A rare sighting

Now you may think that in the last few weeks all I've done is swanned around eating home baked madeleines on beautifully upholstered sofas! Not so. Work had been progressing on guest room three, albeit slowly.

Andrew finished the plastering and put up the new coving and replacement picture rail.

Finished plaster

Nearly ready for decorating

In our renovation work it tends to be that we both demolish, Andrew does the hard  and technical work with the rebuilding and I decorate, floating around with swatches of fabric and paint charts. This room is nearly ready to be signed off to me, but I started a bit early with the ceiling and coving. You may have noted a singular lack of photographs of me on the blog, mainly because I really dislike being photographed. Foolishly I left my camera around and was stuck up a ladder with very little choice in the matter, you may notice I'm not smiling!  But at least it proves that I do make some contribution on the house.

Really not impressed

Lorries & lanes don't mix

The end of our lane on Wednesday.

Awesome books

I don't think I've told you about Awesome Books before have I? I found them via Amazon a few years ago. I don't read much fiction these days but really enjoy foodie books, travel writing, design books and practically anything on living in France. Or as Andrew calls them, my "Driving over squashed figs in Provence" books.  Sometimes I can manage to combine all of these ('Table in the Tarn' being one example) which is a real bonus.

Anyway back to Awesome Books. They sell new books but it's their second hand - or if you prefer pre-loved - section that I really enjoy. They have thousands at £2.59 each with free delivery to the U.K, Western Europe and the U.S. The area that we're concentrating on for French house hunting is loosely based in the Quercy region so it made sense to type that into Awesome's search facility. This gave me the obvious, guide books and maps, which was a good start. Then I got creative and put in related words such as truffles, which gave me Anne Gregg's book on French markets  "Tarragon & truffles". As you can see from the photograph, from the last two orders, there's a huge range of books. I'm even happy with the ones in French.

My latest purchases

Apart from good value and free delivery their customer service is excellent. I had placed an order about a month before Christmas and it was only after a couple of weeks I realised they hadn't arrived. On the Sunday evening I dropped them an email and got a response back within an hour. They had been despatched but as it was just standard Royal Mail there was no tracking. So they would check to see if they had duplicates in store and send them out with no extra charge. They arrived within four days.

Beautifully packaged

Like Amazon they have a wish list facility - I'm currently waiting for a second hand version of 'Honey from a weed' by Patience Gray - and will send you an email when they have a copy. Talking of emails they do send you offers but at sensible intervals that don't clog up my inbox.

So if you love books, have a browse at Awesome, you never know what you may find!