Rita was still coughing today and spent most of the day curled up in bed. But having planted all the flowers that they bought at the market on the weekend, the girls decided that they needed more, so Jackie drove over to the Duffault Nursery on the Castersarassin road (run by the brother of Veronica, our music teacher friend) to buy some more.

In the meantime, I installed the two wall lights in the loft, that are the same design as the one I installed last week. When we bought the house, the previous owners left many pieces of furniture, because none of the remaining members of the family wanted them. Many of them are high quality, such as a walnut-veneer, marble-top chest of drawers. However, while it had locks on all drawers, it had no handles - I guess you used the large keys in the locks as substitute handles. However, since we now have none of the keys (that we can identify), it therefore had effectively no handles as well. But a quick trip to Weldoms found some old-fashion Victorian handles which I fitted today and which look like they have been on these drawers forever.

Rita and Jackie’s Postal Vote papers arrived in the mail today, so in the late afternoon we all sat down and completed our voting, then had one of us witness the voting of the other and sign the forms accordingly. Jackie then went to post them, but the Post Office was closed. So she went to the Tabac, bought some stamps to Australia, then slipped them into the postbox outside the Post Office. We have now all done our democratic duty and hope that we have picked some winners.

In the evening, Jackie went across to Veronica’s house for a music and English lesson evening with about 10 others. Jackie taught the English lesson first, then they had a pot-luck dinner, then they all sat around singing some French songs, plus an Australian one (Home among the Gum Trees) that Jackie took along. Apparently, a very successful win-win evening.