After the summer break, with Abi at school in Mirepoix, I found I had more time to organise and oversee the work being carried out on our house in Chalabre. Ed was in London every other week, so I was the Project Manager when he was away. We were at the stage where we needed to find a plumber and as ever, Marielle from the Hotel de France, came to the rescue. She introduced us to Christian, Plumber Extraordinaire. He was a large man with huge hands and an appetite to match and his work was highly rated in the local community.
We arranged for him to visit and he duly turned up, checked out the necessary work and gave us a quote. We agreed a price and then arranged a start date. That date came and went and we waited, and waited. Eventually about three weeks after the agreed date, he turned up one Monday morning with his ‘boy’ (Pascal, aged about 50). They drank a coffee, had a cigarette and began working.
The first job was to take out the ugly grey stone sink in the huge room that Madame (the previous owner aged 86) had used as her store room. We wanted to reverse the rooms, so that her old smaller kitchen became the utility and her store room became the main kitchen.
Madame in her old store room 
Madame’s old kitchen
The store room had been used as a place to keep her freezer, vegetables, confitures, fruits, and curing meats. The old stone sink, fixed to the wall in a dark corner, played a big part in meat hanging, where slaughtered pigs were left to dry out over the sink. We decided that we wouldn’t be slaughtering pigs any time soon, so we asked Christian to remove it.
The old storeroom to new kitchen 
The old kitchen to utility room
He measured it a dozen times and shook his head. Then he asked us if we were sure. We said of course we were sure.
“It’s very heavy – a huge job to remove it” he said
“Can’t you just break it up?” I asked
“Mon Dieu absolument non! it is a lovely sink” he cried
“Ok, then what can we do?” I was getting fed up by now – I really didn’t like the ugly old thing and it leaked like a sieve.
“I will arrange it” he said and wrote some notes in his little black book
After several days, a lorry with a large crane attached, turned up and parked beside the wall leading down to our garden. Christian, Pascal and the lorry driver came down to the kitchen to survey the scene. They proceeded to carefully remove the old sink from the 2ft thick wall and with the aid of three other volunteers, lifted the sink and placed it on a trolley. They grunted and shoved and pushed it to the garden wall. Then they wrapped a huge belt around the sink and secured it to the hook of the crane. They gradually hauled the thing up the wall and onto the back of the lorry. By now the whole street was full of the locals, all wondering why we would want rid of such a wonderful piece of kitchen ware.
Sink finally out of the kitchen 
Hauling it up and over the wall
We were delighted – the kitchen was on it’s way.
Stories from my typewriter 