Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
formal
devis
for the work - a quotation that becomes binding on both parties once signed -
I'd included the statement that the work had to be completed before the end of November,
which was now a sniff away. The charming but unresponsive Monsieur Lombere was tak-
ing no heed. I explained my worries to Jamie when he came up from the vineyard, showing
him the name of the plumber as I had written it down when a friend in the village gave
me the number. Jamie cracked up. 'Mr Lambert!' he said, writing down the correct spelling.
'I'll call him for you. He's doing all the renovation work at our place.' I went red, feeling
like the village idiot. Despite years of classes I still had no clue about French spelling and
pronunciation.
Jamie's powers of persuasion were epic. Within hours, Monsieur Lambert called to say
Jean-Marc would start the bathroom on Monday. He arrived on cue: a muscular fellow with
a clean-shaven head and an upbeat attitude that remained even when he had to look in-
to the bowels of old toilets. I showed him the renovation target. The bathroom had bright
multi-coloured mosaic tiles on the floor, pink-flowered tiles on the walls, a broken basin, a
broken toilet and a black depression in the wall where a shower had once been. I asked him
what the white box behind the broken toilet was.
'It's a
broyeur
. A
broyeur
is a chopper that minces the waste into a smooth mixture so that
it can travel down a small waste water pipe instead of a large sewage pipe.'
I interrogated him about whether this was acceptable sanitary practice and he assured me
it was. The only alternative was to rebuild the main wall of the house so we could replace
the small pipe with a large sewage pipe. The wall was close to a metre thick and three hun-
dred years old.
'You will have to use a
broyeur
in your new bathroom,' he concluded. 'You can use this
one, it works perfectly.'
He flushed the broken toilet and I heard the signature chopping sound of the
broyeur
. I
was horrified by the whole idea but reluctantly accepted his suggestion, although I had a
feeling it would be trouble.
Afewdayslater,after thenewfloortiles wereinstalled byourtiler,Jean-Marc reappeared
to fit the new bathroom. I had worked until past midnight the night before removing the
old pink flower wall tiles from the shower area. I was adamant that such an unskilled job
had to be done by me to save money. The tile removal took much longer than anticipated
but there was no way I was going to be the reason for a delay in the work after the pressure
we had put on Lambert. I planned to cunningly paint the rest of the tiles with a tile primer
followed by a coat of cream paint. Removing more of them was out of the question.
When we bought the new shower tray Sean and I struggled to move it a few feet so I told
Jean-Marc to let us know when he needed some help to get it upstairs. Before I knew it he
had the tray upstairs without a murmur. Within a day he had finished the new bathroom.
The following day our tiler tiled the shower walls while I painted the primer over the re-
maining pink flowers.
