My glamour week is going well – Yves Rocher goodies Monday, haircut Tuesday and a bike ride wearing lipstick Wednesday. Here I am touching up before we set off!

We had a great ride this morning. Rors is getting the hang of using his 18 gears so our average speed per trip has shot up. When he gets going, Chris and I are having to work to keep up! We passed a wine delivery point on the way. Here are six empties waiting to be collected and presumably replaced by six full ones. They think of everything in France.

I’m getting into this elegant French woman thing. I’m trying not to spend longer than I need in my farm clothes, although with the lakes and the land and the llamas to look after, there are a lot of grubby jobs to do outside every day so I’m in scruffies for a good part of the time. But I’m changing out of them quicker now.

Our polytunnel has finally arrived, very late Wednesday afternoon. It was meant to come last Friday but it never materialised. Still, we’ve got it now. Caiti’s new bike arrived at the same time – it’s fantastic. It’s a Diamondback. Chris and I got our Diamondbacks about 17 years ago now, and they’re still going strong. Which is a shame, because having seen Caiti’s new version with disc brakes and a super-slick gear changing system, not to mention general all-over sleek design – well, we want new ones too!

Here is the polytunnel.

And here are the instructions for the polytunnel, complete with teabag to help things go smoothly.  Something tells me we shall need more than one cup of tea between us during construction! Things are about to get even busier …

Daily snippets for 5th May

Today’s saint: St Judith

Famous French person born this day: Louis Christophe François Hachette, publisher, in 1800. (Hachette Livre these days has a turnover in excess of 2.3 billion euro.)

Famous French person who died this day: Jean-Claude Pascal in 1992. He represented Luxembourg twice in the Eurovision song contest, winning it in 1961.

Today’s word: rouge à l__èvres – lipstick

Today’s dicton: Le temps de Sainte-Judith va durer jusqu’au dix – The weather on St Judith’s day will last till the tenth of May