Page 329 - Demo

325The first big job I had to undertake was repairing the roof. It was OK on the habitable part of the house but there were holes over the barn. I also wanted to put in some dormer windows at the back of the house and some Velux at the front. Planning permission was simple. I took a photo of the house and then drew on to the photo what I wanted to look like when I had finished with a little bit of a written explanation and that was it. The mayor had a certain amount of time to approve the plans or reject them and the mayor was the brother I think of one of my neighbours who spoke good English and so it all went through. My neighbour Pierre was a sheep dealer. He bought lambs from England, actually from Yorkshire, and then transported them to France. They stayed on his farm for a bit and were then moved on across Europe. Different countries wanted their lambs slaughtered at different ages and so the scheme worked well, for the farmers if not for the lambs. Once permission was granted, I had to put up a large board outside the house with the permit number and a description of what work was going to be carried out. Thus, anyone could see what had been approved and could take action if something was wrong. Consequently, the planning system policed itself. The building had something like 10,000 little tiles on the roof. I had to take these off, check and replace them and if need be thetimber joists, cover it all with a membrane and then nail on battens before putting the tiles back on. I started at one end of the barn and slowly worked my way along both sides of the roof. It took weeks, as I was going up a ladder, collecting a number of tiles, taking them down and stacking them and then repeating it day after day. At one point a family from down the lane said they would come and help but I told them I had plenty of time and they had children to take care of. I did say that if they did not see me for a couple of days, perhaps they could look inside the barn and see if I had fallen in. Quite a lot of the tiles were cracked and had to be discarded but I wanted to save as many as possible. As I said, about two thirds of the roof was over the barn part of the building and