{"id":1267,"date":"2007-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-30T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2011-09-06T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T10:26:15","slug":"3152007-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/3152007-thursday\/","title":{"rendered":"31\/5\/2007 &#8211; Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nice start to the day.\u00a0 Cool, with heavy showers in the afternoon and a lovely evening.<\/p>\n<p>Jst got back from Paris last night following an uneventful 4 hour train journey.\u00a0 Ilka &amp; I had a lovely time in Paris (surprise) and didn\u2019t overdo the tourism but instead just meandered through the streets and came across things.<\/p>\n<p>Paris was a lovely break but the noise and rush of the city is such a contrast to the back-of-beyond existence I have here in the Dordogne.\u00a0 We had to buy earplugs for our cheapo hotel room because it didn\u2019t have double glazing or windows that really closed properly.\u00a0 Back here, I slept for 10 hours last night in a sensory depravation stupor that just couldn\u2019t exist anywhere in a big bad city.<\/p>\n<p>Today I went and saw the bank manager first thing.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t my bank manager but one at the bank where Jenny had an account, and where I wanted to finally sort out the last of her affairs here.\u00a0\u00a0 I arrived promptly but he wasn\u2019t there and I was asked to wait.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t impressed and I told them that after waiting three weeks for this meeting I wasn\u2019t going to wait any longer and so was off to do some shopping and I\u2019d be back later.\u00a0 They hurrumphed, and I felt a small amount of satisfaction in returning after shopping and emailing to at last find him waiting for me.<\/p>\n<p>Meeting done, I came home and did some little bits and pieces around the house.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t in the mood for starting any large projects, so I installed a shelf under the kitchen workshop, and put the old sink outside on a pedestal to make a useful outside wash area and\/or somewhere to put my plants when I buy some.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to finish clearing the weeds on the driveway and that meant moving the old van (a.k.a. Toolshed), which meant starting her up.\u00a0 Unfortunately the battery was flat, but that\u2019s not surprising after 2 years, so I put it on charge for the rest of the day.\u00a0\u00a0 I thought that if I move the van out on the road tomorrow then I should really give it a clean because it was very mildewy.\u00a0\u00a0 So I hosed it down to its original white\/rust sheen and it looks so much better for it.<\/p>\n<p>This evening I cooked another gourmet meal which once again proved the versatility of potatoes and leeks and baked beans.\u00a0 Then I wrote a list on the whiteboard of things that I want to get done over the coming months.\u00a0 It reads (in no particular order):-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fix barn door<\/li>\n<li>Render wall under stairs<\/li>\n<li>Tile basin and worktops<\/li>\n<li>Do cladding around worktops and make doors<\/li>\n<li>Paint a picture<\/li>\n<li>Fix leaky toilet<\/li>\n<li>Knock out wall for new window<\/li>\n<li>Learn German<\/li>\n<li>Paint bedroom walls<\/li>\n<li>Remove bathroom ceiling and make good<\/li>\n<li>Paint railings and gate<\/li>\n<li>Make understairs door<\/li>\n<li>Do some tourism<\/li>\n<li>Clean oak beams and treat<\/li>\n<li>Get rid of weeds in driveway<\/li>\n<li>Finish and publish website<\/li>\n<li>Start own business<\/li>\n<li>Point internal walls<\/li>\n<li>Re-wire upstairs<\/li>\n<li>Find bits for fireplace and finish<\/li>\n<li>Have holiday in Cornwall<\/li>\n<li>Tile around shower<\/li>\n<li>Apply woodworm fluid to cladding downstairs<\/li>\n<li>Find roofer<\/li>\n<li>Find somewhere to live in Angleterre<\/li>\n<li>Get married<\/li>\n<li>Service boiler and heating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2026 some of which will take longer than others I suspect!<\/p>\n<p>Animal news:\u00a0 Today\u2019s animal news is largely bird-orientated.\u00a0 I had the windows open today as usual, and a wagtail flew into the living room.\u00a0 I sat and watched it for a while as it wagged its tail (what else?) while sitting on the one of the wires that stretch across the ceiling.\u00a0 When I got up to usher it out it flew off out the door.\u00a0 Then, one minute later a wren flew in and flapped around in a flutter.\u00a0 When I got up to usher it out it got stuck in the fly paper and couldn\u2019t escape.\u00a0 I carefully removed it and placed it on the window ledge where it sat for a while recovering.\u00a0 Then it flew off and rested on the barn roof, chirping as if nothing had happened.\u00a0 All very odd, as I\u2019ve never known the birds to come into the house before.\u00a0 Today I also saw a pair of green woodpeckers in the field outside, and a couple of herons flew by.\u00a0 There was also a large bird of prey, preying in the valley for most of the day.\u00a0\u00a0 In the barn, the bats are back in volumes.\u00a0 I think they\u2019ve returned because all was quiet while I was away in Paris, and there must be about 20 in there now.\u00a0 They flap around when you go in there, but they don\u2019t like the commotion and I think they\u2019ll move back to the lower barn now because I don\u2019t go in there much.\u00a0 I tried to take some pictures of them but they don\u2019t let you get too close.\u00a0 Ugly blighters mind!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/diary13_Page_4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1268\" title=\"diary13_Page_4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/diary13_Page_4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/diary13_Page_4.jpg 449w, https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/diary13_Page_4-300x256.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This evening was lovely so I went for a bike ride to watch the sun set.\u00a0 It was quite an easy ride because I followed the road on the hilltop as much as possible.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing that I rode for about 8 kilometres without seeing a soul or coming across a car.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t even hear any cars up here, it\u2019s so tranquil.\u00a0 That\u2019s one reason why I\u2019m here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nice start to the day.\u00a0 Cool, with heavy showers in the afternoon and a lovely evening. Jst got back from Paris last night following an uneventful 4 hour train journey.\u00a0 Ilka &amp; I had a lovely time in Paris (surprise) and didn\u2019t overdo the tourism but instead just meandered through the streets and came across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-in-france-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splunge.co.uk\/richnilk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}