I am, it is well known, particularly lucky with my friends and relations all of whom have been heroically helping me during this summer to get Le Presbytére ready for guests.

Latest in, from Spain, is my friend Michael who is finishing off the electrics and generally being very handy with a drill.
He it was who solved my latest problem.

The local festival held here in Beziers is the distinctly Spanish flavoured Feria in the town each August.
It is reckoned to attact around a million people into the area.

There is a tradition of producing beautiful posters for this festival each year, these generally turn into collectors items.

2007 was one of the best, and it was the first summer we spent in the area.

As it was the sixtieth anniversary of Manolete they designed the poster around this bullfighter.
Very appropriatly they based it on a photograph taken by Francesco Cano, himself a son of Beziers.
I was lucky enough to acquire a copy of the poster.

Now as it measures nearly two metres tall and one and a quarter metres wide it was not going to be an easy one to frame or mount.

Michael’s suggestion was that if we wallpaper-pasted it directly on the wall the paper would shrink as it dried and so produce a smooth wrinkle free surface making it look unlike those poster pin ups we used to stick on our flat walls in the sixties.

He was right on all counts.

I present Manolete. in all his glory gracing the littlest room downstairs in Le Presbytére;