Goodness me, I feel like 7 sorts of freshly boiled shite. As my insta friends will have seen, my stories have been empty for the last few days, don’t worry, I’m alive, but hubs decided to furnish me with a spectacular cold which has rendered me useless for a bit. The sort of cold where your hair hurts and your eyes are too hot. That sort. Timing for this is poor as I have to do the much dreaded airport drive with the hubs tomorrow as he’s heading to Malaysia for a fortnight for work. I’ve only managed one dry run this week and I don’t feel prepared. To many this is not a big thing, but for some reason, the prospect is sending my anxiety crazy. I’m not a massive fan of driving anyway, but I had an accident several years ago, not my fault but still, it shook my confidence and made me just that little bit more wary. The dry run was fine, I’m less concerned about getting lost, usually one of the things I get anxious about, but I am concerned that I have to do this on a Saturday, and it involves doing all the roundabouts near Limoges busy retail park. But, it has to be done, and if I can get to the point that I’m happy to drive to the retail park on my own, I will literally feel like king of the world. One of the reasons I’ve only done one run this week, is that hubs, overwhelmed with work as usual, forgot to chase the accountant about the tax return for a few days, then late in the day on Weds when I reminded him again, he finally spoke to him and the return was due THAT DAY. So that evening was spent answering questions, trying to find paperwork and generally panicking. Was fairly stressful. But, our first tax return is now filed. Scary adulting stuff. Another reason this was more stressful than it needed to be was that hubs had entered his password incorrectly 3 times on the internet banking app for our French bank. This meant, that rather than your account being temporarily blocked, we now have to go into the branch to resolve it. File, once again under the heading – “because France”. He’s working incredibly hard at the moment, lots of travelling, and weekend travelling at that, which means, especially with both of us having been ill this week, that we’ve not spent much quality time together. So, for the first time since we bought our home here, we’re actually having a proper holiday. Now that we know about Trusted house sitters, we have James and Elise back with us in July, and we’re off on a road trip. We’re so fortunate that the country we’ve chosen to make our home, is so beautiful and diverse, so we don’t even need to worry about flying anywhere. I think it’ll be sometime before we run out of places we want to visit too, which is lucky! Our itinerary is 3 nights by the sea in La Rochelle, the longest of our drives at about 3 hours 40 minutes from home, and we’ll be there for Craig’s birthday. Next it’s 2 nights in Cognac, home of the Courvoisier and Remy Martin distilleries, then Bourdeaux for 2 nights for the Cite du Vin, and lastly Sarlat-Le-Caneda for 2 nights, with it’s medieval gas lit streets and world famous market. Then home for our very first Bastille Day in France, which is exciting in itself. When Craig arrives back from Kuala Lumpur it’ll already be June, so will only then be about a month before we get to have a proper actual break. I cannot wait! Meanwhile, the polytunnel is going great, I have about 30 tomato plants in, and about a dozen peppers, with cucumber, gherkin, beans, aubergines, and some flowers I forgot to sow earlier, still under propagation. I spied a most excellent haul of tyres at the recycling point earlier in the week, so off I went for them, in a race against time with the bin men, so now I have more planting opportunities once the seedlings are big enough, and that might save me having to dig any more of the potager this year. Although, the bracken is coming up again at an alarming rate, so plan to cover everything remaining with left over cardboard from the kitchen packing, and try to subdue it all, to make next year an easier one. Also, the plumber actually came, so I now have running water and a functional dishwasher in the big kitchen. How long did that take!! I spent a wondrous few hours going through some boxes and putting things away. It was like Christmas morning, rediscovering all our stuff again. Miraculously, so far at least, everything has survived the move. While Craig’s away, I plan to order the bed and bedside cabinets for our room, and then start on the office/crafting room, so hubs can have a better, more comfortable office set up than the gite’s spare room currently affords him. Then, hopefully on to the spare room, and then, on to downstairs. – so much to do! So, lying here sweaty and snotty has not been ideal, but hoping I’ll wake up feeling much better tomorrow, and I survive the airport run! TTFN xx