Well, it’s been a week, so here’s the latest from Mazeroux! First off, January is a busy time for birthdays in my family, with my brother, mother and uncle all having one in the first week of Jan, so I shall start by wishing them happy birthday on the blog. Also, David Bowie (my personal God) just turned 66 yesterday so happy birthday to him too!
We’ve not been up to too much here, but there has been some socialising, and also some work-related developments, as I shall recount. Our first social activity of 2013 was a Galete du Roi at our local bar in Milhac. This is a French New Year’s tradition whereby everyone gets together, normally at the local town hall, to have a few drinks and eat galettes. These are cakes, coming in different formats depending on the region of France. Here in the south-west, they’re very light and spongy and sugar-topped, but otherwise quite plain. The Parisian version comes with a yummy frangipane centre. We met up with members of Matt’s conversation class, mostly French, at Chez Pierre, the dingy bar down the road where the floor, ceiling and walls are the colour of the inside of a long-term smoker’s lung.
It is normally sparsely attended, but on this occasion, it was more or less full and everyone was in a very jovial mood. The pastis flowed freely, and most of the French bought a galette a-piece, so we got to sample several varieties. Inside every cake is a small figurine (a bit like the UK sixpence-in-the-Christmas-cake tradition) and whoever gets the slice with it becomes the king (regardless if they’re male or female). They then choose a queen and both wear crowns for the duration of the celebrations. It all sounds quite peculiar for a country so famed for its intolerance of the monarchy, but there you go! We’d intended to stay for just an hour or so but in the end were there till the eponymous owner chucked us out at 10pm, all of us pleasantly tipsy.
As for work, we have finally completed and made live the all-new version of our business website, Port 80 Services. We don’t have many serious competitors out here, but there is one other big player in town called Lazy Lizard and as clients are so few on the ground, we decided to up our game to compete with them more seriously. Now that Matt is done with BCMD, the site is now much more of a blend of our 2 different web skill-sets, offering a full range of websites and web-related services. We’ve no idea what the market is for web-based business solutions out here, but if there is one, we are well placed to corner it.
Once the new site went live, we did an ad on our local expat network, which resulted in an immediate enquiry, so I am calling this a good omen. Last year, we took out an ad in a new “yellow pages” style directory of English businesses in the Périgord Vert area. This is being printed as I write this and should be delivered very soon. We hope this helps expand our pool of customers. Time will tell…
I have a meeting next week with a lovely client whose site I began late last year, and should hopefully get it finished within a couple weeks. She already has plans for 2 further sites that Matt & I will put together for her, so all being well, we should be quite busy for a few weeks to come. We have also had 2 small requests for some IT-helpdesk related work.
Going back to the social scene, it’s curry night in Milhac this Friday. The owner has had a few health problems lately, forcing them to run a reduced menu for a few months. Fortunately, she is back with a vengeance: full menu restored along with a new Specials menu, currently featuring Thai curries and other yummy treats. To celebrate this, we’ve invited over Lee & Richard, who we havent seen for weeks and weeks, Bryan & Carol, and a friend of theirs Nancy, to come and partake of a curry feast at ours. We’re looking forward to this very much.
Well, I think that is all I have to report. We have been spoilt by a very mild winter so far, although up in Mazeroux, it has been very damp and foggy, which always makes it feel colder. Unfortunately, the mildness looks set to change from next week: snow is forecast and we have a stretch of days looming where it will barely get above freezing. We’ve been relying solely on the log burner until now, and have been blazing through our wood as a result, but I think we’ll now cave in and turn on the central heat. I hope you are all keeping warm wherever you are. Tune in again for more news soon!