Skip for hire?

The new plan for the floor in the upstairs bedroom would involve lifting all the tiles and digging out all the sand on which they were laid. If the boards beneath were in as good a condition as those I had already exposed, then they could be used as a foundation on which to lay joists and, on top of those, a new floor. In preparation for this, I would take careful measurements of the dimensions of the room.

I also decided to find out where I could hire a skip to dispose of the old tiles and the sand. A visit to the post office was needed so that I could study the local Yellow Pages. This was not terribly successful as there didn’t appear to be any company in the area which hired out the sort of builders’ skips we have in England. All I could find were giant, industrial-sized monsters, but, just in case, I noted the addresses of all the companies supplying these. Mrs S and I then spent several days touring the industrial estates and back streets of every town and city within a forty mile radius. I might have saved both time and fuel if I had bought some street plans. I’m sure there was one back street in Laval that I drove along three or four times, and the number of times we lost ourselves on vast industrial complexes verged on the ridiculous.

But the search proved fruitless. France doesn’t have builders’ skips. I wondered if this was a business opportunity, but then I remembered that practically every car in our village has a tow-bar and every car owner has a trailer. That was how they disposed of unwanted sofas, mattresses, bikes and the like.

I did consider having a tow bar fitted and buying a trailer myself, or borrowing one from Jean-Paul or Jacques, but decided that the cost of the tow bar would be more than I wanted to spend. The materials for the new floor were going to be expensive enough. I would just have to think of some other way to dispose of the remains of the floor.

~~~~~

The church at Chateaubriant again.