The Dividends of Determined Grovelling

What a difference a day makes… to recap on yesterday when everything looked dire. With our apartment at Place de l'Eglise about to change hands, we need to swap apartments. After a phone call from us, the plumber’s receptionist had rung back mid-afternoon to say they couldn’t possibly get to us until August 26th at best (i.e. after we had already moved in), there was no sign of the plasterer, no sign of the electrician, we were contemplating which friends to crash with later in August and also altering any ‘holiday’ plans we had for September.  After receiving the call from the plumber we decided that we needed to take direct action. We jumped in the car, rehearsed what we would say about the dire need we were in for a toilet, fittings for the pipes so the kitchen could be installed in two weeks’ time, family arriving at the end of August (in fact it’s our good friends Jeff and Sandra) etc., etc. That was all fine except that when we rolled up at the plumber’s depot nobody was at home. The office was closed up. 

Ok. Plan B. This was to go to the supermarket up the road and buy a cask of rosé. It meant driving past Antoine’s (our builder’s) depot. We pulled up, and not surprisingly, Antoine wasn’t there. He almost never is. However, his receptionist was. Right. Here we go. She is rather a large woman, obviously hot and bothered and suffering in the 30+ degree temperature in the office. We have met her before and she is very nice. To cut to the chase, we grovelled. I affected a rather distraught state, while John did his best to explain that Antoine had PROMISED us a plumber a week ago, that the plumber only had ½ day’s work to do, the kitchen man would be stymied if his fittings weren’t in place, we had no toilet, family was imminent, we couldn’t paint anything because the PROMISED plasterer hadn’t turned up and we had to move out of our current apartment in three weeks.

Oh la la……. The receptionist promised to pass on the message to Antoine and was very much ‘in our camp’. We left feeling a little more hopeful than when we had arrived, continued the few kilometres to Lidl supermarket, duly plied ourselves with sufficient rosé and red wine to see ourselves through the crisis, and when driving back happened to see that Antoine’s car was back at his depot. He would be getting ‘the message’.

Today, we awoke to another gorgeous sunny day, didn’t have any expectations, and weren’t altogether surprised to find that our internet had been cut off. Yes, our internet provider had done something ahead of time and cut us off pending our relocation to a new address still three weeks away. C’est la vie! You’ve got to love France or you’ll hate it.

Anyway, John duly went over to the new apartment to find out whether we could get internet (via a neighbour’s connection). Lo and behold, a miracle had taken place. The plasterer was merrily working away, whistling along to his radio and offering a cheery ‘bonjour’. Wow. John was stopped in his tracks. What’s more, the plasterer said he will try to finish tomorrow (Friday), and if not will return next Monday. Wow. 

But wait, there’s more. The electrician had turned up early in the morning and the two air conditioning units were now whirring away happily and the place is gorgeously cool for the plasterer to work away in. 

But wait, there’s still more. Mid-morning John got a call on his cellphone from our friendly plumber’s receptionist. Good news – the plumber will arrive at 7:45 tomorrow morning to finish all his work. Wow.

But wait, there’s even more. The plumber then rang at 3pm and asked if he could please come and install our hot water cylinder now. Wow.

We thought all our Christmases had come (for the next century). So, to sum up the state-of-play this afternoon, John and I were busily installing the vanity unit in readiness for the plumber tomorrow, plus doing some painting, the plumber and his mate were there installing the hot water cylinder and the plasterer was still merrily whistling away, totally flat and tuneless as ever. Wow.

Even the fact that we no longer have the internet cannot wipe the smiles off our faces. What a turn-around from yesterday. The new phone line is due to be installed in 12 days’ time so we will manage somehow until then and hope it will be activated prior to 25 August.

What a grand day. It was topped off by a lovely lunch with friends at Percherons, a new local restaurant. Our English, Norwegian and Swedish friends are coming and going a bit at the moment, so we managed to arrange a day when 6 of us could get-together. We had a lovely meal in the outdoor courtyard and basically France is back to being a bunch of fluffies for us. Long may it continue ☺.

