This evening, and in this heat , Sile and I set ourselves a particularly onerous task.
We needed a wardrobe in the spare room and , having discovered the price of anything built in, decided to go the Argos route.
The advantage with buying flat pack furniture is that it can fit up the stairs in our tiny house.
The disadvantage is the work you have to do to put it together.
The, particularly large, wardrobe arrived this morning.`
If I have learnt anything about the assembly of flat pack furniture it is that it requires at least two people to put it together.
I delayed the assembly accordingly until Sile came home from school.

It was a bastard to put together.
We had to stop for out tea in the middle but it was still near to ten before we had the brute up.

It must be said that it looks particularly good.
(And if it standing tomorrow it will look even better,)

I had had the foresight, while we were eating the tea, to put a bottle of white wine in to the freezer to chill.

Oh what a pleasure it was to come downstairs,hot and cranky on a wonderful balmy evening, to be greeted by a truly well chilled glass of white wine.
(In this instance a fine Picpul de Pinet)
On these occasions I am always reminded of a moment in Elizabeth David’s anthology; An Omelette and a Glass of Wine..
Ms David describes a visit to a restaurant in the outskirts of Lyon in which the chef was the illustrious Mme Brazier.

The calm confidence, the certitude that all here would be as it should which one felt on entering the establishment was communicated to her customers by Mme Brazier herself, invisible though she was in the kitchen, by her front of house staff.
Her maitre d’hotel was a charming young woman- her daughter-in- law I believe- whose reassuring welcome to two English travellers arriving on a scorching summer day, hot flustered, extremely late and despairing of lunch after a prolonged tangle with the Lyon motorway, was beautiful to hear.
“But sit down. You have plenty of time. Relax.
Shall I bring you some cool white wine?
When you are a little rested you can order”.
What an impeccable welcome.
There is nothing more refreshing to a hot and flustered palate than a glass of cool white wine.
Again Elizabeth David had described a moment which lives with me for ever.