18 April
Cloudy today and definitely cooler. I had to get a few things at the shops and there was a pre-Christmasesque panic in the air, elbows sharpened, tempers short and trolleys being overloaded because the shops will be closed for the entire day on Monday.
More gardening and sanding, it's getting pretty monotonous now.
Saturday 19 April
I feel like I've conquered my infection, it really feels like it's gone. Wow!
We headed off to Eymet to get the paint to replace the paint which is adorning the interior of my car....... What with that and breakfast, that was almost 100 euro gone!
It was a lovely day and we just spent the rest of it in the garden, Stuart came for a couple of hours and cut the grass.
We uncovered the enormous pile of soil which has been sitting under a black plastic sheet for 2 years. It is all stuff that was dug out to make way for the boules court. Probably never been near any chemicals so perfect compost to put onto the potagers. I was the brave one who lifted off the first plastic sheet, to find myself face to face with a long, fat and very confident-looking snake. Chris ignored my burblings and obviously didn't believe me. I look forward to him meeting the snake face to face over the next day or two. In the meantime I have been looking up 'Snakes in France' on Google but none of the pictures look quite as nasty as the one I met this afternoon.
Easter Sunday 20 April
Easter Sunday and blooming cold! 12C and raining all day. Luckily, we wanted rain to dampen the beds so that I can hoe more easily. Also, we've been invited out for lunch to Joris and Patricia's house. The usual lovely meal, after a bottle of champers. Patricia's mother is staying with them as she has cancer and has just started chemo. Patricia has often talked about her in the past and I had built up a mental picture of her [as we all do] so I was totally shocked with a chic, very attractive woman, looking 20 years younger than her age, walked, slowly and painfully into the living room.
She was very quiet and slept on the sofa between courses and obviously was unwell but quite frankly a photograph would indicate a very well-groomed, healthy woman heading for retirement, not a mid 70s woman with a possibility of just 3 months life left. It was certainly something to think about later when we sat in front of the log fire, listening to the wind and rain outside.
Unfortunately Joris smoked throughout the meal [it is his house and it was pissing down outside, so why not?] and I feel my chest filling up again. Such a shame
Easter Monday, 21 April
All shops closed!
Weather better, sunny but cool so we intended starting painting but we spent the first couple of hours trying to find cheap flights back here later in the year - no luck unfortunately so we had to bite the bullet and fork out the money! I kept a blanket around me. UK Newspaper headlines were along the lines of 'Cor, what a scorcher, 19 degrees' while we wrapped up in thick jumpers as it was 20C here. We are just too used to being warm.
Finally after housework, washing and cooking I was able to start painting. At last! By 6.30 all security bars were painted and Chris had done a fair bit of priming on the shutters.
So we went to take the black plastic off the potagers so that Ricky can put the compost on tomorrow when he arrives with the JCB, early evening, sunny, pretty relaxed then spotted another snake in one of the raised beds. Luckily it was more scared of me and dived down asap. But neither Chris nor I was that comfortable working around there after that!
The weather forecast for the next week is rain and that would be brilliant for the garden but we'll see.........
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