Summer in the city

A day in Narbonne today, seeing two construction firms to follow up our project. Our meeting in the morning went really well. We have been constantly impressed by the way this person a) listens to what we want and b) proactively identifies potential problems and solves them, often directly on his computer as we watch. He has a real talent for visualisation. He has ended up with a design which we think is nearly perfect ... but watch this space.

After that we drove into town for lunch. We'd planned to eat at one of the places in the covered market, but it's Monday -- not a good plan. We went to Co, just across the road, instead. We haven't been there for ages, but it's worth more frequent visits. The menu is quite eclectic. S had his favourite lightly cooked tuna (with a rather odd ratatouille containing chickpeas) and I ordered banh mi, not really knowing what it was, but the ingredients sounded interesting and relatively healthy. I enjoyed it very much, although it was tricky to eat tidily (extra).

Then we headed to our second meeting where we had a mauvaise surprise when Kristelle produced the plan of the plot that she had got directly from A-L, the owner. Compared to ours it had shrunk by 20 m2 (not much of a problem) and the access had been moved to the other side of the plot, completely f*cking up our plans, given that the plot is deep but with a narrow frontage. We were gobsmacked. She'd done her best with the constraints, but her two proposals didn't work for us at all. She'd made some very weird decisions.

We left feeling quite peeved, thinking that A-L had changed the plan without telling us, but careful examination of the two plans when we got home suggested that she had in fact given us an early draft which was long superseded by the version she had given to Kristelle. We had given the wrong plan in good faith to all the companies we'd visited. Argh!

We went round to see A-L in the early evening, and this did indeed turn out to be the case. It was a genuine, albeit careless, mistake and the version we had just seen for the first time was the definitive one, with planning permission. She then phoned the architect (whom we all know) who had drawn up the plans to discuss with him whether we could revert to the original version. It all went pear-shaped at this point, as the arrogant, self-satisfied architect bombarded us with all the reasons why the house design we were happy with was complete rubbish and not at all appropriate, without knowing anything about our requirements or why we'd decided on that layout. All we wanted was a rational discussion about access, but he just talked over us and didn't listen. Infuriating.

Finally, after nearly an hour, we managed to get rid of him. A-L and her husband P had family staying, including four grandchildren, so we thought they needed some peace after that and were going to leave, but they kindly insisted that we stay for a glass of wine with them on the terrace -- A-L was a bit embarrassed about the mess-up, which she acknowledged was her fault.

Back home, emails to the construction companies apologising ... we tried to figure out a solution on our own, but are hoping that our interlocutor from this morning can use his talent to come up with a solution.  Tomorrow is another day!