All by myself again

It being a Sunday, us Brits turn our minds to those jobs that you don't get time to do during the week when you are at the office - well, that doesn't really apply to me as home is office and vice versa, but still it was a satisfactory chores day.

I didn't wash the car, but I did cut the hedge - the one in the courtyard at the end of the arch where we park the car. As part of our new found power over the fate of the house - because we now manage it ourselves - I had undertaken to cut the hedge. You may think that I have just added another chore to my life but the reality isn't like that at all. It took Debrah and me less than an hour to cut the hedge, sweep the courtyard, bag and dispose of the cuttings and change the faulty light bulb in the archway. Under the old managing agents regime we would have waited two months for all that to be done and been charged €50 for the light bulb change and some other extortionate amount for the hedge cutting. So, in fact, it saved me a load of dosh.

Before our 'community' chores, we did a couple of purely selfish domestic jobs - fixing the sagging curtain rail in our bedroom and putting up a new curtain rail and curtains in the Studio suite. All sounds very straightforward, I know - but in fact the 4m ceiling heights here mean all curtain height jobs entail the erection of an internal scaffold etc etc - bit of a palaver really but a job well done nonetheless.

So it was that Debrah and I pottered about together all morning, fitting in a very rare bacon and eggs breakfast/brunch and then suddenly it was time for her to go and get her flight to London - somehow the easy domesticity of the day seemed to make the parting harder than usual - or maybe it's because she had been here for two whole weeks rather than just the weekend.

I gather it was a bit dark and rainy when Debrah got back to London, which is no fun having just left a classic Languedoc summer's day of endless blue sky and sweltering heat.

It was no fun here either - the apartment suddenly feeling very empty after all our friends and family visitors of the last two weeks and especially without Debrah here helping me out (telling me how to do) the dinner for the guests.

I am pretty busy with new arrivals and departures over the next few days, but even so, I will miss the one arrival that won't be here for another two weeks - Debrah.