The House: The Principal Players

We finally had the house in our possession, but in could in no wise be considered habitable. By this stage, I was so heartily sick of the gloomy place where we had been living, that I laid down a deadline of three weeks before I would be in residence. Enter our motley but trusty crew who saw us through this initial "it has to get worse before it can get better" stage: our two leading men, ably and not so ably supported by a random selection of gophers, labourers, passing vagrants, visiting friends and family.

First and most definitely foremost comes Alain, our heating engineeer/plumber extraordinaire and general Mr Fixit. Alain had already saved our bacon in our previous house, by rectifying some hopeless work done by a rank cowboy (whom we sued). He was a compact, wiry and ruggedly handsome chap, with a sweep of white hair and a very French, bushy black moustache. He would cheerfully turn his hand to any job needing doing, could think of ways around problems and understood the need to economise where possible, all qualities of extreme rarity and value.

Alain was always accompanied on site by Mrs Alain and three or four of the junior Alains, who all looked identical and thus put us in mind of a set of Russian dolls. Although we came to know the family quite well  over the years, we never could work out exactly how many juniors there were. Mrs Alain had a penchant for extremely short skirts and high heels (not too practical as work-wear) and not a tooth in her head.

Alain (left) lends a hand with the endless rubble

Although slightly given to histrionics and a little too fond of pastis, Alain was our rock and our saviour on many occasion, and his magnificent heating system serves us faithfully to this day.

Fred works on one of the new doorways

Our second leading man was Fred, a rather mystical chap who appeared one day in response to our search for a stonemason. Fred drove and lived in an ancient ex-gendarme Renault van, was very proud of his distant Irish ancestry, played the fiddle like a demon, and made a bit of extra money teaching the handling of working horses at the local agricultural college. He was generally accompanied on site by his slightly unbalanced but very gentle Welsh Collie, often by his two absolutley delightful young daughters and occasionally by his elderly mother who, as far as I am aware, never spoke to anyone.

Fred's dog keeps watch on the pressure-washer

Since the purchase had been so badly delayed, we had had plenty of time to sort out all the necessary planning permissions, so as soon as the papers were signed, the gang went at it: ripping out floors, digging up the garden for the septic tank, bashing new doors and windows in the half-metre thick walls. By the time I moved in with eight-month-old babe (hubby had artfully arranged to be away in the UK at the time), we had one freshly painted and reasonably orderly room (later to become my son's bedroom) in which we put our beds, settee, fridge, microwave, etc, and an adjacent half-built bathroom with a loo and washbasin with cold water only.





 I would work mornings and then pick up my son from the childminder and arrive home at lunchtime, dive through the front door and dash upstairs to our room before any of them could collar me to regale me with the latest disaster - I worked out early that they always mananged to sort it out if left to their own devices.

By the end of the Summer, it was beginning to look a bit like a house.

Kitchen????

 

 

 

 

Kitchen!