Back to the front fence today, to try and break the back of this job. As always, the preparation work is more onerous than the actual painting itself, and you never seem to be making any real difference when you are doing the preparations. But just for the record, I include a photo of the front fence and gates as they are now, and one day when the painting and rendering of the wall below is finished, I will be able to see what has been achieved.

Because the Arts Expo starts at the end of next week, and because Weldoms had run out of the timber I needed to make the hanging frames, Rita and I took a trip to Gedimat (the building supplies store that Nico used a lot for the house renovations) to get some more timber. However, they were also out of stock, but managed to place an order for us which will arrive next Monday. Lucky we went today, since Tuesday is the last day of their fortnightly ordering cycle; if we’d waited till tomorrow, there would have been another two week delay!

With little to do after 1700h, when the other tradies finished work and I had to stop hammering on the fence railings, I spent some time before dinner updating this website (it has to be done sometime!). Rita and I then went for a walk along the river down to the port and then up along the canal to the first lock, then back home. Always a nice walk, especially at sunset (but i forgot to take my phone, hence no sunset photos). Speaking of which, it’s been rather quiet since Kaz and Iain (our former port capitains) went to live in Dominica; I especially miss my nightly competitions with Kaz to see who could take the best sunset picture and then get it posted on Facebook first!

During the day, my Postal Vote papers arrived in the mail. I must admit I was very surprised to see them so soon. I only applied for them online last Thursday, and they are in France within 5 days (including a weekend). I take back all I was thinking about the efficiency of the Australian Electoral Commission and Australia Post. Rita and Jackie are yet to receive theirs, but we hope they arrive this week before the election on Saturday

PS: I guess I should apologise to all those who are reading this website looking for something about barging. We have been here for three weeks, and yet to take the barge out of port, or even sleep on the barge at night. There has simply been too much to do around the house preparing for the Barge Arts Expo, compounded by the week-long Festival des Voix. But it does highlight a different perspective on barging compared to others we know. We are interested in barging not from the perspective of the barge itself (and all the mechanical details) nor from the perspective of how many locks we can pass through in a week. We are interested in barging because it offers a chance to live a different lifestyle in France, including mixing with local French people. Having the house over here just widens the scope of who we interact with, but this inevitably takes time away from using the barge for barging. However, rest assured that this weekend we will be moving onto the barge, in preparation for the Barge Festival next week, and then we will do some barging, especially after we get back from Switzerland after having celebrated the 90th birthday of Rita’s mum.