Two weeks until the family arrive for a holiday!

The children are coming. For a holiday. Their holiday! They are the most precious people in the world. They must be offered comfort, beauty and clean, organised facilities. One of them is two. She will need all of these things, plus areas of fun... 

Gadzooks!*

So... we're busy. While Kevin ploughs on with the bathroom, I have moved from 'busy bee' mode and succumbed to 'mad fly' mode. I've written a list of jobs for me to tackle alone, in between being Kevin's boy, and I'm foolishly trying to do them all at once. Stripping the paint from the kitchen windows is taking longer than from the sitting room windows. That's because they are ensconced beneath twenty layers and two hundred years' worth of paint and grease. I've run out of paint stripper. I have amassed a wide range of scrapers, ranging from a multi-angled scraper to a teaspoon. I've broken two scrapers already. The paint stripper splashes (yes, I'm painting it on wildy!) have also stripped the new paint from the exterior sill, so I'll have to do that again.

 Just look at the state of the 'kitchen'!

The painting of the bricks, as you know, didn't go well. I've now daubed the beam with French Grey chalk paint in an effort to make the kitchen look habitable. It hasn't worked. The filthy metal fire mouth is still there, screaming silently at me. 

Kevin is, meanwhile, embracing laser technology once again. I love how the line dissects** his face, and he doesn't know about it. He's drawing on the wall again; it's tile patterns this time. Tessellation. I knew that would come in handy one day!

Kevin said that applying bitumen to the floor area immediately around the shower tray would protect the wood from damp/rot. It seems to be a sensible idea, but bitumen is unable to stay in one place. I have found smears of it in the washing-up bowl in the caravan, under my nails, on the bread board, on the toothbrush pot and on Polly's nose.

Don't get excited. The next photo is NOT our house. It's a house beside the Mairie in Seilhac. I thought you'd like to see the carefully trimmed line of wisteria. And I enjoyed the blue of the shutters alongside the violety blossoms. The blue shutter paint I've bought is not like this blue.

* This word is hardly ever used in the twenty-first century. I read the Beano. (That's read pronounced 'red', not 'reed'.)

** You think I meant to say 'bisects' don't you? Maybe I should have... Although, I was thinking more of the laser cutting a smooth line through his face. Also, 'to bisect' should result in two equal parts.