The creaking, and gradually sinking, floor in the sitting room came up at the end of September, allowing us to discover just how close to the underlying rock the house had been built.

John and Liz visited in October and had to make do with plywood floor covering and limited furniture as we waited for the concrete to dry. The new parquet was installed in November.

I had spent a good bit of September, armed with Jan’s original planting plan, occasionally at variance with the final execution, trying to work out which plants in the prairie had not survived. A reminder of my trainee days in radiology where one of the lessons was how difficult it is to “see” something which is not there! The replacement plants arrived in November, in hundreds rather than thousands this time. I went out alone to re-plant, and open the house for the carpenters. This put my schedule somewhat behind, as I had hoped, beginning to realise the scale of the task I had set myself, to start the winter clearing of the perennials that month.

November also brought the wine tasters and a long awaited trip to dinner at the Troisgros restaurant in Roanne. After which the male members of the party, with Peter supervising, were set to clear the old bonfire, an eyesore in the middle of the prairie,

and then constructed a splendid walk in wooden composter which I had managed to source on Amazon and which turned up, flatpacked, and in instalments, over several days.

The rest of the winter was quiet. We saw a bit of our neighbours, Francoise and Phillipe, who had finally succeeded in selling their business in Cannes and retiring to “rural” tranquillity.

By February, with some greatly welcome help from Vicky and Fabien, all the grasses and perennials in the gravel garden and prairie were cut to the ground and we had a new, but better sited, bonfire. The reward was a few days skiing in Bequeira Beret, plentiful fresh snow, zero visibility, and the discovery of the pinxhos bar in Arties, which remains a great incentive to return.

My “white bed” intended to left the gloom by the gate, was flowering by March

along with the genista, slow to establish but now more in need of vigorous pruning than cosseting.