We've finally been IN!

It's so hard to believe... BUT...we have actually been in the pool!  At long last! 

The terracing isn't finished (and won't be for about another fortnight as John has had to go off somewhere else for the next week!), there is still a mountain of earth to shift (with no idea of WHEN that might happen) and a whole area of the garden still resembles a building site.

BUT..we do have a usable and heated swimming pool!  (An engineer came on Thursday to see why the heat pump wasn't working.  He spent two hours here but found and rectified the problem.  Some wiring had been installed wrongly by the manufacturer!)

So, leaving aside some totally unprintable, awful photos, here are a couple of half way decent ones of Danny and I enjoying some swimming...

 

As you can probably see, all of the margelles are now fixed round the pool and about half of the flagstones are down. 

 

It's been a very hot and sunny week but on a slightly cooler day this week, I spent some time tidying up the flower beds in the front garden.  As it is now so much clearer of building materials, the whole front is beginning to look better.  I've returned the patio table and my mum's old garden bench to their original positions and I think it's an improvement....

 

The stack of pallets you see in this last picture is going to be used when Danny makes a compost bin for us!  Just another of his projects 'on the list'!

I must also tell you about our visit to our next door neighbours' house yesterday.  The English couple who owned our house before us were coming to see their old neighbours on their way back to the UK from a holiday in the Dordogne and the neighbours had asked if we'd like to join them "for coffee and cake".  We duly turned up, fashionably late, a little after 4pm to be served red wine, followed fairly swiftly by a glass of champagne, the latter served with healthy portions of delicious cake!  A couple of hours drifted by (with more wine and liqueurs!) till the other couple said they needed to check into the hotel they were staying in that night and we needed to go back home to feed the animals.  Our neighbours then asked us all if we'd like to come back in an hour or so.  So after a while, we were all regrouped...all of this was round a huge table in the garden.  There were more drinks and around 10pm we thought we'd make a move home only to be stopped in our tracks when out came dinner plates, knives and forks!  And there followed nothing less than a full blown four-course meal!  I have read about and heard about this sort of thing happening; when you're invited for apéritifs only to end up eating a huge meal and staying till the wee hours!  But this was a first for us!

Unfortunately it hasn't been all good this week; Danny had a phone call this week to say that another of his aunts had died (the third in the time we've been here).  So he is going back to England for a few days so that he can go to the funeral.  We each hate it when the other one is away but I will have plenty of little jobs to keep me occupied! 

But I'll leave you with another couple of animal photos.  The first is of our two cats, sitting just a step apart.  The sight amused me because they don't like each other yet were prepared to be this close!

And then good old Finn....here he is, showing how to sit "poolside"....

 

 

Till the next time, à bientôt!