I think I ought to be thinking we're on the home run. I know we are actually, but it doesn't exactly seem like it, the place is still quite a mess. But it's getting there. I hope.

Alien invasion of the radiators:

This is a chauffe plat. A radiator with a little cupboard in it for keeping your roast potatoes warm. May be used on a cold day for warming up your knickers while you're having a shower:

Raphael's Lulworth Blue bedroom, with concrete floor. It was sagging alarmingly and after some thought we decided we had to change it. It's probably going to look crap, cheap parquet always does, though this isn't particularly cheap it must be said - but better than sagging and creaking.

You can sort of see the colour of the hall and staircase here. You can also see the state of the parquet on the stairs. Covered in wierd hairy stuff, like the sock fluff you sometimes get between your toes:

I had these friends in London, both architects, who did that very London thing of buying a Victorian terraced house and gutting it to make way for a lovely, minimalist interior. They moved about two years later. "I just hated the place," K told me, "after living through the hell of the renovations, I couldn't wait to get out and move somewhere that wasn't filled with the phantom shadows of the builders." I didn't understand it then. Now I am rather afraid I think I do. 

Oh, today I'm feeling more stressed than ever. I just don't think this baby is going to be done for when we're moving. How long can we survive with neither sanitation nor kitchen? Or does it just look like it's not going to be done, is everyone just pretending to freak me out and then on July 29th they're going to be jumping out from behind doors screaming 'Surprise!" Would like to think 'twas so, but fear that is more naive than simple optimism.

Anyway they've started painting and guess what, I hate all the colours. All the colours I chose. All the colours I painstakingly painted onto large sheets of sugar paper so that no nasty surprises would be delivered in the form of colours that look surprisingly anodyne on one inch samples, whilst becoming stridently well - colourful- when painted on entire walls. Guess what! It's so fucking colourful! I hate it.

The living room is particularly terrible. It's called off white on the F and B swatch, and seemed okay, kind of grown up and murky on the sugar paper swatch. But all over the living room - which is, let's face it, large - it's absolutely disgusting, the colour of a long linen skirt I own (which I actually quite like). Okay for linen, but just vile over all the walls, like a really grim accident with a can of mushroom soup. I don't know why I didn't listen to my instincts, the room was so beautiful and ethereal in white undercoat, it was obviously the right colour. Bugger. Well it's just paint. Not so difficult to deal with.

Our bedroom is this slightly pinky white, which I fear might cause C to suffer a crisis of masculinity. Perhaps he will never again be able to get it up. My lovely friend K, here from London for the day, thinks this isn't going to be a problem, claiming that anyone who has fathered three children has nothing to prove, and citing as evidence of his inherent confidence in his masculiity the fact that he is not ashamed to wear fluffy sheepskin slippers in front of guests.

Albie's got the glorious Borrowed Light, a perfect colour that I would have happily slapped over every room in the house if not for fear of eventual banality. But it is such a lovely colour! Raphael's Lulworth Blue is a bit intense for my taste but nice, the yellow for the playroom ditto. The dining room is sultry in blue green, will probably look lovely by candlelight. They're all okay but I miss that lovely, easy white. It all looks so bloody busy now, so much like we're trying for an effect.

I went to the house this afternoon to see the electrician, and found a car with its hazards flashing parked in front of my drive. I beeped a few times and the electrician came out and said 'I think it belongs to your neighbour,' gesturing to the house that belongs to Monsieur Toulemonde, the guy who wants my garden to be his garden. Funnily enough, M Toulemonde has his own garage and there's a great big space outside it...Why does he need to block my gate when he could block his own? Who knows. All I know is that I'm already pissed off, and late, and the obvious solution is to park my car in front of his garage. As I am doing so his front door opens and out comes a rather elegant little man who asks me not to park in front of his garage.

'Monsieur,' I say, 'is that your car parked in front of my driveway?'

'Ah. Yes'.

'Why?'

