Le Projet - another Public Holiday

Willie and the team are not on site on Monday so we decide to take a trip to Tonnay-Boutonne for a few supplies. Luckily I dialed up my 'in house' barista, Roger, for my morning coffee fix as we're just cruising down the local road when a deer leaps out of bushes, in broad daylight, narrowly missing the front left panel of the lease car. It happened so quickly, I didnt even have time to brake as by the time I caught it in my left peripheral vision, it was 100ml from the front of the car and moving straight across the road into the bushes. We all blinked, in disbelief, just grateful that it was moving fast enough not to make contact with the car!

The builders were here bright and early Tuesday morning to dig the trenches, and they didn't leave till the job was done. Emma Lou and I followed up with another kitchen designer in St Jean D'Angely and hunted out some more tile samples for the external terrases.

We had a few jobs to finish off on Wednesday, including a trip to Bricomarche to buy some timber poles for the new woodshed, which we plan to construct before Johhny and Emma Lou return at the end of June. So we rocked into Bricomarche late in the afternoon, select 4 x 4 metre posts, 7 bags of beton (concrete) and ask for delivery. €56 was quoted for the 10 min journey to St Loup, but there's a cheaper option madame, you can rent our truck for €30! You guessed it, we rented the truck, and Thelma (Emma Lou) and Louis (Roger) were off in a flash. Lightning McQueen (that's me) followed just in case and we were whizzing through the streets and farmlands in a flash. It was hilarious. Dropped off the timber, returned the truck and were home for a well earned GnT within the hour. And on Wednesday after the reo framework was fitted into the very deep - 500mm trenches, the boys departed, 'Aurevoir, bonne vacation, à Mardi prochain' - happy holidays, see you next Tuesday.

You see, Thursday 14th May is Ascension Day, another French Public Holiday and it seems taking a 'sickie' on the Friday is de rigueur. And we're still not sure about Monday's. As there was not alot happening on the building site for the next 5 days, Emma Louise decided she had plenty of work back home in the UK so the plan was made for us to drop her of at Bordeaux airport. So we head south on Ascension Day, with a stop at Saintes and the very large Leroy Merlin store, think Bunnings on steroids, and because of the Public Holiday, the place is absolutely packed. Parking is almost in the paddocks of the relatively new commercial subdivision just off the motorway, and we have to make at least three circuits before we are successful. Once inside we move relatively quickly between the outdoor tiles, the kitchen taps and the aluminium windows frames, with some deliberate distraction avoidance to prevent any delays. We've decided, we now know where the population of these small empty villages disappear too when they're not at home!

We head down the A10 as the rain settles in and arrive at our cute little BnB to park our car. A tricky but successful park in the covered carpark and we jump on the tram onto Bordeaux city. Its only 2 stops to the old town, where I've luckily located a wine bar called Frida, a short walk from our tram stop. All would be well except its starting to rain harder and poor Emma Lou hasn't really got a raincoat. Once inside a warming negroni hits the spot and thankfully, the bar staff can rustle up the chef to produce some delicious tapas for us, right at 7pm, which was when the kitchen opened, as we only had a 20 minute window of opportunity before we had to make the mad dash back to the tram, then to collect the car and take Emma Lou to the airport. Safely deposited, we returned to the tricky car park space, noting parking was much easier after said negroni. It was still quite early so some research highlighted a bar just around the corner.

The Cooldown bar seemed quite legit, had good reviews and displayed an image of a fairly typical bar with a wall of spirit bottles in background. What it didn't show was the rooms full of computers, overhead monitors and mostly male gaming clientle with a few goth females for effect. As it was still raining and only 11 degrees, we perched at a bar near the door, enjoyed a negroni while we observed the world of gaming, and shared a pretty good beef burger, rather than wander the streets looking for an alternative bar. Just another adventure as the saying goes.

On Friday we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at our BnB before heading to Auchan Bordeaux shopping centre to revisit some of our favourite stores in order to pickup some accessories for our International Chaine event in Aix-en-Provence in 4 weeks time. We were both pretty tired - it had been a full on 10 days with the start of Le Projet and Emma Lou staying so after a few less than fruitful hours of wandering and browsing, we headed for home, relishing a refreshing GnT by the fire.

Our weekend was pretty non eventful, plenty of sleeping, not much 'thinking' and a few walks around the farmlands pretty much set the scene. As usual, the builders were absent yesterday so we cranked up the lawn mower and Roger started disassembling the old wood shed. The weather remained grey and miserable with frequent showers, so we kept the home fires burning because it's one way to reduce the load of wood that needs moving.Læs mere