Another busy weekend

What an awesome weekend. On Saturday we managed a quick whip around the morning market and set off for a shopping expedition to Perpignan at 10am. The plan was to be back home by early afternoon so we could do an hour's work on the stone wall in our new apartment (extending and tidying it up), leaving the remainder of the day to tackle a backlog of work on the computers. Yeah right. It didn't quite work out that way...

First stop was Villeneuve-de-la-Raho, a little place beside a lake just on the outskirts of Perpignan. The oven we had ordered on-line had to be collected from the depot at the supermarket there. After a bit of a struggle we managed to fit the oven in its bulky wrapping into the back of the car.  We dropped in on a little café beside the lake for a much needed coffee, and to see if we could catch up with a French friend of ours who we got to know well at our local bank. He has a part-time job at a café there but now works in different branch of the bank so we haven't yet caught up with him since we returned to Céret. Alas, he wasn't there so it was off to the huge 'Mitre 10' type stores in Perpignan. We stopped off at a few lighting shops along the way but, because it was after 12pm, they were all closed until 2pm. It still amazes us how these massive shops can close their doors in the middle of the day so all the staff can enjoy a two hour lunch break. 

Villeneuve-de-la-Raho

We repeated Thursday's run-around between the stores, comparing prices of different things - floor tiles, kitchen units, fridges, dishwashers and the like. 5:30pm saw us finally hitting the road home. We managed to squeeze a bathroom vanity top into the back of the car alongside the oven. The vanity unit itself is on order. The major purchase of the day was a beautiful big fridge. Conforama had already reduced the 700€ price by 250€ down to 450€ and had a special deal on for the day which gave you a 100€ voucher if you spent 400€. We jumped at it. The end result was that we effectively bought the fridge for 350€, and spent the 100€ on a rug (100€ reduced to 70€) and some light fittings. We came away feeling very pleased with ourselves. Many more stores later we had decided on the wood flooring for our mezzanine, the kitchen units and had decided on the style for the floor tiles, if not the exact type.

We struggled back and forth carrying our purchases up the stairs to our current apartment and flopped on the sofa at 6;30pm. We were still buzzing from the success of our expedition so instead of relaxing a little, we made a scratch meal and spent a few hours pushing little squares of paper around on a piece of grid-paper to design the layout of our kitchen. We don't have a lot of room to play with and it was a bit of a juggle but we think we have got it sorted. 

Today, Sunday, we were woken at 7am by the glorious aroma of freshly baked bread coming in our window. What a way to start the day!! The baker across the way had just opened his oven and the breeze brought the delicious smell directly to our noses. We bravely fought off the impulse to jump out of bed in search of croissants and made do with muesli in bed while we read for half an hour. What a treat. I was determined to do a short weights session (having done extremely little since we arrived back) so managed half an hour of huffing and puffing while John worked. 

Our scheduled Skype with Bella and Nic was very welcome and we caught up on all their news. It was great, and took a while. This was the start of what proved to be a wonderfully social day. Our French friends in Laroque-des-Albères had invited us to a seafood lunch at their house and we rolled up at midday. After a perfect meal, good conversation and a very relaxing time, we rolled back into the car at 5:30pm. What a lovely couple.

Our French friends Pascale and Miquèl

Stunning seafood platter, it comes over ice in a polystyrene platter

Since we were in Laroque we called in to see our Irish friends Valerie and Lorcan with whom we did our home exchange in 2009. They were very surprised to see us and gave us another warm welcome. We caught up on all their news. They are off back to Dublin during the week but we plan to catch up again in July. It was to Valerie and Lorcan that we looked for an opinion on whether we should buy our initial apartment here in Place de l'Eglise and we valued their advice. They took a sneak look at our new apartment last week (unfortunately we were away for the day in Perpignan) and they've since given us the thumbs up on that one too so we are very pleased to hear that. 

And so, after a most enjoyable day of friendship, we arrived home at 7:30pm. John has got straight into work but we've had a great day out. It's not  over yet. Our son Alastair is in the last few days of writing his thesis and we are on standby for him to do a 'dummy-run' presentation to us (40 minutes duration) at 9pm tonight. 

