Yessssss

3rd January
I was woken with a phone call from the landlord, he tells that he won’t be putting the Lovely House on the market until we choose to leave, and we can stay as long as we want, and yes he’ll put that in writing.

How did that come about you may ask?
After the landlord's call before Christmas to say that the house would be on the market and after I’d got the flames coming out of my nose under control, I deduced that he was hoping that we'd buy the house, and anyway it would be easier to sell while inhabited – and he’d still be getting our rent.

Clearly the man is a No Good Duplicitous Rotter. I asked Mme B. to help me write a letter explaining that due to the security risks of unknown visitors and the disruption ensuing we would have to find other premises forthwith – I now feel so euphoric, triumphant and smug I've just had to hang that dartboard and fling a few darts at this image, which is as close as I can get to a likeness of the landlord.

Happy Christmas

24th December
Friday
concrete floor laid and paid for
Saturday
fill the car many times with piles of old planks from the woodyard
Sunday
fenced off the area that will become a vegetable plot for filming
Monday
landlord calls to say that he's putting our house on the market and that we should expect visits from estate agents in the new year
Today
I stopped frothing at the mouth

Back Story
Back in October our Landlord paid us a visit, shot at our cameramen, stayed for lunch and assured us that he had no plans to sell his property

Choosing Colours

14th November
The Director has gone back to the UK where our house has become a production office. Over there the bedrooms are now editing suites and the living room is full of people writing scripts and arguing about contracts. I am going to (hide in France) stay here and prepare for next year’s filming. We need a studio to film things that have to be contained (like cockroaches) and slow things like butterflies emerging from cocoons. I’m currently trying to persuade builders to give me a quote to lay a concrete floor for the studio. The outside project is the 'film set garden’, I’ve started clearing a large overgrown piece of land where we will put a shed, fencing, plant flowers and make a vegetable patch. I’m a bit hampered by the all the rubbish the Landlord has dumped here, hacking back brambles I keep dinging into bedsprings and bits of rotten furniture.

For light relief I go and visit my new friend Florence. On Tuesday I took the fabulous chicory tart over to her place. Florence is expecting her second child in the spring. She has recently moved into a small village house that needs some work. We picnicked amid the rubble from a big hole that has just been knocked through the end wall. Turning our backs on the view of a suppurating septic tank in the middle of her garden we perused paint colour charts for the baby’s bedroom.

New Blood At The Bar

2nd November
The filming really is done for this year, the Camera Boys have returned to the UK - we are now in visiting season. Since Bruno's August visit we have been without doorhandles - he replaced the original knobs with a set that can’t be made to stay fixed on. My parents arrived here a few days ago. They have known me long enough not to expect much in the way of comfort but I bet they had hoped for door handles. No matter - once given a pair of pliers and a monkey wrench they soon got the hang of getting in and out of their bedroom. My mother hasn’t really got the upper body strength to haul the front door open on her own yet though.

We were also suffering from a smelly drain problem. Our squalid kitchen has a concrete sink with a hole through the back wall. The water, and whatever else you put in the sink, washes through to a concrete gutter running the length of the back of the house. Over the years it has silted up and grown over with weeds, the autumn rains have made the area behind the kitchen swampy and putrid. My repeated calls to Landlord and plumber have been ignored. Mum put her foot down, The Director and my father got out the shovels and a wheelbarrow, dislodging unspeakable hideousness to make a drainage channel.

As a further treat for my parents I took them to the bar for some of Mrs Strange’s gin. The Senior Strange’s have already slipped away. But Kurt the tattooed son has returned from Copenhagen with his wife and turns out to be perfectly good at serving gin with flat tonic in a dirty glass from the iceless bar.

Kurt’s wife, Courtney has translucently pale skin, she has only recently started her tattoo collection, they both dress exclusively in black. They tell me that their band had split anyway and that they are going to liven up the bar with 'live bands, gourmet food and that kind of stuff'. Courtney is animated, she says that Kurt’s great in the kitchen - I’m not sure if she means he can cook. Buoyed up with enthusiasm for their plans (and feeling guilty that I’ve now booked to show our film at the village hall) I suggest that they put on a supper for after the film show - I’ll publicise it on the flyer I’m going to put around the surrounding villages next week. Kurt is a sullen kind of chap, he asks what sort of thing I have in mind,
I suggest casserole-type dishes; a daube, coq au vin … a cassoulet?
I’ll do a cassoulet
Something about his response is not putting me at ease.

Getting Shot At By The Landlord

12th October
It was very misty this morning and the Camera Boys were out around the house getting atmospheric shots of dewy spider webs at sunrise. Suddenly I heard them running in and shouting that someone was shooting at them. We all went out to see who was there and the figure of our foxy-faced landlord in his brand new hunting clothes loomed towards us, proudly carrying a very small dead bird in his pocket.
I'll be back later for lunch
He strode off and we put camerawork on hold for the morning.
I was disgruntled

He came back for lunch having done no more damage apparently, he seemed impressed by all the work we'd done clearing up the outbuildings. The Director wanted me to establish if we could be there another year at least, so I asked the landlord if he was planning to put the property on the market, he said no, we could be there as long as we liked. I then asked about laying a concrete floor in the barn adjoining the house so we can set up a filming studio there, the landlord has agreed to pay half the cost of doing this.
I'm still disgruntled

New door handles - Hooray!

8th August
Yesterday an elderly man with a corrugated face and a bag of knobs turned up on the doorstep, sent by the Landlord to change all our interior door handles - I had no idea that we had door handle issues. Bruno is of Italian origin and has a drink problem - and strong political views.

We're clearing out a disgusting barn to make a lovely studio for filming. It is full of rotten furniture, rat-soiled piles of newspapers, bottles of veterinary medicines and rusty sharp things. Glass aquariums are set up to accommodate our growing captive insect population.

I can't get into my bedroom without a spanner now because the new handle has dropped off.