More car madness

Sadly, my wife has now gone back to London. It has been great having her out here for a few days. She is the design inspiration for the renovation, so it has been very important for her to see where we have got to, see the room spaces for herself, confirm tiles and paint colours, socket placement, kitchen layout and many other decisions that needed to be made. We now have some firm thoughts on areas where there were unanswered questions and can crack on with the work. She has been known to change her mind occasionally, if you can believe such a thing, and many an email has been received starting with the words "What if..." or "How about ...". As she says "Hurry up and finish it and I won't be able to change my mind any more". Quite. We are doing our best, believe me.

As part of that decision making process, we went to the IKEA store in Toulouse to look at kitchen cabinets and door fronts and sinks. I don't really enjoy visiting IKEA stores but some of their stuff is good - it's the whole store experience I can't cope with; you either end up not finding what you want or coming out with a load of stuff you hadn't bargained on buying in the first place. Our four hour round trip on Monday, which elicited much confusion about the kitchens we need to install and the purchase of just three under shelf light fittings, was pretty much par for the course.

I am glad to say that the kitchen confusion has now been resolved - all that remains is to order it and either collect (another trip to Toulouse and not sure if it will fit in the car) or try to arrange a delivery that will actually come to my door instead of depositing the goods two blocks away.

My poor mis-used car had to cope with more hard labour yesterday when I went to collect the new tiles for the studio kitchen and bathroom (the ones we managed to secure at a bargain price at the end of last week). 25sq metres worth of tiles is pretty heavy and despite spreading the load between the boot, back seat and vacant passenger seat, I was seriously concerned for the well-being of the rear suspension and had to drive home very carefully, praying that nothing occured that required an emergency stop - because it wouldn't have stopped very quickly, that's for sure. The guys at Tridome, the DIY and materials supplier we generally use, appear to be no longer surprised by what goes into the back (or on top!) of an Audi Cabriolet - so we will have to come up with something in the weeks to come or they will have nothing new to talk about over their lunch.

Talking of cars, I have just had the most bizarre and surreal conversation with my wife. She is in her car, trying to find somewhere in East London, and had got herself lost and couldn't work it out on the map - so she phoned me, mobile to mobile, so that I could talk her through the route from where she was to where she needed to be using a map on my computer here in France - how mad is that - absolutely stark raving bonkers. I guess it's another skill I can add to my CV - a sort of real-time GPS navigation system provider - actually, for the cost of the phone call we could probably a bought a GPS system but then they don't have a sense a humour and they know left from right, so they wouldn't be anything like as amusing!