A SNAKE, SOME PAINT, IT IS ALL RATHER IFFY!

At our house, we experienced all manner of wildlife at some point.  Thankfully, unlike last year we were not infested with mice again.  We had one lone mouse, and I soon took care of him.  SNAP!

I was delighted to find that this year we had rabbits. This is the first time I have seen rabbits in our garden, though I did once see a large hare.  Every morning, I would look out the window, to see if they were in the garden.  Now I may come to regret liking the bunnies, but they are so cute looking, and appear more scared of me than I am of them (which really takes some doing!).

The electrician found a small dead bat behind one of the exterior lights.  Hum, I didn't know we had bats around.  Owls yes, but bats?

Once again, we had a snake visitor, only this time we saw him, and it wasn't just the empty skin!  The builders told us where they had seen it, and sure enough, THE EVENING BEFORE HE RETURNED TO THAILAND, LEAVING ME ALL ALONE, Alan spotted the snake.  You can just see him (I obviously took this with a long lens!) hiding in the undergrowth (er the snake, not Alan).  I also spotted him on another occasion.  Alan looked him up when he got back to Thailand, and said it was a non poisonous variety.  Of course Alan knows all about these things!

We had our kitchen renovated this year.   The old kitchen, well I would say it was past its sell by date, but I don't think it was ever deemed worthy of having one!  This old cupboard, which came with the house and was in the kitchen, was used to store crockery, pans etc.  At the end of the renting season last year, one of the doors was hanging from its hinges.  I didn't want to entirely dispense with the cupboard however, as I felt it could still be useful whilst renting the house.

Out in the enclosed terrace, I removed the doors and shelves, then burned and sanded the cupboard, removing the old varnish.  

Next I had paint specially mixed to match the green of the kitchen door.  Paint buying is a nightmare in France.  It is very expensive (Brits often resort to going back to the UK, buying it and taking it back to France in their cars) and the range is very limited.  It actually took longer to find paint, than it did to work on the cupboard.

This is the finished result.  As I don't particularly care for the look of gloss paint, I used a water based paint, which I watered down even further.  This gives a very chalky look and feel to the cupboard, which I really like.  I left the doors off, mainly because fixing the door was beyond my limited carpentry skills.  Anyway, I think it looks better without them.

I managed to get the cupboard finished a few days before I left France, but wasn't really able to see (or use) the kitchen to its full extent, as the builders were still at the house when I left.

I have to praise our builders.  Mark and Gavin, a couple of Brits, who have settled  in France, had to have been the funniest builders ever.  I hate having workmen in the house with me, but we were soon laughing and joking around like old friends.  I think the funniest thing was listening to them as they tried to not swear at each other in front of me!  A great couple of guys, and I loved their work.

I was lucky to have them around, especially as they hefted my vastly overweight suitcase into the car for me, the afternoon prior to my leaving.  Then, just as I went to put on the dishwasher, I realised that it was broken - as in beyond repair.  These two guys stepped right in to help me.  I shot off to buy a new dishwasher from the supermarket and left it there for them to pick up.  They arrived at the house the following morning, just before I was due to leave for the airport.  They collected the receipt and went to collect and then plumb in the dishwasher for me. Really, no quibbling about having to be somewhere else, or making things awkward for me.  I cannot praise them enough.  Oh yes, and I was sitting in the traffic en-route to the airport, when they passed me in their truck, with my new dishwasher sitting in the back!

I visited a small flea market here

To occupy myself when Alan had left, I did the rounds of the flea markets at the weekend.  This was a good opportunity to discover places that I had never visited, or that I would have been unlikely to have detoured to. 

Most of the time, the markets were full of junk, of the children's variety.  I therefore spent scant time looking at the goods and wandered around the villages instead.

One flea market turned out to be huge, and instead of the baby clothes, toys, old bric-a-brac and the general detriatus from people's homes, there were quite a few stalls selling antiques.  I walked past one stall and I just couldn't believe what I saw.  OMG, I had wanted one ever since I first spotted one in an antiques shop near our house, but it was far too expensive.

To those of you who don't know what this is, it is a wine bottle drying rack.  You wash the bottle and upend it onto the spike.  What a fantastic thing for the garden, or maybe decorated for Christmas if I don't have a tree.  Oh the uses are endless (well, that was what I told Alan anyway).  

I actually walked past it as I thought there was no point in asking how much it cost,  as I know how much they sell for.  It was still there when I walked back past the stall, so I asked and they told.  My eyes bulged and I grabbed for my money after a small bit of delicate negotiation.  His son carried it to the car for me and I carried my prize all the way home,  It is now proudly sitting in the store room (hey, I'm not leaving it outside for the wreckers we call renters!).

Now the vendor told me that it was called an 'if', but I forget why.  Talk about useless!  I think it is also called an inverse (with an accent over the e, but I can't find the key for that on the computer!).

At the end of the day, who cares what it is called.  We are only interested in emptying the wine bottles to put on it!