It doesn’t seem possible that just three days ago, we were outside in T-shirts! We thought spring had sprung and summer was just around the corner; but no, we woke this morning to a quiet blanket of snow that’s turned the trees to lace and the land as far as we can see to a winter wonderland.

The sky was still heavy and snow still falling when Nick and I went out for a walk (I’d cancelled today’s lessons as I didn’t fancy driving), but later, as the sun was setting, the sky cleared and it looked so beautiful. It’s very cold, though, so I suspect that we won’t have much fruit this year from the trees that are already covered in blossom.

The lads had dug out half the bike shed floor yesterday, with a view to mixing and laying concrete today; needless to say, that didn’t happen.  I made the most of my “day off” by trying to sort out the paperwork that has somehow accumulated over every surface in the spare room. I must have made some progress to judge by the amount of paper I’ve shredded! Perhaps Alex, Graham and Izzy will have somewhere to sleep at Easter after all!

It’s been half term here for the last two weeks; plenty of time for the French to take off, en masse, to go skiing in the mountains.

I thought I’d have time to catch up on some DIY, maybe do a bit of spring cleaning, prepare for our Easter visitors (now so numerous that some are having to stay at a friend’s house!), but no; my private students didn’t want a half term break, so I agreed to carry on. And not just my usual lessons; a young man phoned; he was taking an English exam to allow him to study in Australia, and please could he have some intensive English tuition while he was home over the half term holidays. Again, I agreed. At 7.30pm last Friday, I finished the last of fourteen lessons over the fortnight and I was nearly on my knees. It’s not just the lessons; planning each one takes me at least 2 hours! Next holiday, I’m having a break too.

Nick and Kieran decided last week to fill the gap above the doors in the garage; they cut pieces of wood to fit, then filled in the holes with old bricks. All that remains to be done is to crepi the bricked-up parts and the outer walls and it’ll be finished!

This weekend we’ve had a bit of a break, sort of…. Nick and I have done a lot of gardening so that we can sit out for meals at Easter if the weather’s kind. It was so lovely today, we were working in T shirts; it seemed unreal, speaking to Alex this afternoon, that it was snowing in Harrogate!

But it’s back to work tomorrow; we’re hoping Joel might turn up to get on with the next phase of building and for me it’s back to preparing Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s lessons and possibly, fingers crossed, grouting the tiles in the arrière cuisine.

Becoming an auto-entrepreneur is recognised as being the simplest way to set up a business in France, so it’s the route I’ve taken with my language classes. But all things are relative and simple isn’t the word I’d choose to describe the hoops I’ve had to jump through.

When filling in the original forms, I asked several people what one question meant; none of them knew; I ended up going to see the nice man in the local tax office, who made several phone calls on my behalf and concluded “You tick yes, but don’t ask me why!”.

Last week I received an email saying that they’d changed the dossier numbers of all auto-entrepreneurs, since January 1st. Since I only set up on January 1st, I don’t understand why I wasn’t given a new number to start with, but……   There was a link in the email to allow me to change to my new number, so I filled in all the little boxes, going through the reams of paperwork containing INSEE numbers, SIRET numbers, dossier numbers, social security numbers, declaration numbers…… you name it, to find what I needed. However, after numerous attempts over the next two hours, I received an email telling me that these co-ordinates don’t correspond to anyone in the system! A lot more searching led, finally, to a way of contacting them by email, so I’ve sent copies of all the papers they may find useful and I’m waiting for a reply. Perhaps if I don’t exist, I won’t have to pay taxes????

There’s been no sign of Joel yet, but Nick and Kieran have been keeping themselves busy with the task of putting drainage in the garden. So far they’ve laid 40metres of piping, some with slots cut in, to collect the water, the rest left intact, to drain it away into the well.

The frost still lay thick on the ground at 8o’clock this morning, as Nick set off to join about twenty other intrepid cyclists from the Nogaro club on the annual CODEP 64 ride. Their destination was Lourdes, in Haute Pyrenees, departement 64, where they would meet up with other cyclists from all around the area for lunch, then cycle back home again; 180km in total.

The weather was glorious, the sun soon burning the frost away to leave a day of clear blue skies and temperatures around 15ºC. The route was relatively flat, too, much to everyone’s relief; that is, as flat as it gets when you’re riding into the foothills of the Pyrenees! When they arrived at the Lourdes Cycle Club clubhouse, an old railway station just south of the town, there was a barbecue; sausages and ventreche (belly pork), to be piled into baguettes, followed by cakes and dried fruits and washed down with the inevitable red wine.

