Water and Guitars

I am starting to fear Saturdays. They are the busiest and most stressful day of the week, we have to prepare both gites for new guests, clean everywhere, repair any damage and have the gite looking just right in time for the new arrivals. It is intensive work, but if the leaving guests leave on time (before 10.00 am) and the new guests do not appear too early (after 3.00pm) then it can be achieved. Little repairs can knock the day off schedule and the last two Saturdays have been just like that.

Last week, along with the trauma of having to collect Fifi the cat from the vet’s in Cluny, I found out that the sink discharge in one of gites has been leaking for some time, mess everywhere and only a few hours to repair the damage, clean up and dry the walls (yes the water had really been going everywhere!) So the afternoon was spent with my head under the sink with hairdryer in hand pumping hot air on to the wall, all that with 30 degrees outside. This week, it turns out that the sink in our own kitchen has been leaking down into the bathroom below, mess everywhere, call out the plumber - I didn’t dare do it myself, I didn’t know what I would find when I opened up the joint. Monsieur Kotas our trusty plumber was called and he agreed to come out on a Saturday afternoon, what a star. Job done, we now have water again in the house and not pouring down the gite bathroom wall.

The guests arrived on time and fortunately on both occasions they were none the wiser about the frantic activity going on before their arrival.

We had earned an evening enjoying ourselves and that was just what we did. We went to the last concert in the ”Guitares en Cormatinois” series. We went to Saturday’s concert to “cheer ourselves up”, not really expecting much. The group was called Poivre et Celte (a typically French play on words) and they were playing “world music” umm... We have had renditions of how obscure French groups have treated the music from other countries, but it was local and this series is normally good. Much to our great surprise and enjoyment the group were superb! A guitarist, a viola player and a drummer who played what I think was a Makuta drum, he also played an African thumb piano to great effect in one song. The viola player changed instruments a number of times playing at different times the didgeridoo and a recorder and he had a beautiful singing voice. They played music from many countries in their own style and I for one will not forget their punk rendition of “Dirty old Town” in a hurry!

Maybe Saturdays in Cormatin aren’t that bad after all.

For more information on the accommodation here, click here.