Balance

I am back in London for a couple of days work. The intensity of the renovation work over the last five days has left me little time to address my London job, which isn't good because I need to balance my time between the two. The imminence of BD-1 meant working all hours on the apartment and feeling too tired for anything else - amply demonstrated by me falling fast asleep as soon as the plane home took off, and I never sleep on planes! So for the next two days I have to forget all about the renovation and the weekend visitors to come.

I said it was going to be a paintathon and it was. We painted from dawn til dusk, but even so we have only had time for one coat of paint in most places and two are needed. It will get done but not in time for this weekend.

Something else that won't get done in time for this weekend is the delivery of two beds that were ordered in late May that we still don't have a delivery date for. So much for the two to three weeks quoted on the website, which turns out to mean twenty working days, but only after the payment has been authorised which took three weeks to begin with after it took them two minutes to take the money off my credit card. No matter how many emails or telephone calls - no matter how much the service centre agrees that it has taken too long - they will arrive when they arrive. It is the French way.

We have all been so focussed on getting the apartment finished that the start of the festival and the arrival of the first figs of the summer virtually passed us by. The festival started on Saturday and will run throughout July with better known acts up in the Cite and free music in the squares of the bastide. Basically, tiredness, cool weather and some uninspiring folk and blues put us off for now - hopefully it will get better. As for the figs, well maybe they will get better as well because so far they have just been ok rather than spectacular - another consequence of the weather maybe.

Listen to me, moaning about the quality of the fresh figs. How my life has changed over the last two years - for the better, mostly I think - now I just have to get the balance right.