Holding Our Breath

Well, all the work over the last few months, with work-days won and lost along the way, has come down to a few days of this week. The tradesmen all go on holiday for the month of August. It's 1st August on Friday.  It's now Wednesday. Eeeekkkk. We have yet to have the plumber return to plumb in our toilet, hot water cylinder, vanity, etc. The sparky is yet to return to install the final components of the air conditioning units. Most important however, is the plasterer still has a couple of days work to finish off the plastering. Without the latter, we can't paint the ceilings and walls, and that will completely stymie much work we can usefully do during August. It's really frustrating. We are so close to all the trades finishing off - it's just a day or so's work for each of them. Our builder anticipated getting everything finished well before now so the days that were lost for various reasons (including two-weeks late kick-off) look likely to cost us dearly.

We now have to start thinking about Plan B, that is to say, making up Plan B. We have to hand over our existing apartment on 25 August so we might end up bunking in with friends for a week, or maybe going away for the last week of August, or ...... something.....

Yet again, we have come up against the French system of getting things 95% great, and then messing up or not completing the final 5%. Some of the finishing on the apartment is simply awful - for example, the floors are so carefully levelled and the tiles nicely laid out, then the plinths around the edges are tossed on without proper care. The front windows have been moved out, straightened and so on as they should be, then they put in the most pathetic excuse for architraves you can imagine. We will replace a few bits and pieces over time.

Quality of finish?

On the positive side, the fridge was delivered today. We paid €25 to have it delivered from Conforama Perpignan out to Céret, into the Place des 9 Jets, up 3 flights of stairs and into the kitchen. That's such good value. What wasn't so good was that one of the 2 delivery people had some incident coming up the stairs - the younger one more or less crawled into our apartment clutching his leg, moaning and weeping. We felt rotten for him. By the time he left the was sort of hobbling - we presume the fridge had at some point dropped onto his leg and pinned it, or something similar. All our remaining deliveries (beds, appliances, kitchen) except Ikea are to the "room of use" thankfully. We don't want it to be us that is ruined.

Not much has been on our agenda for the past few days except working on the apartment in the evenings and weekends. We put in 14 hours painting on Saturday and Sunday. We prefer to time hanging out the windows to either mid-late afternoon or Sunday morning, which are the times when the plaza below us are empty of diners and we don't feel immensely conspicuous in our awful painting clothes wielding a paintbrush, and splashing passers-by. 

Other, and definitely more exciting, news is that Alastair arrived safely in Colombia last week and had his eyes lasered in Bogota on Thursday. The results are excellent and he is thrilled. I hear you saying "Bogota?". The medicos there have apparently been leaders in eye surgery and tuition of eye specialists for a number of years, use top-notch technology and are extremely experienced. Alastair is now about to set off on a two-month jaunt around Central and Southern America, catching as much adventure-tourism along the way that he can (minus contact lenses and glasses). He's a very happy chappy.

Postscript: The plasterer is on site and will finish Monday. Awesome.

Starting Finishing

We are now at the point of finishing things off in the new apartment. This week has seen a lot of progress, though less I think than the builder expected.

We specified that the tiles should be laid diagonally, as there is barely a square corner or parallel wall in the whole place, and trying to lay tiles along the angled walls would only accentuate the non-squareness of it. Also, we felt the diagonal lines would look a bit less formal, and would soften the modern and sharp lines of much of the new work. It has cost us a bit extra, as laying diagonally is more expensive in labour and tiles, but it is clearly worth it. We are very pleased with the terracotta-look tiles we've chosen - just as well as we have them in all rooms bar the toilet and bathroom. There too, the mottled grey we chose looks excellent.

We made a rapid choice of white 200 x 200 square tiles for the bathroom so that could be finished, in order that the plumber can come back and connect water so we can have a working toilet and shower when we move in a month's time.

