I forgot to mention that we made a trip to Brantôme for a week mid-March, a town known as “le Venice du Périgord”. If you want to see how that looks, here’s some photos for you.

The last few weeks have been fairly busy ones. The local Mairie asked me to work on typsetting the village magazine, called “Le Blongios Nain”, it is surprisingly printed off in colour. Looking after “little monster” and working on that wasn’t very easy, particularly because I had to have a few meetings with the Maire and the two Maire Adjoints. Thumpah ended up taking two of her RTT days off so I could work and try and get the job out on time. As it turned out, I thought I’d be able to work a weekend to get to the deadline – but I was out of luck there.

Add to that lots of last minute changes, my PC going down (I had to borrow one from my BIL) later found to be due to viruses, and a problem getting the magazine printed off due to techincal problems; the magazine was finally distributed 2 days late.

Yesteday I was asked to attend a meeting at the Mairie for the “Commission de Communcation”. The subject on the adgenda was the new village website, although during the 2 hour discussion I had very little to contribute. Not being aware of how things operate in the “Conseil du Village” didn’t help a whole lot. But at least I did put forward a couple of observations at the end of the meeting. To be honest with you, I found the whole thing embarrassing.

We’ve at least had some nice weather in fits and starts – much like this weekend. Yesterday was really nice, unfortunately I was tied up with other things so wasn’t really able to take advantage. Then, earlier today, just as I prepared things to continue with lopping down our laurel hedge with an electric chain saw, it started raining. Here I am sitting in my old work clothes and unable to do any work outside. OK, I’m moaning… but the weekend really is the only time I can get jobs like this done, or not as the case may be…

As this is France, the month of May is jammed packed with long weekends. Thumpah is taking a week off too, so we’ll have some time to finally start decorating our bedroom. We bought everything we need to do it a few months back… wallpaper, lights, etc. We just need to buy some insulation material for one wall and a few bits of furniture.

Talking of expenditure… yesterday we bought Rémy his second new pair of boots. You won’t believe how expensive baby shoes are, and as we have to buy new ones every 3 months or so, I can see that this will break the bank alone!