Renovations to the French house

1^st December 2014            Renovations to the French house continue

The downstairs bathroom walls are made of plasterboard over a lightweight metal frame, zinc probably. In England builders use wood for the stud frame supporting plasterboard, and our English builders say that although wood is stronger, there is nothing wrong with the French method and it is faster to construct. It seemed to me that it was quite strong enough as, it was hard for them to get the old framework out without unscrewing much of it. The “I” cross section is robust enough, and using electric screwdrivers, must be quite easy to construct. Anyhow, the builders are making the new bathroom walls with a timber frame, and I am not arguing the toss.

It proved impossible to get the shower tray out intact, so a new one will go in, which does not surprise me. It did surprise me that we have managed to salvage all of the pencil tiles, which form an edge to the tiling, but we may have to get a suitable match, since I think we shall break some getting the tile cement off.

The rain, which persisted over the weekend and overnight, has stopped now and a little sunshine breaks through the cloud. There are fewer people about, but we get townsfolk down the road all through the morning buying bread. We think the baker, Jean-Marc continues to bake in batches through the day, as his stock never runs out. He does a variety; and we have tried his baguettes of course, and the heavier cereal bread, as well as the larger ¾ or “trois-quartre pain”, and his croissants are simply delicious. They have a higher butter content than the English types we have tried back home in Reading, evident from the greasy smear on the base of the paper bag.

The boulangerie also stocks a selection of sweet baked products, which we can see tempting us from our kitchen window. Aside from the usual tartes de pomme, there are things with whipped cream toppings, and other sugar glazes, which Jean-Marc somehow has the energy to make after all the assorted breads.

The Céret leaf sweeper made heavy weather of clearing leaves today. The rain had stuck them firmly to the road surface, and the ones that did come off left a pleasing leaf print on the tarmac, a kind of palimpsest, an echo of the copper colour and outline, at random on the road.

Carol cleared the garage over the weekend while I lay ill in bed with a fever and headache. I think it was the flu, which has an evocative French translation (la grippé). I am better after almost three days in bed, although feeling weak. Most of the boxes of paintings, light and gallery fittings are now in the studio bedroom at the back, along with assorted beach umbrellas, and beach chairs.

We will have to go to the large shops in Perpignan for tiles, extra light fittings, and any other bits needed as the work progresses. I don’t think there is any need to go today fortunately, as I am not in the mood to go out and about.

It will be the same for the builders. There is a Mr Bricollage, or builder’s merchants in Céret, but it is rather small, and probably does not stock all they need. Perpignan is a half hour’s drive, and has everything in outlets near Auchan, as big as the huge B&Q in Reading.

When trucks reverse down our road to deliver supplies, to the bakery or to builders, they come very close to the buildings on our side. From where I sit at the kitchen table, the roof of the truck looks like a flat roofed extension to the building as it is so close. There is a large wheeled JCB type vehicle with an excavator on hydraulics at work at the end of the road today – some heavy lifting going on.

There are two other houses in our road having major renovations done; the house at the end of the cul de sac seems to have been completely re-built and has a nice little garden. It would have been out of our price range, but I do envy them the garden enclosure, which gets the sun. Next door to us approaching the market square a house has been undergoing renovations for the past year, and is approaching completion.

Much of the old town houses are in need of renovation; a few lie derelict, and others have been done up. Where we have been inside other town-houses to take a look, some are very modern. Our friends Tania and Maurice have a large building, and live on the top floor, doing up each of the three floors below as apartments and a ground floor workshop for Maurice. Tania works at the estate agency, where we met. They installed a lift into their building to get to the four floors, and have a large garden out the back. Maurice makes things from metal, doing welding and spray-painting at his workshop.

Across the access to the alley way at the back, there is another row of town houses, and Phil, an English electrician, lives there with his wife, Lou. He has been renovating his ground floor, having put in a shower and toilet, and a mezzanine bedroom. The rest of his ground floor will be a workspace and art show-room. Lou works as a telephone sales and marketing agent for English firms and has found a way to use an English telephone number somehow, but she does some art as a sideshow for the summer tourist market. Catalan donkeys in watercolour.

The little alley takes a large volume of water down the gulleys at each side, and we hear the rush of water at night while in bed.  The builders tell us that the weekend rain filled the Tech river so that it overflowed its banks at Arles-sur-Tech.  There were cars overturned in the flash floods at Argelès, the resort on the coast, and very high winds all along the coast. We shall get used to the singular peculiarities of a weather system between mountains and the sea. Céret itself is tucked neatly into the cleft between the Albères, the Pyrenées, and the coastal plain.

In the evening we walk to the lab for my urine results; an infection after all – white blood cells and a germ which will respond to the augmentin I’ve been given. I shall keep taking the medicine. The little lab in Céret has a single pathologist and is run from a converted house, reminding me of the town where my parents lived in Gwelo, when small labs like these were common.