The fact that French workers take all of August off completely makes it rather vital to get things sorted before the end of July. This August shut-down has affected us in other ways. We  held off ordering the new beds until the apartment was in a suitable state to receive them, and it appears that the beds we have ordered are not in stock and need to be made, and the factory is shutting for the holidays before ours can be made. Thus we will not have our beds for the first week, though we are hopeful our upstairs convertible sofa will arrive from Ikea to give us somewhere to sleep other than our blow-up mattress. We haven't yet received the washer-dryer and dishwasher ordered some 5 weeks ago, but apparently they are "en train d'acheminer", which means nothing really. The fridge is set for 20 August, so that's fine, provided of course it does come then.

Power is on and working, water is a very simple matter as it only needs connection and for us to tell them the meter readings when we move. Internet I've just ordered, so who knows with that. Last year it took 3 months, but this time round seems much more simple, and there is a connection available to tide us over as with our provider you can connect with anybody else's Freebox.

We had a great win with the staircase, and a slight loss. The stairs arrived on site on Wednesday, and we were surprised to see that the colour was not the light beech we had expected. We'd found them on a UK website, but they were bought locally. Unfortunately France gets the oak version, not the beech version, so the steps are darker than we'd wanted. After putting them in, we got the builder to knock out some of the stairs' side wall to open them up to the living room (as we had drawn and specified), but not as was built. Antoine and his main worker were not particularly happy, but when we went back on Thursday it had been done, and it was enormously better - even Antoine thought so. It lets more light in, shows off the stairs, and simply looks really cool. Thankfully, the darker timber looks fine too.

New stairs, with opening cut to the right

Nice view down the hall and out the rear windows

We have decided that the original lighter grey of the shutters was a bit too light, so we have remixed some paint to make a darker colour, and it is a good deal more subtle and appropriate. A bit of repainting, but it does look better.

Interior shutter panels now darker, one original remaining to the left

Au Revoir Alastair

Where did those three weeks with Alastair go? We dropped him off at Perpignan train station yesterday, after having him with us 24/7 for three weeks. It was great. We feel rather lonely now and our little apartment suddenly seems much bigger! He is currently winging his way to Columbia, where he plans to kickstart 2½ months of cramming in as much adventure tourism as he can, along with Spanish lessons, getting his eyes lasered and giving one or two lectures to design students at Bogota University.

While he was here we managed to get out and about quite a lot, even though he had heaps of bookings to organise, presentations to prepare and uni work to finish off. Last Sunday we set off for a swim at the beach, partly to have a day away from the Feria festivities and partly because it was high time we saw the sea. Although the day clouded over a little we managed to catch some rays (of the sun variety not marine), while Alastair also jumped in for a swim. On with some walking shoes and we enjoyed the 40 minute coastal walk up, down and along the bays to Collioure. Here we scored some scrumptious ice-creams and had a gentle wander around before retracing our steps back to our bay and the car. Instead of going straight home we diverted to a nearby village to see our good friends Miquel and Pascale. After a wonderful natter (accompanied by a little tipple of the local Banyuls, for the non-drivers anyway) we arrived home just in time to catch the beginning of the World Cup Final. What a great match - though we were all yelling for the Argentinians and not the Germans. Yet another late night and yet another late start to the next day. Most of the games we have seen have only started at 10pm our time.

Thursday saw us off on another expedition to the coast, but this one was far more vigorous. John and I had tackled the walk to the Tour de Madeloc (a ridgeline tower inland from Banyuls-sur-Mer) in the depths of winter very early this year. Of course this time the temperatures were much hotter this time round and we suffered a little, though the views from the top were definitely less hazy this time and well worth the effort. It was a great climb and took just under 4 hours in all. 

