Another contender joins the race...

Usually I switch off the ringer on the phone & turn the volume right down on the answermachine, but last night (for some reason) decided not to, in case anyone wanted to contact us. [Normally late night calls are drunken wrong numbers & early morning calls are weird wrong numbers; why are morning wrong numbers always weird?] The phone rang just before 6.45, and as I was awake, I got up to answer it (and possibly deliver a pithy lecture on the desirability of dialling carefully before 8am!). The caller started to leave a message in French (you don't know how heartening it is to actually receive a call from a French speaker, rather than just being successful in calling them!), and I realised it was another maître d'œuvre so I called David & got him to the phone in time to speak with candidate number 3 for the position of saviour of our project.

David was chatting away for about quarter of an hour & laughed throatily several times, so I guessed the chap had a sense of humour. He doesn't think he can visit when we are out there later this month, but maybe M. Lorin would be kind enough to let him in? [That's top of David's to-do list today; nicely ask our kind neighbour for a favour.] He gave David his mobile number and his website address, and said we would recognise him by his moustache. I asked David whether he would be Asterix or Obelix. After a quick look at the website, he's "Mr Asterix" - check it out if you don't believe me!

I (very often, anyway) believe in 'third time lucky' - that's not to say we will go with "Mr Asterix", but getting three opinions will give us a majority decision. I foresee a couple of alternatives: either Dominique D's work is OK (in which case we will happily accept that that is just the French way and go with it), or it is not OK (then we need to decide whether to try to get Dominique to put it right, or engage another builder), and: the maître d'œuvre will with either be willing to oversee the work to (successful!) completion or he won't. The fact that the three gentlemen are willing to have a look seems to indicate a willingness to undertake the project management rôle... So the main question is going to be: is Dominique's work OK?

Either way, please keep your fingers crossed for us that we get to a successful conclusion in a timely manner ( I won't say 'quickly', as I have a nasty suspicion that the bits Dominique has done that I'm not happy with were done 'quickly!).