Did we get lost?

Note the town name on that sign! I think we have indeed been on another planet for the past two or three weeks. Perhaps we took a wrong turn somewhere? This is a sign we came across when taking a back road to the art show venue one day when it was my turn to be on duty.

The show itself was held over for an extra week and we had good crowds throughout the whole time, even though the posters all over the place showed the earlier end date. All in all, this is a very good venue for a show!

What's really been taking up our time, though, has been our septic system. Shortly before a quick trip back to the Ste. Colombe house to pick up some more things left behind, we found ourselves with a non-working toilet. Good thing we were leaving for the weekend! We called a septic-tank emptying company and they agreed to show up on the Monday and empty it. Which they did. But this did not solve the problem. The guys then made a hole (this is the most euphemistic way I can describe what they did) in the pipe going from the bathroom to the tank and used a RotoRooter sort of thing, which improved the situation but did not completely cure it, and left a very picturesque pipe, wrapped in plastic bags. The next day, our usual plumber came by and replaced this piece of pipe with another one without holes. All was well for about 3 days, and then everything backed up again. In the night, I thought to myself, Hey, it's just a piece of pipe that is causing the problem, one piece of pipe. Why can't that bit of pipe, only about 10 feet long, just be replaced?

So next morning, I called our plumber. Sure, said he, of course it could be replaced. But not by him. He only did things inside the house. We then called the people who will ultimately be doing the new septic system. Too busy, couldn't get to such a thing for weeks. Meanwhile, John had a look online and found a 24/7 emergency plumber. (There's a lot of benefits to living somewhere with a large English population; they're used to these sorts of services) They came by the next day, had a look at things and after much pondering about how to get a backhoe through the very narrow quarters leading to the septic tank, the digger operator came up with an easy solution: run the pipe above ground, no digging required. Well of course! It's to be temporary anyway, so why not just take this easy fix. We agreed, and the probably illegal job was done the following day. It's been working now for a week! We're back in the civilized world!!!!

Meanwhile, we've been unpacking boxes, moving furniture, moving furniture again, and again and again. We've also made trips to Ikea, built kitchen cabinets, put them in place, gone shopping for one thing after another. But we do take breaks now and then. We had to do some banking in the town of Lalinde and took in the weekly market as well. Here's a paella stand

and another that sells every sort of handbag you could want.

We also recently treated ourselves to lunch in the bastide town of Monpazier. When caught up in the turmoil of trying to get this house in order, it's easy to forget what an incredibly beautiful part of the world we live in. Here's some photos of a couple of the back streets we walked down in Monpazier.

Monpazier has handbag sellers as well.