Crazy

Everything is developing very rapidly on both fronts of my mildly complicated lifestyle. On the UK work front, the first trial models are being manufactured and in France we are writing copy to promote the apartments on our own website and others that want to list us.

My two full days in London were spent preparing new forecasts and business plans for presentations to the Board and, very soon, the bank. Meanwhile, the product is being manufactured, not without some issues relating to material supply and use, but at least we are getting close to having something to sell.

The unsatisfactory bit of my London visit was only seeing Debrah briefly on Tuesday and then for a few hours on Thursday evening. I won't see her again now for 10 days after returning to France yesterday. When we started this we brushed off these times apart but we are now finding them increasingly difficult - we must be in love or something.

One the greatest feelings on returning to the apartment in France, apart from the sense of relief when the car starts at the airport, is opening up the shutters and letting the beautifully clear Languedoc light flood into and around each room in turn, giving a new life to the previously shut away dark and, even after only four days, dusty space, giving warmth to the rich parquet flooring and height and depth to the always impressive ceiling and door height. As I open each set of shutters and turn to look at the newly lit space behind me I have to pinch myself that it is mine - I love this place and don't think I could ever get tired of arriving here.

All of which spurs me on anew to sorting out the remaining unfinished work. It is a bit frustrating that 'the genius' has had to go back to South Africa. Not from a sporting point of view, of course, because he would now be revelling in last night's rugby, but purely from the sense that I want to get this renovation finished finally and as soon as possible.

Lo and behold, I met a plasterer today. Oh, we so could have done with a really good plasterer about three months ago - it would have saved a mass of heartache whilst we were finishing off in the end apartment - but we could still use someone to do the same job in the studio and office spaces. There was a time in the past when I used to go to a bar to actually watch whichever sporting event that attracted me there in the first place - these days I spend half the time talking to new people that I meet and pumping them for information about what they do with a view to seeing if we have anything in common and can help each other out. I know, it's called networking and I should have been doing it for years in my old life in advertising, but, you know what, it always felt like a drag talking to boring dull people then, whilst now, because it will affect my own business, it feels totally natural and a real pleasure.

Anyway, I met these three Scots over here for a week with their wives to have a holiday and watch some rugby because it was cheaper to travel round the Languedoc for a week including airfares and tickets to a game in Toulouse than to get tickets for a match in Edinburgh - mad. I met the Scots after bumping into Lesa (only an Aussie would have an 'e' instead of an 'i') who introduced me to some Kiwis working at Chateau Pennautier, a local Cabardes vineyard, who dragged me (honestly) to a different bar where I met another Aussie and a Welshman, both ex-rugby players, who persuaded all of us, including Lesa's husband who served 15 years in the French army and is now in the CRS and scarily kept talking about shooting people, to go to the Irish bar to watch the Wales v Australia match.

The Welshman said to the Scottish boys "Scottish are you?" - which seeing as they were all wearing Scotland rugby shirts was pretty bloody obvious. "Ay, are you Welsh?", they replied to the Welshman in a Wales rugby shirt. I thought it was going to a long afternoon.

Then one of the Scots boys says, "my wife is Welsh, from Maesteg".
"I used to captain Maesteg" says the Welshman "What's her name?

The upshot of it all was that her name was Davies - what a shock - and they were related. Rhys, the Welshman, turned to me and said "I walk into an Irish bar in France with an Englishman, an Australian and a New Zealander and I meet a Scotsman who's married to my wife's niece - it's crazy this place"

Yes, it definitely is - as mad as a box of frogs - if my hosts don't mind me saying so.