Wednesday 13 August - cooler, Andre meeting, looking for gravel, la Maison

We had a cool overnight change, so it was very pleasant to stay snuggled under the doona in the morning. But we eventually had to get up, as we had a planned meeting with Andre Calvet about the medieval music workshop later this month. I listened in as he and Rita discussed what might be covered in the workshop, and was fascinated by the connections he drew between music, mathematics and architecture. The meeting took place in Andre's tiny theatre, behind an atelier which was behind a coffee shop in Moissac.

In the afternoon, Nico and I went in search of places which might sell gravel that we could use to lay on the garden area at the house that we had cleared and levelled and were going to convert into a seating area. We went to several garden shops but none of them had gravel for sale (unlike at home were we would just go to the local Bedrock Garden Supply store in Alexandra). Finally, we were referred to a stone quarry near Castelsarrasin which had stones of various grades (sizes). After checking in at the site office, we drove over in the yard to check out the sizes of the different options, and while we were there a guy drove across in a big front-loader to see what we were doing. I suspect he thought we wanted him to load something into a truck, but we only had Nico’s VW and that wouldn’t carry much. After he started making threatening hand signals, we decided to beat a hasty retreat. Since the delivery of the gravel was going to cost three times as much as the gravel (250e compared to 80e for 2 cubic metres), Nico started ringing around his friends to see if anyone had a 4t truck that was willing to do a delivery for a few boxes of beer. Unfortunately, no luck, so it looks like we will have to get them to deliver the gravel to the house if we want the seating area before the band arrives next week.

Now that the house is as finished as it will be before the band arrives, I went up there and took lots of pictures, then spent the evening updating the Maison website to document how far it had come up until this point in time.