Upstairs

The first floor loo is coming on surprisingly quickly. M. Pinto did a great job of stripping out, plastering, painting etc last week and M. Vidal the plumber turned up today, his first day back from hols, to get on with his bit. We need a washbasin in there, and I had a long and increasingly bewildering conversation with him about lave-mains, lavabos, vasques à encastrer (or was it lave-mains à encastrer?) , plans de travail etc. And became increasingly gloomy at the prospect of having to trudge round loads of shops looking for these things. Thankfully when Mr V. came back in the afternoon he was bearing a simple white basin which will do just fine. Problem solved and many miserable hours saved.

By some sort of telepathy all the French children, or their mothers, had divined the things that were unspoken on the school stationery list. Everyone else in Philomena's class turned up with a small whiteboard for their ardoise (which used to mean a slate). Everyone else in Herne's class turned up with cardboard dividers for their file, not plastic. Back to the supermarket pronto.