THE SECOND AND THIRD QUARTERS OF THE YEAR
APRIL
The new drive arrives followed by the kitchen units.
Unfortunately several of them are smashed and unusable. We start fitting the
good pieces and manage to knock up some kind of kitchen for when my brother
arrives for a ten day holiday. Nick sets off with the trailer to the UK to
fetch replacement units, returning, exhausted, three days later. The weather
remains glorious and we take some time off as well.
MAY
Almost the minute my brother leaves to go back to the UK, it
starts raining, and continues for days. The ditch alongside the road fills and
overflows across our gateway and huge puddles appear in the new drive. As the
rain continues, the new kitchen starts to take shape. By the end of the month
the weather has picked up again and we hold the second cake club of the year, a
huge success, with a record number of cakes on the table.
JUNE
Work on the kitchen continues steadily after a trip to the UK to
see Nick’s mum who is poorly. We wait for news from the carpenter about when he
might be coming to fit our new oak staircase to replace the metal spiral one
which we loathe. It is by now six months since we ordered the new one.
JULY
Nick’s mum has a fall and becomes very ill. I go back to the
UK, leaving Nick to supervise the installation of the new staircase. It doesn’t
arrive. The carpenter delivers the parts the afternoon before Nick gets on a
flight back to the UK to join me, leaving the carpenter to fit the staircase in
our absence. Nick’s mum dies hours after he visited her in hospital. We return to France to find the staircase fitted and almost exactly as we wanted it, then make another trip to the UK for the funeral.
AUGUST
