It's been a good day. A long happy birthday phone call to my mum kicked the day off, then the log man rang to say he could only deliver today at 10.45am otherwise we'd have to wait ages. Fine, except Ali and I had our first doctor's appointments for at least ten years at 11am. I'd been dreaming of the smell of burning oak more than antiseptic, so the wood man took priority.

 

As it happened we still got to the quack's in time, then waited half an hour to be seen. I was unsurprised to hear that I have worryingly high blood pressure and Ali's is perfect. I weigh and eat twice as much as she does so I'm back on a diet. Bother and blast.

The four cubic metres of logs looked heavy and cumbersome and I was sure it'd be too much to stack in a single session, but good pacing meant we got it done without wrecking our backs.

 

 

 

We're about to start pruning our vines, now that the leaves have fallen. For the past two years we've simply dropped the  cuttings (sarments) on the ground vowing that we'll go along afterwards to pick them all up. Of course we never do it properly, so this year we intend to burn them as we go along. The easiest way is to make a brûleur de sarments which is a metal wheelbarrow with an open oil drum on top in which you keep a fire going with the sarments. Easy peasy we thought, we'll find an old coach-built pram and lob an oil tank on top. Fine. So we drove off to Emmaus in Beziers hoping to find both. Monday. Closed. Dammit. We then went to a really crummy flea market and found the perfect pram lurking in a dark corner. OK, now all we need is an oil drum. Fifteen garages and agricultural service workshops and two rubbish tips later we had had no luck. Apparently the oil companies now collect them from the garages when they deliver full ones. As a last resort we screeched up at our lovely village petrol station  (from whom we buy our heating oil) - Garage Lafitte - where we struck lucky. Thank you lovely M. Lafitte.

So this afternoon we set to work, making the most appalling noise jigsawing open the oil can. Then bashing a fold into all the suicidal cut edges to round them off. And here it is, Hot Pegasus.

 

We'll let you know how long it takes for us to burn the rubber off the wheels.

Some time ago Ali bought some experimental ostrich steaks and we thought them tender and delicious. This evening we tried them again and I made the mistake of reading the cooking instructions. Make sure you cook it completely it said. So I did, and it was as tough as old boots. Last time I flashed it as I would have done with fillet steak. That's the last time I read cooking instructions.

Today we received a lovely e-mail from a reader of this blog who lives in South Korea. She gives Le Couvent a kind mention ,  for which we'd like to thank her.