Trying to Keep Up

This is nuts. After waiting (more-or-less) patiently for our builder Antoine to start, now we are rushing around in circles trying to keep up with him. He has kept his word this time and is in full swing with the building work. We talk with him on-site each morning and sneak in at lunchtimes and in the evenings to see what progress his 3-4 person team has made. They have now only been on site one week but already have the beams up, all of the walls and doors in place, most of the plasterboard in and are now making a start on laying the flooring to the mezzanine.  The plumber and electrician start next week. 

In fact, when we called in last night to have a look around, we couldn't get in because they had the front door in and locked! Wow. We walked down to Antoine's yard to find a key, to learn he had joked with his office person that he had locked us out so we couldn't go and check on his work over the weekend. We arranged for a key, but on retrieving it from his wife at her shop in our building, it didn't work. She rang, and half an hour later Antoine turned up with the correct copy. John spent quarter of an hour with him going over the changes, discussing bits and pieces. Antoine is very professional, and very thoughtful about what might suit us best.

All-in-all the week has been absurdly busy. Visits to the electrician, haggling over the quote, and endless hours of searching on the net for products and prices culminated in a 8-hour day in Perpignan on Thursday, shuttling between building supply shops and trying to decide on what to buy. We ended coming home with a toilet (we had to return the one we had bought the week before and buy a different model), shower set and thermostat mixer, small basin and tap for the toilet, taps for the bathroom and kitchen sink, four bedroom lights, a heater and a large mirror. Our little car is doing great service. I think the scooter might have struggled - certainly with the large mirror! We had also decided on the ceiling fans and have ordered those on-line. This morning we are off to Perpignan again to collect our pre-ordered oven and to buy our bathroom cabinet.

Decisions have also been made on which spotlights and ventilation system (compulsory in France and rather expensive) to organise through the electrician. On our scouting trip this morning we also hope to find a floor tile that we like. Unfortunately the one we chose is no longer available. Once that is sorted the only really major decision/purchase left is the kitchen. Phew!

We really have been chasing our tails and as a result are feeling a little stressed, but in a good way. It's 9am Saturday and we were hoping to go for a short walk and then head to the market for our fruit and veges early this morning before driving into Perpignan but John is still sleeping. We were both awake at 2am talking about the apartment and what the decisions we have left and are both a little short on sleep. 

We've also been out many evenings socialising. May is a time when many people come out to Céret, with the big cherry festival on in a week's time. Meals out with friends, 'selling the apartment' drinks at our place, a 66th birthday party last Sunday night, an opening of a gallery exhibition last night and so on. Our French friends have invited us to a seafood meal at their place in Laroque-des-Albères tomorrow so that writes off most of the day. We've also had a few meetings with our house buyer and have an appointment with our notaire to get the sale properly signed up on Wednesday. Our buyer is working out what furniture of ours that she also wants to buy. She's a Swede who will be using the place for short-term holidays, so buying it at least partly furnished works very well for her, as well as us.

Drinks to celebrate our sale

The man who viewed our house last week was sorry to find it a little small for his purposes (he has 500+ books to house) but he seemed very pleasant and he's since invited us to his house further up the valley for drinks on Wednesday evening this week. He also knows a NZ/UK couple who run a vineyard not far away and we think they are coming too.

Apologies to everyone who has emailed us in the last few weeks. We do love getting your emails but sadly we've not always found the spare time to reply. Apart from our longish walk last weekend our 'workouts' have been non existent. I'm hoping that the 54 steps up to our new apartment (which we do 3x/day) plus the 48 steps to our own apartment are doing the trick. Unfortunately, I have to admit that all the eating and drinking is taking its toll - a little more insulation on the body than I would like. The temperatures are warming up too. There have been a few days of 27 - 28 degrees and summer is really starting to kick in. 

