An Honoured Guest

Timeline Thursday 12 April: My good pal Alistair rang me up the other day. We’ve known one another for almost ten years and have steadily become firm friends and amongst numerous passions, we share an active interest in most things French and have spent some remarkably happy times in France together, with our respective brides.

I think Alistair was at a loose end and wanted to be of help in our quest to turn our delightful, yet slightly frayed around the edge buildings, into something a bit wondrous. ‘I could come out for a week and help get things organised’ says he, ‘What a splendid idea’ says me, ‘and when can you come?’ Hoping I wasn’t sounding altogether too eager, I was relived to discover Alistair had a slot to spend some French leave here in the Loire and we agreed a date.

The date, as it happened was less than three days after the bride, my sis and her hubby had left us, so we had to quickly tidy everything up and lay a floor in Alistair’s bedroom. We were all ready with time to spare for a change and the guest suite was getting more complete with each successive visitor.

After the tour, I was relieved that Alistair also saw the vision I had for the place as soon as I set foot here eighteen months ago and we decided to work out a breakfast plan for the week ahead. However, not before the three of us chaps set about creating and enjoying an evening meal accompanied by some local red and as eclectic and entertaining a mix of shared stories as could be wished for.

Next morning, over fresh bread and croissants, we decided the plan was to seek out appropriate specialists for the work we couldn't do ourselves, tell them what we wanted, obtain acceptable quotations for their work and commit them to turning up to do it sometime near when we needed them to. This last one is always the tricky bit and the French artisan can be more slippery to nail down than the raw ingredients for an oily eel pie.

Concentrating on the big things we were not going to attempt ourselves, we needed new windows for the barn and little house, roof repairs to the barn, big and little houses, a new underground drainage system for the whole site, a new balustrade to the little house’s external staircase and and and . . . . well that was quite enough to be going on with and Alistair was only here for a week! This might be a good time to remember to mention that my good pal spoke fluent French, particularly technical French for the construction industry, having worked here for several years and also being an engineer and owning a place in Provence way before it became fashionable to do so, following Peter Mayle’s entertaining books. Alistair and I had also worked together in construction project management for a few years and so knew something about what we were about.

The windows were the first target, as they were complicated and my previous effort to obtain a proper quotation from a well known national specialist, was met with less than success. The company quoted only for selective windows and doors, yet they tried to compensate for the missing ones by giving prices for other windows not asked for, well at least not by me! This challenge required successive visits over the next few days, which gradually produced the correct specification, configuration and quantities of doors and windows. The remarkable constant however, was that this well know company appeared not to have any way of referencing or identifying the doors and windows on their detailed printed schedule with those the customer had asked for. Not any great difficulty if only a handful of standard sized windows, but not so for eleven purpose-made units to two buildings. Hence, every time we received a revised schedule, no one knew where any of the windows went, so it was an arduous task to check if it was right! Even the surveyor who came to measure up, discarded the paperwork provided by his office and used a copy of our list. It had a note of which building, façade and room each window was for, together with a simple unique reference number, which ran from 1 to 11. Simples!

A deposit was finally paid and I now have delivery and installation dates and am so very grateful for Alistair’s invaluable help. It would have taken me weeks to achieve what he managed to do in a few days and then I would never be sure it was right!

Other tasks were ticked off with less difficulty, including postponing any tax liability for the barn for another year and getting the work for our new sewage connection into the water board’s pipeline (only just saw that pun). Then we found a gem of a company right in the village and its young boss, proved a most agreeable and useful man to know. He not only came round to measure up for our new staircase railings (quotation now accepted), but also repaired our pressurised water vessel we use to water the garden, cars and the concrete mixer, within 24 hours and told us where to hire a mini digger to dig our drains. That is quite a separate story, so come back soon to hear all about it. It was truly emotional!

I had no doubt that Paul and Alistair would get on well, as both have worked in construction all their lives, both hail from London and I’ve know these good chums for years, Paul in fact for over two decades. It was no surprise then that the two shared many old haunts, but I was genuinely surprised that both of them shared an interest for rowing and had competed against the same London clubs in their earlier years. I knew about Alistair’s rowing passion and was delighted to learn of Paul’s. Well, every day’s a school day!

Coming up next time: Rain, lots of it and no roof and then the tired and emotional part about the, erm . . .well, just wait and read it, haha!

A bientôt,

LC