Bonjour all. I realise an entry is due and as I am at a temporary stopping point in between my chores, I thought I’d take myself out into the sun and get on with it. So, the big news here at Port 80 is obviously that Matt started his full-time job at BCMD this week. I will leave it for him to describe it in his next post, but basically it is going ok and we are both adjusting fairly smoothly to being woken up at 7:30 by an alarm clock for the first time in a very long time. It’s still preferable to the Smoo alarm call, which consists of having his front paws pressed onto your windpipe while he bites your nose – and can go off at any time of the morning.
The weather this week has been simply incredible – 24 degrees and sun every day. Unfortunately for Matt, today is the last of it – tomorrow it is down to a much more temperate 16. It is also due to rain for several days now – although lord knows we need it. Matt can take some comfort in the fact that he isn’t the only one who has been missing out on the sun though: I have been flat out all week working on various sites, so I have hardly been out in it myself.
The main project I am working on is the foie gras shop, which is finally nearing completion. On Tuesday, I dropped Matt at work and then called in on the shop where I spent several hours taking pictures of tins of foie gras and all the other products they want to sell on their site. Some of the more gruesome ones include goose hearts served in a sauce made with wild boar’s blood. Nice… It then took me a full day to tidy up and upload all these images but that is now finally done, so there isn’t too much more to do on this one, which is a relief as they want it live in time for the Easter rush.
Also this week, I finished a Sites for Homes website for a French guy with a vast tract of land for sale – L’Épinassie. He wanted the site in English and French as well as an interactive map, so it was a lot of work, but all that remains now is the fun part of invoicing the client – and it will be for about the most we ever charge on Sites for Homes too, which is nice. What with house cleaning and laundry as well, I am being kept very busy at the moment: I have the curry takeaway website to do as soon as I can get around to it, a website for the friends of Bryan and Carol who own a gite, and also another Sites for Homes customer lined up in a couple weeks, so it really is all go. Well, it’s about time we started earning some money again I suppose…
In other news, we are having a few people round for dinner ce soir. Sharon is coming, along with a friend of her’s we havent met before, and his daugher. Lee is also joining us as Richard is still in the UK working. He has been gone about 3 weeks now so we have been making a point to see Lee once a week to keep him company. It’s going to be a very French-themed dinner. For my birthday, Lucien and Mauricette gave me a bottle of pineau, as well as some mystery paté (he refused to tell us what it was made from, which makes me somewhat trepidacious) so we will have the paté and some other meats for the starter, confit de canard for the main, and then cheese. Long time readers may remember an old post of mine in which I waxed lyrical about a cheese called Trappe d’Echourgnac. It’s made with walnut oil and is to die for – but so very expensive that we rarely have it. Anyway, last time we both called round to the Foie Gras shop for a catch-up, at the end of the meeting, he grabbed a 300g bloc of the stuff and gave it to us as a gift, which was really sweet – so that will be the star of the cheese board. Sharon is in charge of dessert ce soir so not sure if that will team with the theme or not but I am sure it will be lovely, and we’ll serve the pineau with it bien sur.
Ok, that’s it from me I think. I have a lounge to hoover and a foie gras shop to build. Bon weekend a tous.