I must get John up now - things to do, places to go. We are very excited about everything that is happening but would love a little down-time soon. It is rare that we watch any TV but we have barely turned it on at all in the last fortnight. Curling up with a good book is not an option at the moment but we are not complaining. This is what we knew was in store and we chose to do it. Now to get stuck into sanding the windows and shutters sometime soon...

And No Longer Waiting

A massive (and very unexpected) day today. We are very excited.

We've had the little apartment on the market for over two weeks now, and hadn't heard peep from either of the two agents. This morning we got a call from one to ask if she could show somebody through, and she said she had a Swedish woman for the next day as well. The first purchaser found it too small for his liking, but was a very interesting man who we might try to catch up with some other time.

Shortly after the visit, we got another call asking if the Swede could come in the early afternoon. No problem. The apartment was super tidy, the floor polished and so on, as we have been making sure it can be viewed at short notice. At 1:30 she turned up with a friend in tow, and from the moment she walked in we could see she was enchanted.

We had to head off afterwards to argue a quote with an electrician, but an hour later we had a call from the agent. "We have an offer in, for your full asking price, is that OK?". Wow! We really couldn't believe it. Back to town, we counter-signed the offer and it all looks like it will go ahead.. Remarkable. Of course we wonder if the price was set too low, but it was way above what both the agents recommended. We had always thought we could command a premium for our location if the "right" person fell in love with it. That's what seems to have been what has happened. The purchaser and friend came around later on to show it to the friend's husband, and he also thought it lovely. So a happy buyer, and a very happy pair of sellers. Settlement is flexible and we can probably push it out to 3 months so the new place will be properly ready. Of course nothing is yet final.

Now all this could have been a problem based on the performance to date of our builder, however... he is right into the rebuild. He arrived on site on Monday morning, as promised - and as promised for the previous two Mondays as well. Only one man on Monday however, hacking out holes in the walls for the 6 new mezzanine beams. Just as well we went up, as he was cutting them out 20cm too high, and he had another wall set out wrong. That's why you have to be on site!

This morning saw a whole team on the job, the Bobcat hoisting beams way up to the 3rd floor, all dust and noise as it should be. By lunchtime all 6 beams were up in place for the mezzanine, just needing some mortar packed around them. By evening, all fully mortared in place. The French workers, once they get going, work very hard and efficiently.

On what seems a mundane note, we had our first decent walk on Sunday since getting back - doing the Hauts de Céret loop above the town. We are just early enough to get the tail end of spring flowers. It was very pleasant getting back out in the hills, something which we so enjoyed during our long winter stay of 2013/14.

Still Waiting ........

Yep, you guessed it. After all, we are in France and the tradesmen are notorious, as well all know. Our builder didn't appear on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ...... He's now nearly 2 weeks overdue. John and I keep popping around the corner to the square to see if his Bobcat was there and the men diligently heaving the new beams through the windows. No such luck. We are getting a little frustrated, but having said that we know he's a great builder and will do an excellent job, once he gets started that is. 

Anyway, we've been hunting him down. We've been to his depot three times and missed him every time. Once he was driving his truck in the opposite direction so we did a U-turn as soon as we could but lost him in the traffic ahead. Not to worry, we walked to our square this evening and there he was sitting in the corner of one of the restaurants. John pointed 'pointedly' at him through the window and I got him in a headlock when he came out. We both thought he was looking pretty sheepish. "Vous-commencez demain Monsieur Freitas?" "Non, mais je vais commencer lundi et j'aurai tout l'équipe la, et pour tout le semaine!" (You will be starting tomorrow Mr Freitas? No, but I'll be starting on Monday and have the whole team there for the entire week). His slightly feeble excuse was that the restaurateurs in the square didn't like his bobcat coming in and potentially messing up their table seating for lunch. That didn't quite stack up when the restaurant owners he was talking to told us they had no problems with it! They are on our side. Anyway, everyone is now happy and we can hopefully look forward to a definite start on Monday. That means no work on the place tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday but John will spend the time working hard on computer stuff. 

