Tuesday 15th March
The sleepy little town of Eymet is in a state of chaos. Not only is there a new Restaurant opening soon in the square but the Cafe de Paris is being refurbished. Add to that the fact that for weeks they have been installing new drains all over the town; roads have been closed, bulldozers, pneumatic drills, stone cutters and hordes of French workmen everywhere. And today (yesterday of course) they were almost outside the Café (again). Terrible noise and dust everywhere. And we had M. Cantiran with his drain clearing lorry parked outside, I think they were flushing out an old drain right outside the Café, terrible smell. The road is quite narrow and his large lorry was blocking the entire road, I even had to move several chairs and tables for him to get his lorry in.
Heaven knows if we will get any customers today, but French workmen are no respecters of ordinary people. The word in the town is that it will all be finished by Easter (two weeks time) but as we have never known a French artisan to actually turn up on time, let alone finish the job in a timely fashion we have our severe doubts. Of course the incentive of the Easter holidays and an influx of mostly English tourists should spur them on, but we suspect that by Easter they mean Easter Sunday, forgetting that most of our English visitors will come either the week before or the week after. However the signs on the Café de Paris say they will re-open on 16th March, and the Pizzeria which was shut for the winter re-opens this Friday too. So, fingers crossed we will get back to normal soon, but for the moment we just have to put up with the constant noise and dust.