Spots and stripes

It’s just too wet to do any work outside at the moment; walking to the compost heap without slipping and falling flat on your face in the mud is an achievement! But there’s no shortage of inside jobs to be getting on with; tiling and joint filling come high on the list of priorities.

The heating man returned yesterday to install the water heater; a ballon thermodynamique, it works on the same basis as our central heating system, taking calories from the air and using them to heat water; it claims to use 70% less electricity than a conventional water heater. We can’t connect it or try it out as we don’t have electricity in the new house yet, though the electrician has promised to return soon, to hook it all up. We need to finish tiling the floor in the chaufferie and fill and paint the walls before the heating man comes back to install the pompe à chaleur (heat exchange pump for the central heating) in a couple of weeks.

Inside, the floor is now hard enough to walk on, though we must wait several more weeks, until it’s thoroughly dry, before we can start the tiling.  They don’t plaster over plasterboard here, just fill the joints and screw holes. Looking around, it seems a mammoth task; supposedly my job, but as I’m teaching three days a week, Nick’s offered to help.

It’s not all work though; we’re going to see an English film on at the cinema (subtitled in French) tonight and the band is playing our first gig of 2014 at a bar in Riscle tomorrow night.