We have a number of friends arriving in town next week so it will be good to try and get ahead of our work a little if we can. One couple is from Aussie (ex-Rhodesian) and two are English couples. Everyone is here at some point over summer but this is the first time some of them will be here for the cherry festival. It is a big draw-card. 

I have to say we've had a wonderful time with friends here. We very often catch up for drinks at Bar Pablo or at someone's place. Yesterday we entertained a couple here for lunch at 12.30 and we finally wrapped up a great time together at 5pm. They live much further up the valley and have lived there semi-permanently for the last 12 years (instead of London). This was the lovely couple we were supposed to spend New Year's Eve with last year but we had to opt out because we had horrendous colds. 

Other than socialising John and I have had a pretty quiet start to the week. On Wednesday, after seeing the builder wasn't going to turn up, we jumped in the car and headed to Girona in Spain. It's only 1½ hours away by the normal roads or one by toll roads and for a week in May every year it turns on an amazing floral display, or so we were told. When we arrived we were expecting to see lots of fresh floral displays but it turned out to be more floral art, i.e. using all sorts of media based on a floral theme.

Girona is a gorgeous town in its own right and we spent a wonderful time wandering along the old city walls, peeping into little courtyards and generally enjoying the flavour of the place. Because of the floral festival the place was absolutely packed with visitors but, as you do, we happened to spot our friends from Céret in one of the streets just as we arrived. We ended up spending a great time with them, including a lovely leisurely Spanish lunch in one of the main squares. It was a lovely relaxing time, and just what we came to Europe to experience. Il était parfait. (It was perfect).  

Now back home, a beer in hand and relaxing. We stopped off at a Spanish supermarket and stocked up on a few essential items before we re-crossed the border. Cans of beer (in a 24 pack) cost only 32 centimes (less than NZ60c). It makes much more sense to drink these at home with friends than go to Bar Pablo and pay about €2.80 for a tiny beer. We also stocked up on the odd bottle of wine at €1 a throw. Not sure what it will be like but surely worth the punt?

Waiting...

The tradesmen here have a different system. When they quote for doing work, they include the supply of fittings as well. For example, the plumber expects to supply the toilet, bathroom basin, taps and so on. The electrician will supply the sockets, fusebox, air-conditioning unit and so on. But not only that, they expect to supply the light fittings, heaters and more. If they don't supply, they don't give a guarantee on the unit. Ok, that's fine. But what about the price?

We found our way to the offices of our electrician and plumber on Monday afternoon to look at their catalogues and supposedly choose the fittings we want. No way. Their prices are roughly 2-3 times what you can buy something for in the big Mitre10-type shops in Perpignan. And they then add 10% tax on top of that. Not to be screwed over big-time, John and I set off for Perpignan yesterday, and we spent eight gruelling hours checking out kitchens, bathroom and toilet fittings, tiles, handles and a whole bunch of other stuff. We came home stuffed at 6:30pm, with a bargain toilet in the boot of the car and a few other odds and sods. After many hours of searching prices on the internet, we have compiled a list of fittings we will buy ourselves and then get the sparky and plumber to install. They won't be happy but c'est la vie. Granted some of the fittings we have chosen aren't over-the-top quality, but 'internet-direct' deals in particular are hugely cheaper than buying either from a store or a tradesman. For example we have bought another Brandt induction hob online exactly the same as we used in Place de l'Eglise, for €257 versus a standard price of €499 (still very cheap by New Zealand standards).

After a long day in the field yesterday John had to stay up late doing some paid work and I tidied the place up. I have to start compiling a database of our expenses so we can keep track of all our costs. 

This morning we had our third French lesson with our friendly English teacher. She gives us homework each time, and always dedicates a bit of time to tell us some history about Céret. We are working our way up through the centuries. Today we found out that women property owners were able to vote in local elections in Céret in the 14th century! This right was later lost and not recovered until 1945.

Head-down, bum-up computer work today until mid-afternoon when we hope to do some more de-plastering. Did I say in the last blog that we were unsure when the builder might turn up this week given Thursday is again a holiday. Yeah, right. No show as of today (Wednesday) and given tomorrow is a holiday, the chances of the workmen arriving on Friday is probably less than slim. There goes a whole week's work on the house, though we know he was having to wait until Monday or Tuesday for his last mezzanine beam to arrive. We're not too fazed. It will happen in good French time.

