Many years ago, shortly after I arrived in London, I was having a drink with Mary Carol and Abby along with a friend of Abby’s who was visiting from the States. That day, the friend had been to the National Portrait Gallery, a place I never managed to get to while living there. She was amused by the portrait of an aristocratic lady who had died due to “a surfeit of cherries”. I too found this amusing and it has stuck with me ever since. It’s not been until this week, though that I’ve finally understood how this would be possible. We have two cherry trees in the back garden and the bigger of the two is absolutely laden with fruit. Tomorrow we will get out the ladder and have a picking party but then we must decide what to do with our bounty. We had a cherry chicken salad the other night that was tasty and we have a few new recipes to try so I’ll report back soon.
It’s been a largely quiet week around here although we had a couple of social events. On Tuesday evening, we finally managed to get together with the couple who run the equestrian centre. I bumped into her when Mary Carol et al. were here and invited them to the housewarming. They were busy that night so we had them around for a drink instead. We never got her name but he is called Guillaume and they have a four year old son called Mattias. Their story, as far as I understood is that they’ve been in the area around eight years, the first six renting in the nearby town of St Pardoux and for the last two years, here in Mazeroux. He’s originally from Paris, she from Bordeaux but they’re both very happy to be here. He’s a ferrier so doesn’t work exclusively at the centre, she runs the centre full time. They’ve both always been involved with horses so running their own centre is a dream come true for them. That evening, we spent a couple of hours chatting and we all enjoyed ourselves (except Mattias who kept announcing that it was time to go).
Our other event was on Wed night where we went out for pizza and poker. I had seen the event advertised on our local internet bulletin board, hosted at a holiday place near Marval, about 20 min drive north just over the Dordogne border in Haut-Vienne. The venue is run by an three English people and they rent rooms and cottages during the summer, with a fishing lake and bar/restaurant. Will and I showed up around 7 and had a pizza each. They were good, not great but welcome just the same. We hadn’t brought tons of cash with us so were disappointed to see they didn’t take cards. We had just enough to buy in for poker (€5 each), pizza and two drinks.
There were three other players, two older English regulars plus one guest of the hotel, also English. We played ‘hold em and I won the first game, after two of the players bought in again, earning me €25. This meant that we could afford another drink so we decided to stay for a second game. Will came in third the first game and sat out the second game. I ended up in second place that game and then the winner bought everyone a round of drinks so we were there until midnight. They hold a game every week so this may turn into a regular thing for me, but probably not for Will. Even though everyone was pleasant enough, it wasn’t great fun hanging out with English ex-pats, especially the kind who have lived here for ten years but still don’t speak the language. Then again, they’re not very good at poker so if they want to pay me for listening to their blather, I’m game for a few rounds anyway.
The weather hasn’t been wonderful. It’s cloudy and often humid, temps in the low 20’s but it’s only rained twice, and not for very long each time. So the garden is withering away out there, despite our occaissional waterings. On the plus side, the raspberries out front are now in full swing and I’ve been having a bowlful each morning. The tomatoes also seem to be doing well and it looks like we’ve purchased our last ones of the summer if we can hold out another few days.
We’ve both been working this week although I was a bit slow off the starting block. It’s typical of me to spend a few days cogitating (i.e. procrastinating) until I figure out how I’m going to build everything so it wasn’t until Friday that I really started applying myself. On the plus side, I’m making good progress and should have some preliminary pages to show Alan in a few days. On sitesforhomes.com, we got our new brochure printed up so we’ll be spreading those around soon and also, we got some vouchers for Google ad words so Will set that up today. This week, I’ll be applying for auto-entrepreneur status so that I’m official too.
Ok, off to eat some cherries and do some work.