The title is a line from ‘Greece’ the musical that just popped into my head. It seemed appropriate given the weather, and also the sudden and welcome spate of potential clients we have acquired. Today is Bastille Day, or ‘La Fete Nationale’ here in France. We have traditionally failed to attend any celebrations for the event since arriving here, and this year is set to continue in the same vein. That said, we have had a lot of social events going on recently all the same, as I shall get to. To pick up from where Matt left off, first I am very pleased to report that the glorious weather continues unbroken and shows no sign of abating. We have taken advantage of it as much as possible, with our default meal being a barbecue for the 2 of us.
Last Sunday, we invited Francoise and her sister Nadine and her husband Jean-Claude over for a BBQ. We’ve not spent nearly enough time with the latter two who are really good company, so it was nice to see them again – and always a pleasure to see Francoise. We made a big batch of margaritas which got everyone going nicely, and spent the whole evening out in the garden. We also arranged to have them all back again the following Friday for the monthly Milhac curry night.
The next day, Nat and Jill invited us over to theirs for an impromptu meal (also a BBQ). They’d been having issues with their satellite TV setup in their gites so asked Matt if he could come and take a look. Unfortunately, he is as baffled as they are as to what the problem is, but we had a lovely evening all the same, sat outside on their terrace. Jill’s mother died unexpectedly a few weeks ago, so she is understandably not at her best but she is doing well all told.
The following morning, we received an enquiry via our website from a legal firm based in Eastbourne who want some help modernising their site and updating some of the images. We were all excited that we’d had a genuine enquiry direct from the website, though as it turned out it was in fact yet another word-of-mouth lead. I did a site for a gite owner out here and her husband runs the law firm so she gave him our details. I have put together a mockup to show him which I will send tomorrow. In theory, he only wants me to produce a design for his current web company to build, but I am going to try and persuade him to let us take over the site entirely.
Monday aside, not too much happened over the early part of the week. Matt’s still working on his current project and has made it to the pool a few times, now that it is the summer holidays and he can go whenever he likes. For me, I continued to review our own site following on from the redesign of the home page and have given it an overhaul. It is now far less text-heavy and (we think) much more effective. And indeed, the proof is in the pudding as they say, because on Wednesday morning, we had a phone call out of the blue from a couple who recently moved to France from New Zealand. They produce and sell hand-made pewter jewellery and want an online shop building, which could turn in to a fairly decent bit of work for the both of us. We arranged to meet Thursday morning and they seem really nice. We asked where they found us and thry said they’d seen our post on Anglo Info (a giant expat info resource and classified site). We were most gratified to learn that they picked us out of the many web designers listed on the basis that they liked our site’s home page, so we feel like we’ve gotten something right there.
On Friday morning, we were invited over to Sylvie’s place for breakfast. She is part of Matt’s conversation group and along with us, invited along Jacqui, Josianne and Cammi. Despite finding it a little odd that it was a breakfast and not lunch invite, we had a lovely time with a copious amount of food consumed. Afterwards, we all trooped off to Brantome to have a stroll through the weekly market. It being July, it was heaving with tourists but it’s a nice market and not one we get to much, so we enjoyed the experience.
That evening’s curry night was well attended: Francoise and husband Phillipe, Jean-Claude, and (finally) Lee and Richard too. The latter have been very busy boys lately so we’d not seen anything of them for several months. It was also their 14th anniversary that day, so congrats to them! They’re very well and making good progress on renovating their kitchen which should be done imminently. To celebrate that, we’re invited over to their place in a couple weeks, which will be great. Nadine was supposed to join us as well for the curry but she was up in Paris and so got stranded as a result of that awful derailment. Such a relief she wasnt on that actual train! The boys hadnt met the French contingent before but they all seemed to hit it off really well. All the French speak excellent English, but the boys (who both take weekly lessons) surprised me by how much they understood, and by their replies: they’ve made great progress. Unusually for a Lee and Richard soirée, we didnt actually go too crazy on the booze. The boys wanted to get on with their kitchen so left at around 11, followed by Jean-Claude. Francoise and Phillipe left an hour or so later and we weren’t long to bed after.
The French socialising continued yesterday as well. After a quiet day spent working, we were invited out by our friend Morgan to a new restaurant that has opened in Nontron. He went to school with the owners so knows them very well. We had a couple beers beforehand then got to the restaurant for about 8. It was deserted when we arrived but within 30 mins began to fill up. This was helped no end by the arrival of a very loud group of about 15 people who were celebrating an upcoming marriage. Nontron is a town with an inexplicable dearth of restaurants so I am really pleased to say that the food was extremely good and reasonably priced too. The couple who own it are also both very lovely, so we’ll definitely go again. They’re also on board to be new clients of ours. They’d contacted a web agency based in Limoges who quoted them over €1000 to build them a site, and then a staggering €90 per month for hosting and maintenance. We were shocked to hear this and told them that it amounted to daylight robbery. We offered an alternate quote and they preferred it considerably. They want to wait till summer’s over before doing anything, so we’ll check back with them soon.
After the meal, we said goodbye to Morgan and headed home via St Pardoux. We’d heard that there were in fact Bastille Day celebrations going on in the town that night and indeed, as we got there, the main road was thronged and the fireworks just started going off. We considered stopping but we were both a bit tired so we just came home instead – after all, we had our Fete Nationale non-attendance tradition to maintain.