Shock to the system

Christian is back in town after a weekend in London lying on his bed. He tried to avoid any work yesterday afternoon after his arrival but I finally got him upstairs to remove a load of rubbish which was in the way in Denis' apartment.

The next job at the bar was removing all the stuff that had been dumped in the basement and Christian said he wasn't doing it because of his fear of spiders and bugs - don't know where that came from? The problem for Christian was overcome the irrational fear or lose the job - he chose to overcome the fear - a good decision - I'm proud of him because it must have taken a lot of willpower to force himself down into that basement.

He said it wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be - as always our imagination builds these things up beyond the reality.

Mind you he seems to have adopted French working practices very quickly - he started at 8.00am this morning and he knocked off at 4.00pm on the dot this afternoon. "I've done a full day", he said, before falling asleep on his bed for the next 4 hours - the same next 4 hours that saw Chris and I doing a 'full day' with an 8.30pm finish. I guess after years of sitting around on his arse, 8 hours manual labour must seem like a full day - but when you are being paid by the hour and are going travelling soon, well, personally I'd have put in a couple more hours for the money and to hell with computer games and myspace until two in the morning.

I don't mean to sound harsh on the boy - he's worked hard and he is being very good company and it's good to have him here. Oh you should see what we've got in store for him the rest of the week!

We are coming to crunch time on Denis' apartment - he arrives in a week's time and we haven't started painting yet! Bugger - there goes this weekend then - somehow, working around the four new guests who arrive on Friday, we need to lay the new floor, paint the whole apartment, build and install the bookshelves, clean and generally make good. I'm not feeling 100% confident of success but as ever we will give it our best shot - it was the same when we finished the apartment and the same when we finished the studio. Timing plans - load of rubbish.

The guests went up to the Cité today but generally had another relaxing day ahead of the family wedding they are attending at the weekend. They took the bikes out this afternoon and unfortunately suffered a puncture. Before I knew anything about it they had the wheel off and the inner tube out and were asking for a puncture repair kit, which I didn't have, so they have promised to take it up to the Peugeot cycle repair shop in the morning and get it fixed - aren't they lovely?

In fact all our guests continue to be lovely and continue to write fabulous reviews on tripadvisor and i-escape which drives even more people to our website - thank you all for your kindnesses. It has been a pleasure to meet each and every one of you - please don't stop coming!