Nick was a little concerned that he’d done very little by way of training and certainly nothing approaching this distance, but he needn’t have worried; he was strong enough to do a large portion of the return trip on the front of the group, sprinting up the hills a few miles from Nogaro, and didn’t even have the decency to feel tired when he arrived home!

Joel’s back from his hols now, so tomorrow could well be back to the grind; I think the next job will be replacing the roof, so no more lie-ins for a while!

Last Monday we woke to snow! Not what we were expecting at all! Happily, by lunchtime, the thaw had set in and it was completely gone by evening. It has stayed cold, however, so, being a wimp, I haven’t done any tiling this week.

The lads have continued to get on with Joel’s homework, cementing up the window and door edges and cementing around the ends of the beams that support the roof. Joel’s back on Monday and is hoping to start replacing the roof this week, weather permitting. Nick and Kieran have also laid the pipework to drain some of the wetter parts of the garden into the well, so there are now even more big piles of soil and mud around the place; no doubt, one day, it will all be shovelled back into holes, or somewhere! They’ve also made a swimming pool for the goose, which she loves and spends hours diving in and doing somersaults in the water! It’ll be fine till she chews her way through the plastic liner.

The French love their dictées (dictations), so when my CLAN students asked if we could do one in class, I decided to do Roald Dahl’s “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf”. We worked on it for several weeks and they so enjoyed it that we thought it might be a good idea to record them reciting it. I borrowed a camcorder, to get a professional-ish result, but, as anyone who knows me will be well aware, technology isn’t my strong point and I couldn’t work out how to do the editing at all, so that put an end to that plan. However, Alicia had recorded the dress rehearsal on her camera, so here’s the result…… (and a few pics from our Christmas party)

The last few weeks of rain have, if nothing else, served to convince us that the garden has serious drainage issues; so Nick and Kieran, having finished their “homework”, have been working on that while Joel’s away. It’s been a lovely few days, so the moat around the terrace has dried out at last and the lads have dug out a drainage channel, that goes from the moat, round part of the front of the house, then across the garden towards the well.  The plan is to drain the excess water into the well and hopefully, use it to water the garden in summer.

I’ve missed most of the sunshine, through teaching and tiling. But the second part of the arrière cuisine tiling is now finished and ready to grout. Part 3 next week, with a bit of luck 🙂

The first (and easiest)  job on the list of things to do before Joel gets back was to strip the crepi from the front of the new house, so Nick and Kieran tackled it today as it was a lovely day for working outside.

I spent the afternoon getting on with the tiling in the arrière cuisine – I’m getting quicker at tiling now, as you’ll see from the video 😉 But having had such fun this afternoon, now there’s just the small matter of the two lessons to plan for tomorrow……..I  think it might be a late night………

France is still a patriarchal society and I suppose this shows nowhere more than in the building trade. Joel and his lads are quite happy that I regularly take them drinks and cake, and even that I’m consulted on such points as the size and position of windows and doors, the placing of items in the bathroom, etc. But Joel’s face was a picture yesterday when he came in to explain something and found me tiling the arrière cuisine walls; it was a look of total disbelief! Once he’d got over his shock, however, and conceded that, actually, I’m not making a bad job of it, he offered to bring round any extra tiles he’s got left over from jobs he’s done, that would be the right size.

He and the boys finished the brickwork on the chaufferie yesterday; we won’t see them now for a fortnight as Joel’s going to Guadeloupe for a holiday (we must be paying him too much!) When they get back, the next job is to replace the roof; but in the meantime, Nick and Kieran have been left their homework to get on with while he’s away, cementing around windows and doors.

They have spent the last couple of days building a temporary staircase in the new house; a ladder is just too precarious for carrying stuff up and down. Having a staircase seems to transform it from just a building site into something that may, one day, become a home. 😉

After weeks and weeks of rain, the sun shone today – bliss! As Nick got on with the daily task of pumping out the moat, Joel arrived to start building the chaufferie, which will house the water heater and the pipes and stuff that will run the heating system. He set Nick and Kieran to work, opening up an old, blocked up window upstairs, while Seb and David started cutting holes in another wall for the French doors and window onto the balcony. Once cut, they put up the shuttering and poured the concrete lintels.

I finished the first little wall of tiling last night, so I laid out the tiles for the next section this evening, arranging and rearranging them until I was happy that I’ve got a “random” pattern. It seems such a small job in comparison with the rest of the work going on right now, but I like the result so far.

Today’s time lapse video