Completely knackered after a 1000 mile drive, and all I wanted to do when we got here was have a decent shower. So, I went through the rigmarole of switching the hot water on, flicking the switch to “jour” and then discovered that the plumber had taken out the hot water cylinder which he said he was leaving in. Never mind, I thought, the new thermodynamic one will be working…. Trekked upstairs to check – no sign of life in the new boiler, pressed a load of buttons, nothing 😢. I left a really irritable message on the plumbers answer phone ( thank you, Google translate!) and he rang me back telling me to turn it on at the fuse box! Hey presto, hot, very hot, water shortly afterwards. He still hasn’t plumbed in the upstairs loo, done anything about the upstairs shower and the bath is still in the barn but he said he’d be here this week to finish off. We will see…

Disaster number two today was opening the champagne. I dropped it when I was taking it out of the car – nothing too dramatic, it just rolled around a bit in the boot so we left it for an hour to calm down. Obviously didn’t leave it long enough as it fizzed all over the floor when we opened it. Salvaged most of the bottle, just a criminal waste of champagne. Still, if Pip licks it off the floor, maybe he’ll sleep for the rest of the afternoon instead of pottering about under the feet.

Our next disaster was the cooker. It’s not fantastic to start with, but all I needed to do was fry up some frozen chip things to go with the cooked chicken for tea. Out of gas. The bottle was completely empty, as was the one we had in the bergerie which I thought was full. Thankfully, we had the Jetboil with us, and the camping pan set, so tea wasn’t a complete washout. Half a bottle of red wine, feet up in front of the fire and then an early night. Glad we are finally here and hoping that nothing else goes disastrously wrong in the next week or so.