1st Cherries from our tree

Not as many as last year, but that's normal we heard, but today we have picked our first ripe cherries. They are very juicy.

I heard it on the radio...

...that's a clue for a song....! Yes Franca here. This morning I heard a radio program, Dutch local radio station, where 4 members of the Guys 'n' Dolls were giving an interview. They are going to give a re-union concert in June in Amsterdam and we will go there! As you could call the studio, which I did, you could talk with them. Curious: then listen me talking to Julie, Dominic, Martine and Paul.

http://stream.rtvnh.nl/RadioArchief/2/200805191000.asf

stream nummer: 26:25

For the whole interview: it starts at: 06:49.

Enjoy!

Franca

Work in progress

Well here it is a picture of my work in progress, the new utility room at Au Bellefleur, my little project for our B&B and this one is all my own work, it looks pretty impressive on the photo, even though I say so my self, almost like a real builder has done some work. There is still a lot of rubbing down to get a good finish on the joints before the white paint can go on, so I shall be rubbing down and refilling all the white bits on Saturday, its the bit that Franca hates because the fine dust gets everywhere. Then may be on Sunday I can do some painting. Once the walls and ceiling are white I am going to tile the floor, which will be another first for me, I've tiled walls before but never floors, a little job for the bank holiday weekend.

Sunburn buiding the play house

Despite working inside most of this weekend I have still managed to get a touch of sunburn, building a play house for my daughter, at least starting to build it. It was handy because it is made of boarding that has to come out of our old scullery, so as they say, waste not, want not. As soon as the sides were up and my first attempt at a roof was on she was inside trying to play. Sunday was a lovely sunny day and amazingly warm hence an hour and half without my shirt on and I got burnt, and before you ask, no it was not the mid day sun; Saturday would have been just as good if the sun had managed to burn off the cloud, but it was still warm even without the sun.

Franca has had a break of a few days without guests, so she had a chance to get her breath back before the next ‘invasion’ which started last night. It is always good to be able to greet guests sitting outside in the sun with glass of something nice and chilled, looking as if we had been sat there all day, little do they know......

On the building front it was one of those weekends where you cannot really see much evidence for the amount of work done, it was a taping and jointing weekend which means filling the gaps between the plasterboards installed last weekend and blanking off the screw heads. We are getting closer to the point where we can paint everything white as a base coat, and then it will be time to lay the floor. I am still running behind schedule, as I was hoping to lay the floor over the late May bank holiday, which I can and probably still will do, but it would be good if all the messy work was finished first, which is highly unlikely to happen as next weekend is a short weekend for me as I switch from Bordeaux flights to La Rochelle flights for a couple of weeks, which means flying back to the UK on a Sunday evening instead of Monday morning.

So much to my daughters chagrin I will have to put in a full days work on Saturday to try and get as much rubbing down done as possible and may be some painting too, otherwise I will try to encourage Franca to pick up the roller during the week, but that depends how many guests we have,....... so much to do and so little time to do it.

I’m not sure if this is my final weekend using Bordeaux before the summer or not, the reason for the switch of airports is the cost of the bank holiday flights, but I hope to be able to use Bordeaux until I can find a Monday morning flight back to the UK via either Ryanair or Easyjet for the summer. The Bordeaux flights get very expensive in the summer months on BA. The tourist season has definitely kicked off in France now, there are a lot more foreign cars on the road, which is good for our business. Today is a holiday in France, infact May is a month of holidays for the French, they claim to keep religion in its own little ring fenced area, but if there is a chance of a religious holiday the French take it, and why not. So this weekend started on Thursday last week, and, although Friday was a normal working day, most French took the day off to make a nice long weekend which also includes today (Monday), which for obvious reasons in France has been branded a Red Day on the roads and public transport as all the French return home from their long weekend, not a day to be out and about after mid-day. On my drive to the airport this morning everything was very quiet but come mid-day it will be wall to wall traffic jams.