As I write this today (Friday pm) my hands have got a bit of the shakes. Yep, another big day of digging out plaster and similar self-inflicted torture. All great fun (still) but a hard slog I must admit. We just about finished digging around the stones on Wednesday afternoon and this afternoon John just about finished scrubbing all the stones while I set to with hammer and chisel and knocked off heaps of plaster and tiles where the wall protruded too far out into the room. We reckon we have gained another 5cm depth in the bathroom, toilet and kitchen by doing so. Only one damaged digit this time (very angry looking thumb) but it was worth it. Took ages to gather all the debris into one pile (to try and make it look smaller for when the builder sees it) and sweep up the oceans of dust. We don't have too much more work to do on the wall now, so will soon be able to start turning out attention to sanding the shutters and windows. The joys in store  .........

One pile of debris and one vaguely straight wall with most of the 'fat' sections knocked off it.

Home to sluice down at 6.30pm and promptly down to our local equivalent of a NZ Four Square where we stocked up on ice-cream and a box of trumpets. That's dinner! Too weary to do anything else. Last night we went out with English friends and had a very pleasant meal and evening. It was only our second meal out so I guess we are doing our usual trick - not getting out enough and experiencing local cuisine. However, we do really enjoy it when we do venture forth, and in the meantime are having our share of simple but very tasty bread/cheese/saucisson etc meals.

In 'downtime', John has plenty of work on which he is struggling to keep up-to-date with and while he's doing that I'm working on John's father's diary. My deadline to get it to the publisher is probably about July but I would love to get it sent off by mid-June, which is when Alastair will be coming to spend a week or so with us. 

Kick-off

Wow, how do I review the last week? So much has happened.

First, the real estate agent who we bought our second apartment from came around to value our place. Didier is a nice guy, ex-cop apparently, doing this job to top-up his retirement package. We had decided to list with him, and also Valerie, who has a large Scandinavian clientèle at her agency. Neither sign-up is exclusive so we are free to find a buyer ourselves and thereby avoid any agents' fees. In any event Didier had already decided he was going to charge us a really reasonable commission, rather than the more common 8%, and Valerie matched it so we are pretty pleased about that. We now have two rather gaudy real estate signs on our balconies but hopefully they will draw the eye of passers-by. There are so many more tourists coming into Place de l'Eglise than even a week or so ago so we're hopeful someone will be keen to buy us out. So we are now in the mode of keeping the place exceptionally tidy each day - not too much of a chore but when we have the washing draped on the stand it takes up a good portion of the living room and is a little hard to hide!

We are now officially For Sale.

Monday was a big day. We met with our builder, plumber and electrician on-site AND they were on-time, more or less. John excelled in talking French with them all and we managed to work through the alterations we had made to the plans with Antoine, discuss in the in and outs of plumbing, and put the sparky on the spot about his stupidly inflated quote. The end result is that Antoine is all set to start work this week, probably on Tuesday rather then Monday because he now has an extra beam to be delivered. We are visiting the plumber's place soon to choose the fittings we want. We will then call in on the sparky, give him the opportunity to substantially reduce his quote (working with the few changes we have made to power points etc.) and hopefully come to a deal with him.

Antoine put us on to a maitre d'oeuvre (master of works) just around the corner from us to help us with our application to the mairie for consent to put in our two skylights. We bravely fronted up to the mairie first, obtained the application forms and had a good chat to the receptionist about how to fill them in. Amusingly, we said where do we need to put in the added square metres we will get. She said we really wouldn't want to do that, zero would be fine! While there, the receptionist from our notaire came in and we ended up having a right old yarn about the All Blacks. It was all very friendly and we are feeling more and more welcome here. We are finding it makes a huge difference going out of our way to thank and chat with people. The old adage about French unfriendliness is untrue here. The only people who are not that helpful are those at the tourist office - a rather unfortunate place to have them placed.

