Hectic

To say that the last ten days have been hectic would be an understatement. Work has reached a critical, time intensive and very pressured stage in both London and France.

In London, we are on the cusp of selling the new product but have frustratingly come to a halt because of lack of funds - so we are looking for a further round of investment to get us over the last hurdle and into the market. It means a temporary hiatus in being paid - as always, just before Christmas, just when you are stretched to the limit already, just when you can least afford it.

In France, we are on to the final push. I vowed that all would be finished before Christmas but that vow is going to be put to the test.

As I type, Chris is still laying tiles in the new studio kitchen at 11.30pm. We have a very definite and very intense schedule of work to complete between now and Tuesday evening when Chris leaves for the US, to shoot animals and ride snowmobiles and frame a couple of houses. As he is not back until five days before Christmas, all the major work needs to be done now - hence the late nights.

As ever, nothing is plain sailing.

We bought most of the mdf needed for the new kitchen shelves two weeks ago, but since then they have been out of stock (this months national shortage a la France). I found somewhere else that supplies it but they are wholesale and you have to buy the whole sheet rather than just the bits you need - and I don't need a whole sheet. So we have two shelves made and the batons for the third in place.

Meanwhile the extra tiles that I ordered arrived from Italy in two weeks which was something of a miracle and about four weeks earlier than we expected. We shouldn't have got carried away though by this fabulous news because, although they are in the same packaging and carry the same identifying reference numbers, they aren't quite exactly the same colour or thickness and there are only four to a box not six, which means we are still going to be a bit tight and have nothing left over and let's hope nobody else notices eh?

Half way through today we ran out of grout for the mosaic tiles on the kitchen wall - just a poxy square foot left to do. Yesterday I had spent a bit of time mixing grouts to get the right colour from the fairly basic selection available here, which of course meant we had to make up a new batch from some new grout and hope that we got the mix correct or else we'd be able to see the join - not good.

It would be so damn easy if it all went to plan - but where is the fun in that?

No doubt there will be more minor traumas tomorrow.

Other news - the starlings have gone. Whether they were scared off or whether they just emigrated anyway, nobody knows - but gone they have and the Christmas lights have gone up in the street outside and all the other streets in town, which is quite exciting really.