We awoke on Friday to an unexpected realisation - it was a much noisier start to the day at Rue Gambetta than at either the boat or at Taggerty. In hindsight, this should not have been surprising, even though Rue Gambetta is still closed to traffic while the water mains are being rejuvenated. But we had forgotten all about the normal urban noises that greet each day. We will get used to it again.

There were a few drops of rain in the morning (about 7 in total) but nothing to get excited about. The heatwave had not broken, so we settled down to more websiting and pan paper writing.

As I was reading The Age on the iPad, I saw that Phil Walsh (the head coach of the Adelaide Crows AFL team) had been murdered overnight by his son. This came as a shock, even though I did not know him personally. But you just never expect such tragedies to happen to such public figures. It just goes to show that domestic violence can happen to anyone, and will hopefully draw more attention to the ongoing toll of domestic violence against (predominantly) women.

Later in the morning, I watched the AFL game between the Hawks and the Collingwood Magpies. After a very close game where the lead changed several times and Collingwood were ahead with 10 minutes to play, the Hawks kicked the last few goals to run out winners, 101-91

In a very unusual occurrence, the two coaches kept their players on the field after the match and formed a circle with alternating team members in honour of Phil Walsh. It’s times like these that you realise that AFL is just a game, and that other things in life (and death) are more significant.

Today we received a letter from the Mairie about the Terrasse and other aspects of the construction at La Maison. This was a follow-up to a previous letter in which they raised concerns about our not having obtained a Building Permit for construction of the Terrasse. My rough Google translation of their letter seemed to indicate that they had now approved the Terrasse construction, subject to a number of conditions, the major one of which was that the new-style tiles used on the verandah had to be replaced with old-style tiles, as used on the Terrasse. Since this was the only significant condition, we were very happy with the outcome (especially after their earlier suggestion that we might have to pull down the entire Terrasse!).