Now that much of the work had been done at la Maison in preparation for the Arts Expo, and with the painters needing access to the 1st floor bedrooms to finish up some trim painting, Rita and I moved down to the barge and let Jackie and Stuart move up to the top floor. When we got to the barge, we realised that we had a bit of work to do, cleaning the winter debris off the outside, and the cobwebs off the inside. I also needed to do some repairs to the bimini which had been flipped over onto the wheelhouse roof during a winter storm.

So, after a quick sweep of the leaves and debris off the deck, Rita got to work inside while I started on the bimimi. It was soon obvious that the bimini repairs were slightly more than I could manage at the moment, since most of the pop rivets holding the bimini frame to the supports were missing or stripped, and I didn’t have a pop riveter (I thought I did, but then remembered that was at the house in Australia!). So I settled for a temporary repair using tape and zip ties, until I realised that I also didn’t have enough zip ties. But I was fortunate when someone off Tesserae (another Piper Barge in port) came down for a chat, and offered us a loan of some zip ties. It was during that chat that we had another indication of the impact of the Brexit decision. She was saying that a friend was visiting her daughter (who has a 2-month old baby) over the weekend and went into a room to see the mother holding the baby and sobbing. She offered sympathy, explaining that she knew how frustrating it can be with a crying first child, compounded by a lack of sleep. The mother then explained that she wasn’t sobbing because of the baby; she was sobbing for the baby and the effect that the Brexit decision would have on their future life.

In the evening, after a long day’s work on the barge, we headed over to the Uvarium Cafe for a drink. As we sat there enjoying the view, we were greeted by Dede Calvert (our piano tuner) and his wife Piou, whose unique house we had visited for dinner last year. They had come to listen to a Salsa Concert that was happening at the Cafe that night. Unfortunately, it was a sold-out ticketed affair, and so we couldn’t stay longer. As we eventually rose from our table to leave, an elderly man and his wife approached, and we offered them our table. We immediately fell into conversation, and found out that they were an English couple who lived permanently in the village of Castelsagrat, about 30 minutes north-west of Moissac. They too also talked about Brexit, and wanted to make it quite clear that while they were “old”, they had definitely voted to Remain in the EU. After 10 minutes, we had exchanged email addresses and were invited to dinner at their house. Such is the ease of making acquaintances over here!

We returned to the barge and had our first dinner for the year on the back deck, listening to the salsa music through a convenient gap in the houses in between the canal and the Uvarium. Later, Jackie and Stuart wandered by on their perambulations around town and joined us for a drink. We were later joined by Jim, our new port capitain, as he did his nightly stroll around the port to make sure all was in order.