'I am expecting a van any minute to arrive and I needed to keep my driveway free'.

'You might have thought of that before. Now my car is there and I am not moving it, I'm late as it is'.

An old guy, his father in law it turns out, joins us.

'I'll move the car and then you can park in front of your own garage.'

I was feeling mean.

'No. I'm late. And if you don't want me to block your garage, then I suggest you don't block mine.' For good measure, I left the car there for two hours.

Is anyone reading this any more?

I was pootling along somewhere in the centre of town when I heard someone call my name. It was the postman - who already knows me for some reason - with a registered letter from the Service d'Urbanisme.

This much I knew from the envelope alone: trouble. The Service d'Urbanisme is not in the business of sending you letters welcoming you to your new neighbourhood. With a slightly fluttering heart and shaking fingers I opened the letter; from the first line - 'travaux realises sans autorisation' - it got only worse. The letter infomed me that the Architect whose job it is to protect the town's heritage was walking past the house and heard noises indicating that we were doing major demolition work. This is strictly forbidden within the conservation zone. It went on to order us to stop work immediately (ironically not so difficult since guess what not a single person working there today, think I might be right to be a tiny bit concerned) and summoned us to the Mairie to explain ourselves.

I had already heard that you Don't Fuck with this particular city architect, who is a fusty old bugger who will say no to every single planning application that passes through his office.

It took me a minute or two to figure that we haven't actually done any demolition work to the house, that the noises he heard were probably the plumber drilling holes in concrete. In other words that I had nothing to fear from anyone in that department. So I rang him up straight away. He was pretty aggressive on the phone, informing me that even so I was bound to be in breach of something. It occurred to me that the best thing to do was to disarm him. 'I think the best thing would be for you to come to the house and see for yourself', I said in reply to his rant. 'Oh. Really?' he replied. I don't think he often gets invited round for coffee. (Not this time either actually, since there's no running water, but it's the thought that counts.) 'I'll be there in twenty minutes'.

True to his word, exactly twenty minutes later he was at the gate. I showed him around, explaining how the house had been divided into four apartments and how we had decided to unify it again, respecting its history whilst bringing it into line with contemporary building regulations. After we had looked around inside and outside, he turned to me and apologised. 'I've been doing this job for twenty years in various parts of the country, and I can promise you that I have come across no more than ten people in all that time who have, like you, a deep respect and sensitivity for the architecture of their homes. I assure you that I will look favourably on any planning application you make for this house.'

I'm such a creep. I felt like teacher's pet. Was only sorry I didn't have an apple in my bag (I have just about everything else) to polish and hand to him. But at least we're out of trouble.

I'm a tiny bit worried that the initial burst of enthusiasm - that has lasted 3 months - on the part of the builders etc is wearing off. There are definitely noticeably fewer people there each day, which is widely considered to be a sign that they've gone onto other sites. Still, so much progress has been made, I will hold on to my belief that they know what they are doing. All the bedrooms are ready for their final coat of paint and have the beginnings of polished floors (first round of sanding with a rough sand, then one more with a fine sand before being sealed up with some incredibly polluting and hardwearing varnish that would keep a boat buoyant on the high seas for a couple of years, so jolly well ought to withstand the abuse meted out by my three children). The Farrow and Ball, lugged back from London last week with only one casualty (yes, the paint might be good but the pots split open if you so much as tap them with your little toe. Luckily it was my dad not me spilled it over his hall carpet. and who then used a blue cloth to dab white spirit on, thus ensuring that a fairly innocuous patch of off white paint on an off white carpet that has seen better days turned electric blue and means they now have no choice but to replace the carpet).

I was at the house on Saturday morning, talking to Floor Polisher Guy. I said how pleased I am with how the work is going; FPG replied, 'Madame, everyone likes working for you, that's why everyone is working so hard. If they like you, they enjoy working. If they don't, you know it.' Quite simply, the nicest thing anyone has said to me for a very long time.

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I feel like a hairdresser.

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