Ou est le plombier?

Well, as the title suggests, the plumber has yet to make his entrance. John and I are not too hassled (yet), but our builder and electrician are. Their work is now being held up so I'm pretty sure, or as sure as can be, that the plumber will be on deck tomorrow. Maybe, normalement. 

We didn't spend much time on-site last week but spent hours and hours walking the aisles in the huge handyman stores in Perpignan. That makes up our main form of exercise at the moment!! We had a huge day on Wednesday, mainly just firming up on what things to buy and where. Raced home at 6:45pm, which gave us just enough time to bolt down a takeaway falafel for dinner and scoot to the new theatre for a Spanish flamenco performance. It was a colourful Catalan affair, with the dancers being local women and their young daughters. It was great fun to watch, full of audience interaction and perfect as a 'welcome to our new theatre' performance, one of the dozen or so free concerts the local council is funding.

Flamenco dancing at the Céret theatre.

We felt very weary on Thursday so contented ourselves with our computer jobs again. It was also very hot: 37 degrees. Summer is here and it's gorgeous. I love coming out of the big air-conditioned stores and being enveloped in a 'hot glove'. Enough - I don't want those currently in winter climes to become jealous, or, worse still, start to yawn!

Next day, another 6 hours in Perpignan including 2 hours going through our kitchen plans with one of the staff at Leroy Merlin and ordering all the bits and bobs. What a nice man who took us through the plans and helped us with what is possible and what isn't. Almost without exception, everyone we have had to deal with on this project has been super helpful and pleasant. Our builder will be very pleased to hear the kitchen is now ordered, though it won't be installed until early August. However, a lot of prep work has to be done by him before then, including levelling the kitchen floor (and indeed all floors in the apartment) and laying tiles. Next job for us - choose the tiles!

Friday night was definitely one of R&R. A 15 minute walk to the outskirts of Céret brought us to the house of Marianne (one of our Norwegian friends). She has lived here for about 11 years, and recently Mats (a lovely Swedish guy) has moved in with her. They are a neat couple and we had a wonderfully casual and chatty evening, finally wandering home at 1:30am. I'm not sure where our stamina is coming from - we didn't socialise this much or so late in Nelson so perhaps the air is richer in the northern hemisphere and we don't tire as quickly in the evenings?

"Starters" at Marianne and Mats' place.

Main course (salmon, lobster, cod and asparagus). Oh la la!

Of course, that's rot because we crashed and didn't wake up until 9:30am on Saturday morning, just in time to turn on the TV and watch the All Blacks play England. What an entertaining game, and so much better than last week's shocker when we just managed to scrape through with a win. Finally got to the market at 11:30am, bought a few veges and retreated to the shade in Bar Pablo to watch the first half of the Aussie vs. France game. We weren't quite sure who to support - France or our fellow Antipodeans? Quite a dilemma for us, easily resolved by supporting both.

We have enjoyed a quieter weekend, but have been reminded of something. It's taken a Skype with Bella and Nic to bring it home. They work long and hard during the week, and now and again will treat themselves to a weekend away, sometimes to Sydney (when Nic goes there for work), or maybe just somewhere on Mornington Peninsula close to Melbourne. They know how to take time to totally chill out and put work right out of their minds for a day or so. John and I are not good at that - we do computer or restoration work in the weekends just as much as during the week. If we spend too much time on one job then the other suffers so it's very rare we do neither. I think we need to take a leaf out of Bella and Nic's book and take some days totally off.

Having said that, we Skyped with Alastair this morning and it looks like he will be flying in at the end of June. We are planning to take the opportunity to prowl the country on some new explorations, sample new French fare, spend a day or two in Spain and just enjoy each other's company. Who knows when we will next see Alastair? He will leave us to go backpacking in South America before taking up his new job in San Francisco in October. 

A great Skype with Bella and Nic this morning and a phone call with my Dad in Auckland topped off a great 'family check-in' during the last 24 hours. Dad turned 91 today and sounded in great spirits on the phone. He loved the present we left for him - a cup complete with family photo from his 90th party.

Now Tuesday, and some ups and downs on the project over the last two days. No plumber on Monday, no plumber on Tuesday. On Monday we did manage to order the dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer. The latter is a combo unit to save a second 60cm x 60cm footprint. We really want the two to be delivered in August, but after ringing up the retailer, you can only change the delivery date after you have the order in, so let's hope the cartage people will play ball. If not, it will be a hassle for the builders to have them on site early. The delivery includes taking them up to the 3rd floor, not something we are prepared to do ourselves.

The builder's men are rapidly approaching the point they will be held up by the missing plumber - they might stretch to the end of the week but perhaps not. Work on the mezzanine floor started today with Antoine turning up with his Bobcat to load in more plasterboard and timber. He was a little uncomfortable, having fallen 3½ metres off a ladder in the weekend, and with plenty of bruising, but thankfully nothing worse. Had a great conversation with him, as he has a good sense of humour, and most importantly a nice clear voice and accent.

At lunchtime, we got a registered letter from the mairie to say our skylights had been approved by Batiments de France. Only problem was that they had shrunk the allowed size from our requested size to something less than half. They've got so small that the glass area after taking off the structure has got down to 0.22m² each. We were very annoyed. They can't be seen from the ground, so what difference does it make if they are small or large? Went to our local friendly maitre d'oevre who agreed it was absurd, and suggested we could ignore it and install the next size up. All very well, as neither the mairie or Batiments de France will ever come and check, but it may become an issue when we come to sell, whenever that may be. So not an option we will take this time. So Plan B is to go into Perpignan to visit B de F and see if being New Zealanders won't make a difference, as is has so often before.

Back on the positive side, we went up after close of play on the site this evening, to find most of the mezzanine flooring is down. Wow! It is a really good space up there. The ceiling is rather close, as expected, and I'm better being at one end than the other due to the slope of the beams, but it is going to be excellent. Another good thing, we have realised that the size of the skylights is less of a concern than we imagined. We had though we may be able to see scenery horizontally through them, but the reality is that we are only going to see sky, so the size is of much less importance than we thought, though we will still try to increase it.

Nice view down from the mezzanine