At the risk of diminishing our small pool of followers, I am afraid there is still little of interest to report, and less still that is terribly optimistic… but I will do my best, I promise. So, as Matt mentioned in the last post, we went round to Sharon’s on Wednesday to discuss a few business ideas of hers. She is in a similar situation to us – reaching the end of her reserves of cash and casting around for a plan of action – so wanted to run a few things by us to see if there were ways we could work together. One of these plans was about helping business grow their fanbases via Facebook, and could have led to some development work for Matt. After some further research into it though, it now looks like it is not really going to be viable.
I fared slightly better out of the evening in that Sharon wanted to get a new site for her gite business so I am working on that at the moment. I also fared better in that I was the designated driver so my wine intake was a fraction of theirs. Whereas I escaped unscathed, Matt and Sharon were both a little delicate the following morning. Work aside, it was a great evening and Sharon served up a typically excellent dinner of scallop and chorizo pasta (minus the scallops in my case).
Thursday entailed yet another trip to Périgueux, this time to get Lola fitted with new front shock-absorbers. We’d had to order some associated parts before the garage were able to do this, so were a little nervous to see if we had got the right ones, but mercifully all went fine. Well, apart from the fact that it took them about 3.5 hours to do the work, meaning a tedious afternoon for us of hanging around and waiting. On the plus side, the new shock absorbers have made a massive difference to the car. The man who handed us back the keys described the state of the old ones using a word that I shall not repeat due to its colour. Now, we just have to get Lola back to Nontron to retake her MOT and then she is road-worthy again for another 2 years. We hope…
The next event of note was the following evening when we were joined for dinner by our English neighbours in the village, Bryan and Carol, whose daughter Jenni who was visiting from the UK and had just got in that evening. We haven’t really spent tons of time with Bryan or Carol, but every time so far has been very enjoyable, and this was certainly no exception. Their daughter Jenni is a really funny lady and we really hit it off (it helps that she likes a smoke too). As Jenni is more-or-less a veggie, we served up a meal of spinach and ricotta enchiladas with yellow rice, washed down with copious cocktails and wine. It was an evening of laughter and it reminded me very much of a typical soirée with the Roberts clan, with whom I am sure they would get on very well. They eventually left us at around midnight, by which time we were thoroughly inebriated, to the detriment of Saturday, but hey ho.
There isn’t too much to report apart from that – we’ve mostly been holed up here in Port 80 with the fire going, not doing very much. I have had a little bit of website work to do: I have just finished a website for my favourite client so far and been paid for it, which is good. I have also had a few other small scraps here and there, all of which helps and for which I am grateful… but none of which is keeping the wolf too far from the door. Better news came from back home, where Dad has managed to get the parts needed to get a couple of his vandalised machines repaired.
On Monday, we were pleased to get a visit from Lee at lunchtime. Poor Richard is back in the UK for 3 weeks, doing work on one of the properties they rent out, so Lee is currently fending for himself out in Villebois. Anyway, the boys have a load of paint they brought over from the UK and have started advertising it online, which has so far resulted in a few sales – including to a lady in our neck of the woods. After Lee had dropped off her paint, he called in on us and stayed for lunch (the Port 80 sandwich, bien sûr). As ever, it was nice to catch up.
I think the only other thing to mention is that it is mushroom season out here at the moment. We have scores of them, of all shapes and colours, popping up all over the place in the garden (although we haven’t been brave enough to harvest any of those ones). The locals are all out combing the woods in the area, generally coming back with kilos of huge cêpes (porchini). Encouraged by that, Matt disappeared off into the woods yesterday for an hour or so, returning with at least one confirmed cêpe and one other large mushroom of uncertain type – which we have confirmed to be benign by virtue of the fact that we are still here after tucking into it. Mushroom has, needless to say, featured very heavily in our diet lately.