What a lovely start to the day. A bit lazy but rapidly up at
8.15am when the builder’s van arrived downstairs. He was only actually here for
about an hour while he put another layer of plaster on a few small areas. We
are not overly impressed with some of his work. The framing of a new small
window is skewed and when we pointed it out to him he said he would be back
tomorrow to sort it out. We are not sure how he can do it since he glued the
glass into it this morning. We are hoping his boss, our friend Monsieur Freitas, will call in and we can have a wee word with him.
We are pretty tired today. I have just got the expense
spreadsheet up-to-date, that is to say I have entered everything into it but we
are too scared to add it all up. John has been doing a few bits and pieces,
mainly trying to sort out a trip on the 1€
train from Perpignan up the Tet Valley. We might do it with my brother Scott
and his wife when they arrive on Friday for a week.
It is now after lunch and we were just contemplating a
siesta when the electrician turned up. He is now merrily working away. John is
putting some plastering on some areas we are not totally happy with. With the
final plastering finished, we will be able to do the sanding and THE LAST big
clean-up. We are greatly looking forward
to painting the bedroom and entrance area. Then we can happily finish putting
up our wardrobes, build our bedside cabinets and doing lots of fun finishing
off stuff. We might not get much, or any, painting done before Scott arrives on
Friday, but we will at least be able to put the sealer coat on some of the walls.
Our Aussie friends have invited us to dinner at their place
tonight. It’s a 3 minute walk away. It will be very pleasant. They have also
had lots of people to stay with them, with their son arriving soon. They head
back to Oz in mid-July and then are back again for three months in November. We
have loved having various family members stay with us. Hopefully everyone will
come back again sometime. We were sad that Alastair could only spend a few days
with us but there is a possibility he could be back for a week at the end of
August.
He finishes his internship around 14th August and is very
keen to stay in Munich for a while because he loves it at that time of year and
there is so much going on. However, he doesn’t fly out to San Francisco, to
take up his internship with IDEO, until 4 September, and could spend some time
in Céret before flying out from Barcelona. He should be able to confirm all
this next week. If he can come here in late August, we will change our plans
and go up to northern Germany for our book research sooner rather than later.
Alastair is so full of ideas, about design and just about everything else, that
we would love to have more chance to sit down and just chat with him. He is
going to be in San Francisco at least until March next year, and could be
anywhere in the world with another internship from then until next August when
he goes back to Sweden to complete his Masters. His first preference, however,
is an internship in Barcelona. He also wants to be able to speak fluent
Spanish.
Our planned afternoon of rest never came to fruition. We
spent the afternoon doing a bunch of things including cleaning (no surprise
there), assembling the two bedside cabinets we bought at IKEA yesterday,
putting up our new towel rails, overhauling the random junk in the bookcase
etc. We now have the bed and bedside cabinets set up in what finally looks like a
REAL bedroom J.
We had a lovely long meal and evening with Ross and Liz. They
are arranging for a local woman/friend to look after people who will rent their
apartment when they aren’t there, e.g. change the bedding, clean, possibly also
collect people from Perpignan on arrival. They have three other couples
interested and we can come on board as well if we like. It sounds a good plan
to us.
