After the delay due to the weather yesterday, Le Piglet finally departed from Moissac this morning. Like many of our friends from the past couple of years, they are heading up the Rhone at the end of this year to start exploring the canals in Northern France. We waved goodbye to Peter, Amanda and Ash as they headed for the first lock out of Moissac, but hope to see them at the end of August if they come back by car for the Fetes de Plaisanciers.

With a DBA Board Meeting scheduled for next weekend in London, I spent some time writing DBA Board reports on my areas of responsibility, namely market research, eVoting and the eNewsletter. The DBA has changed significantly in the past couple of years, and is gradually entering the 21st century with the adoption of Facebook pages and various other innovations in communication, as a newer more tech-savvy generation gradually replaces the older less tech-savvy generation. There are still some who object to these new-fangled technologies, but their numbers are gradually diminishing.

While we were up at the house yesterday, Rita was doing some dead-heading of the roses and stood on a nail amongst the building rubbish in the garden. We cleaned and treated it with antiseptic cream, but as a safeguard she went up to the local doctor this morning to get a tetanus shot, since she hadn’t had a booster shot for many years. After several hours waiting, she got her shot and is now a little more relieved.

In the evening, we had a meeting with Frederique, the painter, up at the house. Last week, Nico gave us a heads-up that the first wall she had painted was not looking like we expected. We had opted for three shades of one colour with a lighter colour for the walls and slightly darker tints for the various trims on doors, windows and panelling. However, the lighter shade was coming out much darker and pinker than expected. As Nico describes it, it looked like “grandma’s underpants”. So we thought a quick meeting with Frederique before any more was done would be a good idea. It turned out that the wall that had been done was in one of the toilet rooms, which is a relatively dark room, and this was making the paint look darker. In one of the bedrooms, the same paint had been used on the inside of the windows and the window with the shutters closed looked much darker that the window with the shutters open. It seems that the perceived paint colour changes significantly with the light levels and the background lighting. Since we had chosen the colours in good lighting conditions, it appeared lighter than it now does under varying conditions. We agreed with Frederique to lighten the main wall colour, and to use the existing colour for some contrast on chimneys and the walls behind the beds.

Since Rita has now taken a couple of driving lessons over here, we decided to reinforce her learnings by going to the large carpark at Intermarche after hours to do some clutch work. We drove round and round the carpark, up and down the lanes between the parking spaces, practicing uphill and downhill starts, in straight lines and around corners. While there was a little bit of kangaroo-hopping to start with, she pretty quickly got the hang of it. A few more sessions and a lot of general practice will have her as smooth as silk.