Red letter day

Several milestones today! First we went to the notaire to close the sale of our building in Lézignan. The missing document issue was sorted out by the mairie supplying a different document that served the same purpose. It still took ages. The notaire has a fancy videoconferencing system which he was using to communicate with the notaire of the bank underwriting the loan. Halfway through reviewing the very lengthy contract, the system went down. Calling in the youngest member of staff to try and fix it didn't work -- she didn't seem to be any more of a geek than the notaire was, and only succeeded in launching Netflix. Then (at the prompting of the estate agent) the notaire solved it by switching everything off and on again (which is what I would have done), but the internet connection was on a go-slow so he couldn't get the video feed up. In the end he sent her the documents and talked to her on the phone, so the whole video thing was a waste of time. Finally, after an hour and a half, we did our electronic signatures, the notaire called in a T-shirt and shorts-clad assistant to verify that the funds had landed, and off we went, somewhat richer.

Back home, we were in time to welcome the wood man who finally delivered the five stères of firewood we ordered in May. 34C at 4 pm wasn't the ideal time to be stacking it, but we took it slowly and steadily. Some passer-by always stops to help, and this time it was Thierry. We'd nearly finished by then, but it still went much more quickly. While we were doing this, he told us that work had started on the building plots. so of course we had to go and look, having downed our refreshing non-alcoholic beer.

Here we go! They've knocked half of the retaining wall down, and removed the two substantial plane tree stumps. Watch this space ...