18-21 October - Ceret

Autumn has definitely arrived. The last few days had remained relatively balmy, in the mid-late 20s, and sunny, but on Monday 21st it turned much colder and it was the start of a forecast week of rain. The leaves are falling from the trees, and the leaf-blower man and street-sweeper have a tough time of it to clear them up every day. They do a tremendous job, as the town is always immaculate by 8am every morning. That is all except for the dog crap of course. We're not convinced it is getting any less, even though some people now carry doggy-do bags, and the council has employed a 'Pooper Scooper". The latter is a guy who rides around on a scooter with a vacuum cleaner built on the back to suck up all the droppings on the alleyways. I hope he gets paid well.

Lovely autumn light

We had the English couple from downstairs up for apero on Sunday, before they departed back to England. They'll be back in early December, hopefully to find their renovations virtually complete. They are keen to paint their windows and shutters to match ours, but it won't happen for a few months yet. We are planning to recoat our own shutters, which are starting to look a bit weather-beaten after 5 years, before we leave this year. I will also give the details of the paints to the owner of the bottom floor and the first level apartment in the hope he will also paint his. It will give the building facade a huge lift to have all the shutters and windows looking fresh and new.

We bought a garden sprayer and have tried spraying bleach onto the facade of the building, just by leaning outside out balcony windows. However unfortunately it seems to have had little effect in removing the grime. The facade still looks very grim, especially now the neighbouring building has been given a facelift. Plan B might be to now look at pricing up water-blasting the facade (and possibly painting), with the attendant costs of having to have scaffold erected.

Our days are definitely a little quieter now that autumn has arrived. It was pretty cold out on our run this morning.