We learned this morning of a few extra exhibits for the Arts Expo, so I started making a few more hanging frames, including one at the foot of the stairwell and a short one to go on a cabinet in the dining room (we’re running out of clear wall space!). As I worked, the first of the exhibits arrived from a couple who were going barging for a few days before coming back for the Festival. My only concern about exhibits are three I ordered as canvas prints from Vistaprint; two of Kaz Noble’s photos and one of mine. Kaz’s are due to arrive today, and mine tomorrow, so here’s hoping.

During the day while working out wall space allocations for the various exhibits, I got an email from Dr. Raphael in response to my email to him outlining the new rental price and conditions for the rental of la Maison. In the sidebar notice, I saw only the start of his email which stated "Hi Tony, Thanks a lot for your answer, but we have decided to…”. I was therefore braced for the worst when I opened his full email to see that he continued “...accept your conditions of the lease”!!  So, it looks like our plans for la Maison have changed, at least for the next 2 years. However, he is happy for us to retain access to the top floor, so we may yet get to spend some time in the house over the next couple of years. It will be interesting to see how they furnish and use the house over these years; we may well learn something from them. They head off to South America later this week for a few weeks, so we will meet with them in early August when we are all back in town to sort out the contract details.

In the evening we went to dinner with Jackie and Stuart at Florentino’s, right next to the Abbey. A wonderful meal in perfectly balmy weather. We then retired to the barge on the river for a couple of nightcap drinks on the rear deck.