At the Tour de Madaloc

Pastry break

The best was yet to come however. We had checked out a good place to go for a late lunch and tracked down Le Poisson Rouge at Port-Vendres. What a great spot - right on the water's edge, a very nice waiter, wonderful food and a neat time just chilling out. I think one of the things we have enjoyed most with Alastair is just chatting away and hearing his take on things. An offshoot of this is that John and I are once again thoroughly imbued with the desire to travel again, i.e. explore new horizons rather than perhaps just blobbing here a bit in France. I can hear your sympathetic grunts (or perhaps not!). With renting out Walters Bluff, and the new apartment here in Céret, we should be able to tackle a bit of offshore adventuring, certainly by using home exchanges part of the time anyway.

Back to the restaurant. We were still there at 3:30pm when it shut up shop for the afternoon but the waiter said we could stay as long as you liked, just to use the steps down to the beach to get out. Fine, except when we left the boys decided to crawl under the gate instead of heading down to the beach. Yours truly, not wishing to grovel on the ground in my white trousers, tried to follow suit, only to get stuck behind (literally). Haha. Yep, I started to giggle and ended up grovelling on the ground anyway, much to J & AJ's amusement. Thankfully John didn't have the camera handy to catch me at the moment of contact!

Ready for a great lunch after our walk

Prawns, duck and sweet potato

The gate that got me!

Photo update

A quick photo update of the Feria, and progress on the apartment

Just a hint at the kinds of antics and costumes worn by many of the crowd (often rugby players)

Parade of horses and riders

The bulls are let out of their truck

Great drumming band, one of many bands

Disco below us in the square, until 4am, 4am and 2am on the 3 nights. We slept fine! Really.

The Feria was as mad as ever. It is very busy, and very loud, but a heap of fun, and great seeing so many people enjoying themselves. Sunday we escaped to do a walk up to the dolmens above Maureillas - we find a break away from town mid-Feria revives us for the following day!

The fireworks on Bastille Day to end the Feria were outstanding. How a little town like Céret can put on such a show is surprising, but it was a great spectacle, and a worthy finale to the Feria. The best display we've ever been to, as it was all so close - in fact so close that Alastair had to duck at one point to avoid some flying fireworks.

And now onto an update on the apartment. Antoine the builder has pulled out all stops this week, now the Feria is out of the way. He parked his Bobcat in the garden courtyard behind us, so has good access now. The plasterer has just one coat left to go, but has been away this week while Antoine has had 4 men on site. Meanwhile we have been sneaking up in the evenings and weekends to work on the exterior windows, doors and shutters. Despite the age of the woodwork, I've managed to get the whole lot fitting well using generous helpings of plane, scraper, sandpaper and grunt. They've come up even better than we expected.

Shutters finished, in two-tone grey.

Bedroom windows fixed, sanded and undercoated.

TWO SKYLIGHTS! Kitchen will be central below the mezzanine.

From the kitchen: front windows undercoated, plastering near finished.

The best news is that the two new skylights are in place, and the amount of light is superb. It also lets a lot of air flow through the apartment. The light in the new living room is just awesome, as it is in the mezzanine. All the floors have been levelled flush today, except the bathroom which has a tiny step to allow us to have a walk-in shower. Tiling starts asap, can't wait.

Pre-Feria

I'm really struggling to keep up with this blog. I'm still running a week late but here goes:

The highlight has, of course. been having Alastair here with us. To his immense relief he has now got his latest presentation finished, applications for design awards in, orders for backpack and other goodies for his trip despatched online and is now able to start thinking about what might be in store for him in South America. His first stop will be Bogota in Columbia for a two-week stint at an in-house Spanish language school. 

We've had a few short painting sessions up at the apartment, but it's not an inspiring time having to start at about 6pm when the tradesmen have left. The two plasterers who were supposed to start and finish the job this week turned out to be one, who had completed 2/3 of the work by the end of Thursday. Of course it is the Feria this weekend (major bullfighting festival) so the tradesmen down tools on Thurs night in anticipation. No work on Friday. Monday is Bastille Day so that's a holiday too. So our plasterer said he would return on Wednesday (to allow recovery time). 

