In September I made my first attempts on the garden, trying to sort the small rockery and border at the end of the top terrace and the adjacent bed under the hornbeam. I continue to struggle with the first two, they are so dry. For the bed under the hornbeam I made some progress, but my first effort of clearing the rubbish and planting tulips for the spring was only partly successful, the deer beheaded every tulip before it had a chance to flower!
We also finally commissioned the pool. We were still using it in October, reducing the cost per swim, as Peter said, well when you spend your childhood swimming off the coast of Scotland(me), or Cornwall(him) what is a mere 14 degrees? Seriously cold, actually. The next issue, of course, was closing the pool for winter, a bit over 400 Euros in the view of the installers. Happily the Estate Agent came to our rescue, having recommended the installers in the first place they were, I think, feeling a bit guilty about the rather slow installation process, a reduced fee was agreed, once we had resolved the apparently critical issue of whether the winter cover was to be blue or green, did I care?!
October also saw the new bathroom painted, and at various times in our absence the house insulated, wells dug, and the geothermie installed. Joe came back with the rest of the furniture, happily with a mate. It needed all 4 of us to get the wardrobe up over the balcony railing into our bedroom.
Peter returned before me in November, I was still a wage slave, and saw the commissioning of the geothermie. Happily he also decided to ensure that the new chaudiere, back up for the geothermie, was working. It was not. Supported by lovely Heidi from the caretaking team, the plumber was summoned, he could not get it to work either. It powered up fine, then shut down again in a matter of minutes. The plumber retired from the scene, and Heidi’s implacable logic, leaving the field to his assistant Antoine, who was prepared to admit there was a problem. he eventually traced the problem to the thermostat, which, in the course of the geothermie installation had been filled with dust. A couple of minutes with a vacuum cleaner and all was well. Which was just as well, as during our absence in early December the geothermie broke down in its turn.
We returned on Hogmanay, a trip in itself not without adventure as our flight from Southampton turned back over northern France due to “a technical fault” but they found another plane, bouncing, I think, some poor souls who were heading to Belfast, and we made it before the shops closed. We were armed with a haggis, intending to treat some French friends to a Hogmanay dinner. They had to call off due to illness. They may have been relieved, rumour has it that the French believe a haggis is not simply contained within a sheep’s pluck(stomach), which is true, unless you buy a plastic wrapped one (not recommended), but that it also contains(not true) the contents of the sheep’s stomach at the moment of its demise.
Everyone was ill that winter. The electrician sent his team to sort the lights in our bedroom, with a switching result so strange that once he had recovered he agreed that the job had to be done all over again, thus delaying our final move to our own room in the pigeonier. The man who was supposed to be tiling round the pool had a bad back, or it was too cold or wet, or…, we finally decided he preferred not to work here in our absence, he did eventually finish in the spring.
New Year over we set about getting the geothermie fixed, and discovered that the company who had installed it had gone out of business. We remain grateful to the macon who had recommended them and managed to find us a contact for an alternative technician, who muttered darkly about the failure rate of new pump designs and promised to return, which he did, in February, with a replacement pump.
We also returned in February and collected our new car, having been relying on hire cars since we took the Golf back to Scotland in November. We celebrated this acquisition with a ski trip to the French Pyrenees. We were visited by the macon on the eve of our departure. I had spent the cold wet nights in Scotland re-designing, the area between house and garage, and having finally decided that the best option was (more) terraces, rising up towards the pool, asked him to quote for the job. He requested a drawing. This proved a useful occupation on our trip. We spent 5 days in the ski resort and skied once, the rest of the time it rained, it was a mild winter!
Still, we visited Lourdes and Tarbes, tasted the local wine, and shopped for minor items such as clocks and mirrors to finish the decoration of our guest rooms in preparation for our first visitors in the spring.