Thank Goodness For Friends

It's my last day. I have spent the day in a pretty frock tying up loose ends and toasting myself and my friends with champagne being very very glad I'm not in London with all those ghastly people in my back yard.

THINGS I HAVE ACHIEVED SINCE MY LAST POST:

3 coats of xylophene on my poor timbers.

2 bolts on the back door to the courtyard.

Wall paper stripped off in stairwell and bedroom.

Mouldy black blooms gone gone gone.

Walls cleaned with lessive du pin & treated with anti-fungal spray

Credit where credit is due, the above wouldn't have been possible without the help of Andy D. He turns up with a car-load of tools wearing the blue overalls favoured by all serious bricolageurs.

Note to self: Get some. Blue overalls that is. Tools can be borrowed.

He does all the complicated stuff like fixing the bolts, opening and pouring the MASSIVE can of xylophene, and puts my efforts with paint-stripper and a scraper to shame with some angle-grinder/sander behaviour that looks and smells jolly dangerous but cleans up the beams a treat.
I am not faint hearted. I AM going to learn to do all this stuff myself and I am perfectly capable of doing so, but one needs

a) the right equipment
b) more time
c) blue overalls

Paul starts on Monday. I have permission on paper from the Mairie for him to erect un échafaudage (scaffold tower) in the street outside my house. Hurrah for my first successful foray into French bureaucracy!

I just hope he remembers to wear his blue overalls.