This has been such a fruitful year at Les Pierres so far, wherein we managed to tackle many of the horrendous issues that drove us near insanity last winter, all somehow connected to either leakage or blockage, but together rendering our beloved cottage on the verge of unlivable.
I’m more than ever eager to defend our pace when it comes to construction work by pointing out it was my happily acquired French attitude of ‘rien ne presse’ that got me determined to discover our failing septic tank without completely ruining our paradisiacal garden, our most valuable asset anyway, but that’s a lot easier to proclaim now that the wretched thing is finally located, emptied and serving its true purpose again, pending its replacement.
The disturbing drops that poor Ivory all too often had to endure waiting for his dreams to take over, turned out to be caused by a crumbling chimney, too high up to tackle myself so I passed on this nightmarish job to our contractor friend Ian, who not only repaired the outside skillfully but also installed a flue liner and completely rebuild the stone mantelpiece inside, as the old one apparently was a fire hazard that fortunately never materialized.
Trying to follow in the heap of activity Ian brought, I myself created as much bespoke storage space possible everywhere for the books we both cannot ever part with, even though they still live in somebody else’s barn.
We also got rid of the two rickety vehicles we over the years invented these loving hypocorisms for, Pierre et Pierrette, the terms of endearment we painstakingly practiced to heedfully hide their fatally flawed and unreliable state and for the first time lavishly invested in modern albeit less charming wheels, arguing that our thaumaturgic surroundings would also benefit from this upgraded and considerably more environmentally friendly colossus.
Gormandizing the most literal fruits of our labour yesterday, the unusual superabundance of raspberries showed me the way to the internal inducement that got begettered by my rage to restore and rebuild: cleaning house is my strayed way of moving back into my head to properly behold our beautiful backdrop.
Winter’s coming.
