Then down to Devon to visit friends and to move Chris' mum into a care home: her flat with lots of carers was no longer viable. Anyway, with the help of Chris' sister we managed the move and we hope she's settling in well.
Back to France in mid-January to chase our elusive carpenter who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth and with both land-line and mobile answer services producing nothing. But, after the first phone call he arrived and told us that his wife's father in Chile had developed cancer but had no health insurance, so they had to look after him for four weeks. If only he'd said, we wouldn't have panicked (so much).
We've also had our window-sills installed by Patrick, the town plumber - they're zinc. This means we can now finish off the external insulation around all the windows.
We've started the long job of filling all the joints between the sheets of external insulation and covering the screw holes with a thermally efficient mortar-type glue. Did the big blank wall first to practise on.
We won't be able to continue with that this week as it seems winter has arrived and the temperatures will be about freezing, and the glue won't set unless it's at least +5. But there's plenty of other things to keep us going!
The carpenter came back today and is really making progress!
Meanwhile, we have been making the space (walls and plasterboard) for the hot-water tank for our solar system which should come soon.
We've also managed to keep the social stuff going with the usual round of activities. Last Friday was the "voeux" or the mayor's state-of-the-nation speech, a tradition in France apparently. Not too long and followed by an hour or so of free eating and drinking. It seems we're trying to drink our way through our local tax!
Lots more social stuff happening over the next couple of weeks - will post again when we're sober.
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