“Hi hope evrefing is fine and i hopes you are happy here evrefing is misrebulle,” Bea wrote to her best friend Manon yesterday. This morning though there is a feeling a little like Christmas in the air. In Rupert’s briefcase there is a contract. At 10 o’clock we have a meeting to exchange said contract for a key to our new home. This is the closest we have got to leaving the hotel. The only thing that can go wrong now is that the landlady disagrees with something in the contract. I don’t think I’ll be able to breathe as she reads it.

It is a beautiful villa, slightly out of the centre of town but close to the office and also close to the new Corniche, which is not as posh or beautiful as the one we know and love, but it’s still a corniche. There are three floors which we will need to find furniture for and a huge roof terrace where we can sit outside when the weather allows. As a friend pointed out last night; it’s too hot for many months.

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I have shopping lists buzzing around my brain; washing machine, fridge, soap, towels, beds, clothes hangers, tea-towels. I am trying to remember how big our bathroom is and how many of my products I can fit in there. I can’t believe that after almost five months on the road (we left Sainte Cecile in June) we may finally have a home to go to.

I hope we will all be less misrebulle come 10 o’clock……