BnB fun

It[s been a while since I wrote, a week maybe? Work's pretty tiring here, although I have the afternoons off to do as I please - saying that, I have been doing a lot of translation stuff out of my work hours because Jan needs her new website to be up and running, so she's making the most of my language skills. Her next helper, who'll be here next Sunday, is a website manager, so hopefully that will make a big difference.
It's really lovely here, I love it. The work in the mornings is DIY jobs. This week's tasks have included: varnishing a stone table with linseed oil (it's what you use for porous surfaces), plastering cracks on the staircase, removing old gluey stuff from the roof and scraping it clean (now we're trying to figure out how to use the glue gun to fill in the gaps), putting up a bed curtain in one of the rooms, organising leaflets into different categories (sports, art, wine, etc), weeding the garden, hoovering...
And we're also doing a lot of cooking. Stuffed peppers, onion soup, chicken with avocado in peanut-butter and coconut sauce, loads of delicious salads (veg is so fresh here), risotto, ice-cream, bread and butter pudding, rhubarb crumble, and the list goes on. Jan is making strawberry jam at the moment, she made some banana and date jam this afternoon too.
So to burn off all thse calories, I try to do something active active every day - although the work here can be quite physical. I either cycle somewhere or go for a walk. There are loads of walks in the area, we have some leaflets with different walks, their level of difficulty, number of kms etc, so I'm trying to go through them. Today I did a 13 km one that was meant to take 3h45mins but as I got lost three times it took me about 5 hours. My worst mistake was probably when it said to cross the river and I took the wrong turning and saw there were no stepping stones or anything, so I took my boots and socks off and crossed it, water up to my knees. Then realised it was the wrong route completely, and had to cross back. But it was really nice anyway, the sun was shining, and there was plenty to look at.
We've just had dinner outside and finished with some walnut bread, cheese and really nice wine. Could I ask for more? Feeling pretty lucky at the moment. Trying to do some reading amidst all the translation - Jan has loads of good books. I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird, finally, but also reading bits about this book about Lewis Carroll (remember my presentation on his photos of children?) and one about Oscar Wilde. It's great, although I don;t know how, time just flies here, so the days end without me realising and I just want to stop time.
I've booked a hotel for 3 nights in May, cause I've left a week out of work to chill out and visit Provence, which is meant to be beautiful. But before that I;m working at a vineyard near Bordeaux, so probably more branches needing attaching!
I've been meaning to send postcards but we hardly ever leave the village - we went to the cinema the other night and it was such a culture shock, we were surrounded by masses of people and teenagers, and when you're living in a more or less isolated village you just forget that civilisation exists, it's a very strange feeling. But, sitting out in the evening listening to the birds and the frogs.. I wouldn't change that for the world.