the pressure is mounting, it is just 8 weeks until our first paying guest arrive in the gites and 9 weeks until they come to Le Chene.One of our builders has been off ill for 3 weeks so Thijs has bought in an extra pair of hands and his dog! The cats were at first hoffified but seem to be coping with the 4 legged helper.
We still have no render on the North side of our house and the swimming pool is still lots of concrte blocks held together with copious amounts of steel!
We took a well needed break from the painting to collect Joan, Karens Mum last wednesday and treated her to lunch in Ikea (I know how to look after the mother in law!!)
On Thursday Ian & Kath, and their daughter Yasmin, friends from Weybridge who now live near Brisbane in Australia came to visit on route to their skiing holiday. We went to Avignon and lunched at L'Opera , fast becoming our favourite restaurant for lunch.It has been two years since we last saw them , but seemed like yesterday - great to catch up and put the world to rights!
When we returned our gardener had been busy planting the garden outside the gites.
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In between watching the Rugby over the weekend we were working on the house. I also have a Home Hunts client to take out viewing houses today and in between this we are preparing Les Cypres for its first guest so I am opening up and cleaning the pool. Enquiries for the gites and houses are steady, interestingly we have a lot of French coming this year.So life is pretty busy, satisfying, just trying to keep all the balls up in the air!!or all the plates spinning - just like old times!
A little tale of life in France - Karen bought some hair shampoo last week, but it turned out to be conditioner which she did not need.So I took it back to the super market. I had already thrown the receipt - big mistake. I approach the counter in Le Clerc explaining my wifes error and requesting a change - NO! I am told , it is not possible! remember in France - the customer is never right!!I am then directed to 'the office' to discuss my dilema! As I have a store card they have all my purchasing history and after about 10 minutes find the item listed. I suggest they just credit the store card but no -they print two copies of the receipt, each 3 pages, and send me back to the first counter where a different lady looks at me suspiciously! I explain again the need to change the conditioner - receipt - Yes! I get my 5 Euros! Was it worth it - of course!
Next challange - the tax office want to charge our gites as separate properties to our house - so we are off to Avignon on Wednesday - if there are no more blogs for a while you will know what happened!
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