Thursday was our day for sorting stuff - from visiting M.Galland the roofer, to getting the CT done on the car.
M.Galland is an extremely likelable sort of chap. He (and his work) appear to be well respected in and around Preuilly, as everyone seems to know him and has had at least part of their roof repaired by him. We agreed that he would phone us to have another look at the house so that he could fine tune our slightly (to French eyes) eccentric requirements. We are still undecided about items such as having the chimney (which is the source of most of our ills inside the house itself) demolished and rebuilt. That is to say......the chimney WILL be demolished - it is in the worst possible place as far as a roofer is concerned - whether we have a replacement metal (but looking like stonework) one installed will depend on price. We will need a chimney for our wood burning fireplace, so my instinct is to go for a it (depending on price, naturally).
After leaving M.Galland's yard in Yzeures we drove to the Intermarche to shop for the week. As we were driving through the marketplace, however, we saw that they had a market visiting from the Vienne market association (the Vienne is the next Department to ours, literally just over the river Gartempe). We bought most of our requirements for the week in the market - some lovely salad, veg for doing mash (celeriac, swede and leeks), a nice bit of "lieu noir" (blackfish?*) and various bits of meat. All we then needed from the supermarket were some more store cupboard items like pasta and rice.
On returning to Preuilly we called in at Bertucelli, our local plumbing superstars. They are one of Europe's largest geothermal heating installers as well as being a general plumber, quite amazing that they are based in Preuilly. (At this stage, I must have been getting pretty stressed by having to do all the fancy communication in Foreign and my overworked synapses failed to connect to anything at all resulting in complete language meltdown - very embarrassing. Susan). We arranged for them to call at the house on Monday afternoon to quote for (initially) installing a toilet and a couple of cold taps, and then the rest of the plumbing including heating. We already have a toilet we haven't been game to try and some other plumbing in the house, so maybe the initial cost wont be too high. It would be nice not to have to rush to the Mairie every time we need a wee!
We had lunch back at the gite before driving to La Roche Posay for our CT. The car sailed through the test (HOORAY!!) but the mechanic informed us with a combination of mime, hand gestures and the use of our dictionary that the brake fluid resevoir was "vide". We had assumed the flashing brake warning lamp on the dashboard was a dodgy circuit for the handbrake warning. Apparently it does both.........A quick call into our local Renault dealer soon had that problem sorted.
We then returned to Preuilly to start work on the garden - more clearing, digging, weed killing and the like. We soon got dishearted with that, as it appears that most of what we assumed was garden is just layers of mulched leaves and brambles growing over a combination of cobbles, hoggin (a clay/gravel mix as found on tennis courts) and rubble. We have decided to get a man with a tractor to skim all the junk off and level the site so we can see what we have. As a reward for having made a decision we called into l'Image for a coffee
We returned to the gite via the river to have a look at some different views of our new home town. It was amazing weather for February. The daffodils are out, plum (or maybe almond) trees are in blossom. Quite stunning, and so peaceful. We feel lucky that we will be living in such an attractive part of the world.
Simon* AKA Pollock or Coley
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