Renovation Project - Car boot sales in France

Renovation Project - Car boot sales in France

We are desperately trying to buy some chairs for the bedroom, I know exactly what I want but cannot seem to find them anywhere (unless we want to spend a fortune on them, which we don’t!) and so today we are going to tackle a car boot.

There is a monthly car boot in a town not too far away called Dualt, we have heard of it many times but have never been. Today we will lose our French car boot virginity.

Our sat nav cannot find where we are going and seems to be taking us along every back road and country lane it can find, but eventually we see a church spire and then as we drive towards it we see the cars.

As we pull up there is a smell of burning rubber, this is not good, our back tyre is so hot, I’m trying not to panic, we have breakdown insurance but as I have no idea where we are how on earth will I try to tell somebody in French where we are!!!!!

John thinks that there may just have been a stone caught in the brake pads and says not to worry (Why do people do that, do they really think that just by saying don’t worry, I will instantly feel better, that these little words are a magic cure, Oh don’t worry, well that’s OK then. I can feel the anger building again, or is this just the menopause creeping out? Bugger I don’t know what I’m doing now, so let’s concentrate on the car boot!)

The sun is shining and there is a lovely atmosphere, it is almost like a street party, then we hear an English voice, then another and another, bloody hell did the sat nav actually take us back to England? There is a bacon butty stall, English food stalls and even a tea bag stall, I would like to say that we took the high ground here and ignored all the English stalls, but I am no good at lying, I saw sticky toffee puddings (who can resist?) but they were microwavable and we don’t have a microwave so we couldn’t buy them, they were also so expensive, these stall holders really know how to fleece the Brits!

See I could have lied then and said we didn’t even look but .........

We bump into some friends that live quite close to us and I now feel better because if we do break down at least they will drive past us on the way home.

As we are walking past all of the stalls looking for chairs, we hear music, there are Breton bagpipe players walking along, this is starting to feel more and more like a street party.

We do not find the chairs that we want, but we do find 2 that once stained will be OK and these are actually off a French stall holder, they cost 2 euro’s each which is the equivalent of £3 for 2 wooden chairs, Result!!!!!

We don’t stick around and head off as soon as we have been to each stall, we get home with no problem and the burning smell has gone. How could I have ever doubted the trusty Volvo, I’m sorry.

It’s straight to work when we get back and John starts on the top floor windows, the rain is still holding off so John removes the windows so that he can gloss the outside of them. This job takes some time but once finished the outside of the house is completed.

These are the only windows that are not double glazed, we could not replace them as they are bespoke windows and are still in excellent condition. At some point we will try to have some more made but this is not necessary at the moment, especially if the sun continues to shine the way it is at the moment, maybe this year we will be having a fantastic summer!!!!

As the weather is so good I am going to make a start on the garden, no easy task but one that needs to be done.