White undercoat is now on the shutters and the new grey paint is under way.

The floor will finally go down this week (fingers crossed). The Velux windows are ready and waiting to be installed, the kitset stairway arrives on Tues and the air-conditioning units are here (though one is the wrong size and will have to be replaced). The kitchen man who was supposed to arrive two weeks ago to do a final measure-up had forgotten about his appointment but arrived on Wed. As a result, the kitchen is now unlikely to arrive on the appointed day of 9th Aug and will more likely be later. We're not too worried about it. We will at least have our fridge (which we purchased separately).

I'm pretty weary about writing about the dramas with our on-site builder so needless to say we had some minor dramas this week. Despite telling him how we wanted a set of shelves inset in the wall underneath the stairway he's gone ahead and done his own thing. John's decided the easiest thing is for him to cut out the panels and plaster it up how we want it ourselves rather then try and get him to redo them.

Each morning we ask ourselves "Is it safe to go out for the day?". It very much depends what one or other tradesman is doing on site and whether John needs to check them a couple of times during the day (and hope they listen). On Thursday we took the chance (and arrived home to find the dud shelving area installed), however we had a wonderful walk up in the hills behind a nearby village to see some very old dolmens. They are neolithic portal tombs, dated from about 3500BC. John and I been on the walk before and really enjoyed it. 

One of the dolmens (complete with animal skeleton inside!)

On the walk

However, this time we had a real bonus of coming across a bunch of men (we suspect Spanish immigrant workers) cropping cork from the cork forest we were walking through. It was intriguing to see how they did it and they were all very cheery workers. John and I have visited the cork museum in the adjacent village so had an idea of the techniques they use, but it was great to see such an ancient craft still practised. The trees are only cropped every 12-15 years so there's a very long rotation cycle.

Truckload of cork

Newly naked cork trees

On a completely different note, Alastair has managed to induce me (without too much arm-twisting admittedly) to join him in an exercise programme he has started. It involves some pretty gruelling exercises, with about 4 sessions a week. He told me yesterday he is doing Level 2 exercises for men (out of 3 levels) so I feel I am hanging in quite well. I've now ordered the exercise book for myself - the men's one not the women's one of course. Much tougher :).

Well, the Feria is about to hit town. We know of at least three English couples who are leaving town for the next few days, to make sure they can actually sleep at night. By contrast, we love the festivities and Alastair is looking forward to finding out what happens. They started erecting the bars and disco lights in the church square below us at 6am (aargh!) this morning. Events kick off at 7pm tonight. The beer/bull/dance/music festival usually lasts Friday night to Sunday late afternoon, but because Bastille Day is on Monday, this year the event will run through until latish on Monday. 

Tonight we are heading to the lovely renovated apartment of our good friend Liz Morton. She has her two sons visiting, one of whom is Simon Morton who hosts 'This Way Up', the Saturday morning talk-show on Radio NZ. It should be a very enjoyable and entertaining evening.

We are very pleased with the way the apartment is shaping up, builder's foibles notwithstanding. As it is now, with all the joints having at least 2 of their 3 coats, it is even brighter and more spacious than it seemed a week ago. The tired old windows and shutters have come up surprisingly well following some serious surgery and many hours with plane, scraper, glue, clamps and elbow grease. Can't wait to get onto interior painting and the floors to be tiled, which should be late this coming week or early next.

Do fingers grow back?

What do you think? Do fingers grow back? I hope so! John and I have been cracking on with blood, sweat and tears (actually no tears) on the apartment and good progress is being made. With about 16 hours scraping and sanding paint over the last three days my fingers have taken a real beating and my wrists are as limp as wet rags. Nothing a bit of time off won't fix but they feel pretty knackered. 

