappears and leaves the rest of us to get everything ready.

Just as we'd finished cobbling together some dining furniture (breezeblocks, lengths of wood taken off the mill roof and scaffolding planks from chez nous) and the boys had rustled up a pot-au-feu over a camping stove (borrowed from Nainbo), Mini-B turned up. By this time I wasn't really hungry, having spent all morning making PC Dinners (as in TV Dinners but for eating in front of the computer) for BB: 2 x spag bol; 2 x shepherd's pie; 2 x beef hotpot; 2 x beef curry (rice included). I'm off to the Azores on my own for a week tomorrow and if I don't leave him oven-ready meals he'll just cook sausages every day and I'll spend a week on my return scraping grease off every kitchen surface with a wallpaper scraper.

Nainbo is also célibataire (on his own) next week so I don't expect much will get done. On verra.

horsing around

We helped Roquin pick his maize yesterday morning then went to help Mini-B bring one of his mares and her week-old foal down to the village from a field higher up. You'd think we were here doing an agricultural course and not trying to renovate a house! There's a little Mini-B at the end of that taut rope in the photo - legs going like a sewing machine in the mud trying to budge the horse!

It's his birthday party tomorrow in the écurie (where he milks his cows). Last year Nainbo's wife, La Blonde, went for a pee in a field, fell over and broke her ankle and had to be taken to hospital. Never a dull momento!

if you go down to the woods today

BB went off to the Sunday Club today, leaving me to find a recipe for the 10 kilos of figs dropped off by Roquin. He returned with the news that another innocent victim, this time a young guy out riding his mountain bike, had been shot dead by a hunter in a "hunting accident" in a neighbouring département. In our region, the only four days you're allowed to hunt during the season are Wednesday (when there's no school!), Thursday, Saturday and Sunday - i.e. the days when the vast majority of the French population are off work/school/college etc and conceivably want to go out and enjoy the countryside without fear of ending up with a bullet in the head! It's unbelievable.

Mini-B came round in the afternoon to remove a wheel from the trailer he's lent us. He has various trailers for hay baling, muck spreading, mowing etc, but between them all, there are only three inflated tyres, so he has to keep transferring wheels whenever he needs to take out a different trailer. Those not in use are jacked up on blocks of wood in fields all round the village.

BB needs to empty the trailer here tomorrow so he'll have to go and get the wheel back, re-attach it, then take it off again and put it back on whichever trailer Mini-B is using. I'm exhausted just writing this!

calf credit crisis

I was just about to serve lunch today when Mini-B arrived panting, clutching a couple of bits of old rope, and said he needed a hand urgently. Normally he removes his wellies at the front door, doffs his bonnet and gives me a bisou but today he appeared distressed so I didn't shout at him for ignoring protocol and wiping his boots on the Persian rug.

I thought maybe his C15 had broken down again, or he'd driven it over the bridge next to our house - which wouldn't be the first time! - and he needed a tow, but he explained that one of his cows was having trouble delivering and he needed assistance. His cows are his bread and butter (or rather, his pastis) and he doesn't have many, so if he loses a calf - or worse, the calf and the mother - it's a real blow. So off they scuttled while I tried not to dwell on the significance of the rope - and BB told me not to ask, when he returned an hour later to announce that the calf was doing fine and the mother was sitting up in the hay smoking a cigarette.

As we were finishing (a cold) lunch, Top Modèl and his pal turned up to help on the roof. These young kids - you have to watch them like a hawk when there's demolition work to be done. BB turned his back for two minutes and they'd started attacking the ridge beam - which is the only thing holding up the three remaining A frames - with a chainsaw and a sledge hammer. BB nearly had a heart attack!

first customer

I received the following email today:

Bom dia lady Chou, I am finding you through the intraweb when looking for french hotel and please tell me if you have special price for grandparents when inserted in the familiar group? In picture of bathroom - is that private or convivial? Are you near place of architectonic interest?

José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva

Blimey!