One of the things I really like about working for the Stephen Joseph Theatre is that we are playing in repertoire, which means that sometimes, quite randomly, we get time off. Actors normally do 8 shows a week and work six days out of seven (panto season is the exception, over Christmas it's not unusual to do 20 shows and work eight days per week. I'm exaggerating less than you think) so a three day weekend is a rarity and a delight.

How delighted was I to discover I had one of these coming up on August 5th! Ladies and Gentlemen, I have taken a double dose of carbon footprint denial and booked my flight home early Friday morning.

I am going to catch up with the excellent work Paul has been doing in my absence. I'm not expecting that much will have moved on as I know that Paul took Nikki and family to the UK for their holidays (lucky them!) but I know that he has stripped back the crappy wood round the windows and re-pointed:

He's also stripped back the rotten flooring in the attic. The good pieces to be recycled as oak shelving, rotten pieces to be stored in my sentry box and burnt on my woodburner. When I get it. The floor joists appear to be in excellent condition but he's given them 3 coats of xylophene just in case any future nasties get any bright ideas about coming to stay.

My bathroom will hopefully be finished, I may have a new floor in the attic and best of all, I get to see the father of my baby and decide what colour to paint the nursery.

Baby??? Nursery???

Sorry, rather sprung that one on you from nowhere, didn't I? More later, I've got a show to open...

Bit Of A Catch Up

It seems like millennia since Marlene, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'd given up on the Little House and decided to auction my vital organs in order to buy a share in a Barratt Home in Barking.

Pas de tout mes amis, pas de tout. At the end of Marlene, I resisted the call of Glastonbury Festival... particularly difficult this year as JL was playing with practically everyone except Beyoncé and had offered me a free ticket, PLUS backstage access and a warm bed in the event of bad weather... and sold my soul to Michael O'Leary for safe passage from Leeds to Limoges.

I elected not to hire a car for the week, partly because I didn't want to spend my holiday running round the Limousin like a crazy fool, but mainly because it was fiendishly expensive. Get this:

CAR HIRE, 1 WEEK, SCARBOROUGH: £63

CAR HIRE, 1 WEEK, LIMOGES: £200

So a big THANK YOU to all my friends who variously visited me in St Germain, kidnapped me and fed me, did my laundry and delivered it back to me, chauffeured me to and from the airport and assorted supermarkets and were generally tolerant of my lack of transport and extreme work-related fatigue.

Now onto the fun bit: The Little House is of course less habitable than it was when I bought it. Natch. However, exciting things are happening.

The courtyard wall is not longer in danger of collapsing. The well/breadoven (the more informed among us are plumping for well) has been transformed from a soggy chipboard cupboard into a magnificent arched sentry-box. Unless I can find a handy beefeater hanging around Place de L'Eglise, I'm going to use it for storing wood.

The chimney is no longer giving a creditable impression of a banana on top if my roof, in fact it has temporarily disappeared.

And in order to facilitate the normalising of the chimney situation, an échafaudage has been erected and the road duly closed. I'm so proud. I made that happen. Me. I'm the reason my neighbours can't park their cars round the back. And there's nothing they can do about it. I got permission from the Mairie. In French and everything!