Meanwhile John has been concentrating on clamping, planing and partly rebuilding some of the shutters and now they all fit really well. On Sunday we reached a milestone - starting the undercoat on the front shutters. I feel slightly wary standing on a stepladder on the balconies with a three story drop below but we're pretty careful. It is so good seeing the raw battered wood now being covered up and the shutters should come up a treat. They look really weird with the white undercoat though - and stand out hugely when looking up from the square below, particularly because the rest of the shutters on the building are all varying shades of grey. We hope to start the final coat later today or tomorrow, though it's raining today and we might have to be content with just painting inside this afternoon.

Painting the French doors

The plasterer took up residence this morning so we are thrilled. There's supposed to be two but John spied only one when he did a spot-check earlier in the day. A bonus was in store, however. The builders were back as well, complete with two Velux skylights. In the end we put in the larger size, just as every other building in Ceret has done. 

A pity about the rain. In fact we had massive thunderstorms this morning and it bucketed down. It's still raining solidly. The forecast is fine for the rest of the week though. In the meantime the builders have a few odd jobs to do in the apartment. One was to remedy the back wall of the toilet. They had gibboarded it up but forgotten to set it back between the toilet and the ceiling. We wanted the wall stepped back so the room felt slightly more spacious but when John checked today, instead of stepping it back they had installed a small inset shelf above the cistern only! It's hard not to be a little disappointed and it just illustrates how you have to be on-site and keep reiterating what you want. Antoine, our builder, knew what we wanted but obviously didn't get the message across when he asked them to redo it. Darn! We're not going to get them to redo it again. It's not worth the hassle. John and I have started writing a list of lessons learned for our next project. It includes 1. have a large board on-site for pinning up detailed plans, and 2. talk with the builders on-site before they begin each new phase, not just with the head builder.

Two out of three shutters scraped, sanded and undercoated

However, we are very happy chappies and thrilled with how the apartment is turning out. A major coup for us a few weeks ago was the discovery of wet & dry sanding paper (sad we can get so excited about such a mundane thing) because it meant we no longer had to deal with dry-sanding lead paint . Dosing the woodwork with water while we sand solves the issue totally. At any rate we are just about through with the sanding and it will be full-on with painting soon. 

Last Saturday morning we left Céret early and drove to Barcelona where we spent a happy and fairly rushed three hours at IKEA. Most of the time was spent bouncing on sofas and trying to work out which we preferred. The Swedish woman who has bought our current apartment is also buying most of our furnishings and appliances (which suits us fine) so we need to replace them. Because we will have real beds in a spare bedroom in our new place we no longer need a sofa-bed in the living room any more and we are keen to buy a more comfortable sofa. We'll still get a more simple sofa-bed for the mezzanine, though - which means our new pad will sleep up to 6 people. All visitors welcome.

Anyway, after IKEA we sped to the airport at Barcelona and collected a very weary Alastair. He was pretty shattered after a major final push to complete his thesis and prepare various presentations for different exhibitions. Hence, for the first 3-4 days he was with us he wasn't feeling great and just ate and slept. Thankfully he came alive two days ago and is now back up and running. Unfortunately, since then he has been sitting many hours a day at his computer completing a presentation and video which he had to submit to a Danish firm by Sunday night - they are interested in taking on his thesis idea and putting it to the market. He managed to email it all off at 1am, so he is very pleased to have that ticked off. Now he only has another video and a report to complete and he can finally say his academic year (and student days) are over once and for all.

Everyone at work (I feel very technically inferior with only one screen)

During the week we took a break and went into Perpignan. Part of the reason was to look for a new backpack for Alastair for his upcoming sojourn in South America and partly to have a very special lunch at a 1-star Michelin restaurant in town, La Galinette. The set menu for the week sounded suitably drooling, and at only €23, a very reasonable price. 

Carrot, ginger, orange soup - sublime

Prawns on zucchini pasta

Delicious fruit, berry and ice-cream dessert

The meal was excellent, a real treat.