Back home, we managed to fill in the forms and took the required photos. Any concern about the skylights relates to whether they will be able to be viewed from historic square we will front on to. The rules are very protective of the old character of the medieval core of the town and France's national heritage organisation (the equivalent of our NZ Historic Places) has to give consent, as well as the local mairie. Our skylights won't be able to be seen from anywhere as they'll be so high up, so we don't anticipate any problems. It'll take up to 2 months before we hear back though.

Anyway, we called in to see Robert, the maitre d'oeuvre, to make sure we had dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's'. He was extremely helpful, apologetic he didn't have a photocopier so he could provide us with the quadruple copies we needed, and even wrote out an explanatory description of our proposal so we could copy it into the appropriate place on one of the forms. He couldn't do enough to help us, and for nix.

Off to the copy shop to get three more copies made of the application. 13 Euros (NZ$21) later we reeled out of the shop. Some things in France are incredibly and surprisingly expensive, while others are properly cheap. I guess that is the quirky nature of France everyone knows they have to deal with.

Apart from  fiddling around with the plans, meeting the building team and real estate agents John had been busy with paid work and I was once again working on the diary I'm trying to get organised for publishing later in the year. However, we could contain ourselves no longer. After enjoying the Saturday morning market and coffee with friends, we changed into our gorgeously attractive working clothes (not), picked up our tools and headed to Place des Neuf Jets. We did feel extremely conspicuous slinking around the outside of the square to our doorway, with many people still enjoying outdoor dining in the restaurants in the square all around us. 

We closed some of the shutters so we weren't too noisy (or visible!) and set about hacking off the old plaster from one wall and clawing out the plaster from between the stones underneath. Four hours, clouds of dust, four blisters, countless scrapes and one nasty blood blister later, we stood back and were extremely impressed with the chaos we had created. probably half a tonne of plaster and dust at our feet but the stones in the wall look great. This is the only wall we will be able to expose as all other walls need to be covered with new insulation, will be behind the kitchen units, or whatever.  We felt as though we could have been in a Grand Designs programme - Kevin McCloud could have come bounding up the stairs at any time! For those of you who know some of my foibles, I have a thing about making rock walls. The next best thing to constructing one from scratch is to create one by digging out the plaster in a ready-made one and revealing the stones. I was like a pig in mud, except a lot dustier.

At 5.30pm we downed tools, slunk back to our place (the late afternoon drinks crowd had replaced the lunchtime diners), a quick but vital shower, plenty of band-aids and we were off to dinner with our Aussie friends up the road. Some English friends were also there and we had an extremely enjoyable evening, partly aimed at christening the new terrace Ross and Liz had recently constructed (if not quite got permission for yet - long story but one of those French things). A good night, and no doubt there will be a few more before Ross and Liz head back home in early May. They are planning to come out again in November and spend their second Xmas here in Céret.

Feeling a bit beaten up this morning but, looking at the plans yet again, and the new stones we have revealed, we've decided to keep going and pick away at quite a lot more. It's a real bonus for us because we suspected that the stones behind the wall might be just rubble. However we had promised ourselves a day off physical labour today so we caught the second half of the local rugby final at our stadium. It was very parochial, not surprising here, and a decent match to watch, if rather brutal. We couldn't quite understand why the large crowd booed the referee at the end of the match because the home team had won - perhaps it was because he gave so many (justified) penalties to the other team during the match.

We've got the place looking pretty spruced up, all washing dried and put away and we are all set for the week. Last Thursday was a holiday and lots of people took the Friday off work too and the same will happen this week. We are not sure, therefore, how much work we'll get from the builders this week but we're not concerned. Antoine has it all sorted and appears to know exactly what he is doing. I hope we don't eat these words in a number of weeks time but I don't think so.

A few days later now, no builder, as expected, but we have pretty much finished all the hacking on what will be the sole remaining stone wall. We've managed to give ourselves up to 5cm of extra room in some places, and of course what will hopefully become a lovely stone wall.

Before....

... and after.