'Til The Cows Come Home.....

We have seen some funny sights while we have been here - one of the funniest though, was when Craig got up quite early one morning, and sat having a cup of coffee looking out of the kitchen window. He saw some cows walking past the house ! Not TOO strange you may say, as we live in the country, and the farmers do move the cows from field to field on a regular basis - BUT at 6.30 in the morning, ten cows with nobody around ?? Apparently, the cows had escaped, and been wandering about all night - a neighbour had seen them through her window, and thought she was dreaming. Another neighbour had all his vegetables trampled and eaten. Luckily, we suffered no damage on this occasion, but it is still a talking point, two years later !

After over a year here, with the London Olympics just around the corner, Craig promised that we would have a television set up ready to watch them. We had managed up until this point with just DVD's, and watching the odd programme on IPlayer, with the radio via the Internet, but the day the satellite dish was connected, was MOMENTOUS ! It took some getting used to, but to see the English news etc, and of course to watch the historic Olympic Games - as promised - was great. We rely very much on the English TV as a way to relax at the end of the day. I know that we should watch the French TV programmes to consolidate the language skills, but as a form of relaxation, no. It makes us feel more in touch with home and family too, in a strange way.

In order to create a new ceiling for our bedroom upstairs, and a new floor for the top floor, we needed to remove the rotten joists - a huge, dirty, time consuming job ! As we were living here, we had to make sure that we cleaned up as we went along too, and to keep safe, Craig wanted to remove a couple at a time, and replace with new ones as we went along. The house wouldn't have stayed stable if we had removed all of them in one go. We assumed that if we cut one in the middle, or into three pieces, we could pull it out of the wall easier, but it turned out that there was a ring beam, and each cross beam was jointed into the ring. Eventually Craig had to cut each one in three as planned, and then cut away at the wall too. They were incredibly heavy, and to be balanced up a ladder taking the weight, of even a third of a beam was no picnic, I can tell you !

Once down, each one had to be taken downstairs and burnt, and we did have a friend who used some for their heating ! Then, of course, we had to get the new joists, in one piece back up, through the window, and then up onto the joist hangers.

What an achievement ! What bruises I had too - I bruise quite easily, and I had bruises on my upper arms where I had the beams balanced on them - they were quite impressive, and didn't hurt as much as they looked as though they should ! The house was starting to take shape - next step, plaster boarding the ceiling...

and then studding, pulling the electric cables and plaster boarding the walls ....

We were under a little pressure at this point, and we had three visitors due so needed to have extra sleeping space available for our guests.