Friday 20th April

Today was Paul’s birthday! The downstairs of the old house was cleared out and cleaned by the volunteers in preparation for the nights’ festivities. Today we all buzzed around preparing for the big event! Yes, it as Paul’s 35th

birthday yet again. The first person to arrive was Christian, a football friend of Pauls who works for the local commune of Brossac. Within the hour La Giraudiere transformed from a building site into the “Place To Be”. Neighbors of La Giraudiere and friends of Paul, both English and French, mixed with the international volunteers to provide the perfect celebratory atmosphere.

Guests started to arrive at 7.30 pm. We volunteers tried our rusty French and were a bit intimidated for a while. However, we slowly mingled and the lovely locals were really patient while we tested out incomprehensible sentences of Franglais on them and kindly corrected any mistakes we had made.

Lucy, a local Expat, had baked an amazing Pavlova and Sarah, our French neighbour at Chez Moche, had baked Chocolate tart which was gone in a second (once we had sung Happy Birthday).

The icing on the cake for Paul was to see 3 of his first apprentices, Nicholas, Julien and Aymeric, who began working with Paul in1998. They had either been an apprentice or had been a stageaire of Paul and started learning building and restoration with him when he first came to France. It was a true birthday treat to see them as this was the first time since 2004 that they had all been together at La Giraudiere.

While many of the locals and neighbors left the party around midnight, Paul and the younger group of locals and volunteers remained late into the night singing, dancing, and playing pool. True to form, the last to leave was Aymeric at 3.00 am.