Laughing Ducks and the Languedoc

It’s one of those days. I’ve been on the go since 6 this morning – the Thursday French lesson for four hours at Teenage Daughters school, making lunch for everyone - builders, kids, BF, me - clearing up, driving all over the Languedoc to find the colour, digging the garden to get it ready to sow for grass, making the supper, dealing with difficult renting issues in England, at both our holiday cottage in Cornwall, and our flat-which-should-be-sold by now, sympathising with Teenage Daughter who has problems at school because some kids are being horrible to the English kids, washing up the supper, tidying up, going to buy a bottle of wine because BF (I hate drinking, he says) has just scarfed the end of the rose. Apart from the sunshine, it’s not a day I have enjoyed much and then to put the final finish to it, BF and I have a row and go to bed, and then I can’t sleep because the small amount of not very good white wine I have drunk is galloshing around, and I wish I hadn't drunk it.Next morning at 7.30 am, there are five men at the gite, it’s bright sunshine, and I make them all tea and coffee. The girls go off to school. We look again at the colour on the restaurant and the Lurcher tips some pigment in the mixer and off we go. 'It’s very difficult to get the colour right like this' says our Macedonian , shaking his head sadly, 'very difficult'. But we mix up two batches, and surprizingly, first time it looks great. I am elated. It will go well! It's all going to work! Then we put the coloured render on the wall, and it still looks great. Then the render is smoothed out and as it is smoothed, it goes muddy and grey, right before our eyes. That’s horrible says BF. The Lurcher and I try various mixes, various colours. Whatever we do, it still looks horrible. Then we realise that the reason it's going from soft peachy yellow to horrible is because the tiny black stones in the sand, which no one had noticed before, come to the front when the mixture is smoothed onto the wall, turning the colour to a murky muddy dirty yellow. "You should have got the paint, Tonne Pierre" says the Lurcher "thats what you want", then "you don’t know what you want". "I do know what I want" I say, (near tears), "I want that colour over there. – I’ve always wanted that colour over there". I point at the restaurant opposite, as I did when we first agreed the job . BF doesn't say anything, just comes up and stands behind me, towering over us both 'Well you won’t get it like this" says the Lurcher, and calls the boys off and takes them all home so he doesn’t need to pay them, promising to be back shortly. It's not yet 10 oclock. 'We need white sand, without bits in it,' say BF and our Macedonian, before they go back to the rest of the work on the gite - sanding beams, finishing walls. So I career off in a hot car again, the dog at my side, in search of some sand which doesn’t have little black bits in, and predictably enough the Lurcher doesn't come back, probably going to the pub, which I reflect, grumpily, is where I'd like to be. The sand turns out to be six miles up the road, so it's only seven return journeys with a trailer to get what we need, to replace the sand with gritty bits in that we've already dumped in a pile in the yard. Then all we’ve got to do is sieve the three tones of white sand by hand to get the grit out so that we finally end up with the fine white we really need, which BF does, as the lads lean on spades and watch. Then it's only another hot week of full on work for the whole team to put it on, and then it's done. And our gite is transformed. It's a pale lovely yellow, slowly coming alive in front of us. At the end of the week we give the lads beer and wine, and we raise a glass as the sun glints on the canal, and the boats glide by in the soft South of France early evening light, and we look at our peachy colour which isn’t really the same as the restaurant opposite but pretty nice anyway, and for a moment we think we know why we are here, and it’s all worthwhile.