Everyday I'm shovelling....

Hello everyone,

We've got another two day job to report on today. Simon has finally finished the pointing up!

The plan, for his pride and joy, was to now add a concrete base, upon which he will build the boiler room.

Exhibit A.

Ready to receive the concrete.

The thing is with being in another country is that a) you don't speak the language and b) you also don't know where anything is. You can't just pop down to Homebase or B&Q. For a start the department we're living in, Creuse, is 5,765 km², which for comparison, Bedfordshire is 1,235 km². Quite a big difference.

Luckily for Simon, the other day while he was waiting in a queue (his absolute, most favourite way to pass the time 😂) he got chatting to a fellow from Yorkshire. A few 'aye ups' later and Simon had the directions to our local quarry.

Tuesday morning, we were up, breakfasted and, with a sense of trepidation and excitement we set off to get the required mixture.

Simon had informed me that we needed, ready mixed concrete, which for the uninitiated is, sand, cement and gravel. He needed to ask for this, in French, funnily enough.

"Je voudrais un demi mètre de béton sec, s'il vous plait" he said with his best 'Allo Allo' accent.

Well, it obviously worked because this happened....

This did make me have a little scream, mostly because, as usual, I wasn't paying attention to what was going on. Too busy taking photos of the surrounding area....well it was pretty!

So, there we were, fully loaded up and we sped off home, ready to getting mixing.

Simon, sporting a very fetching wellie/short combo....

There I am, doing all the graft....

We shifted around 0.5 of a cubic metre, which weighed 1 tonne!! By the time we had finished my arms felt slightly wobbly....hard and muscly obviously, but hardly able to pick up a cup of tea.

"Not to worry" said Simon cheerfully, "We've got to do it all again tomorrow!"

"Yay" I said, with feeble enthusiasm 

Wednesday morning arrived, sooner than my muscles had expected, and back to the quarry we went.

There's a lot more to mixing concrete than you'd first think, although not really any of it worth documenting. Let's just say, by the time we had finished, we were, knackered, smelly, soggy and covered in concrete mix....delightful.

Good job we're so good looking 😂

All that was left to do was tidy up, bloody hell that takes forever! And to wrap our new concrete baby up for the night. Rain was forecast and we didn't need a swear fest from Simon if it got buggered up by 'la pluie' ⛆

Now, I think it's shift over and time for a beer!🍻