In order to return to Sunday blogging, I’m penning this week’s update a day early so you’re only getting a 6-day summary from me for the festive entry. As Matt mentioned, on Monday, we went round to Peter & Maggie’s house for drinks and to have a look at his malfunctioning laptop. As we pulled up, we were both immensely relieved to see that Barry & Carol (our erstwhile band mates) had been invited too as their car was parked outside.
In fairness, Maggie is good company. Her problem is clearly just her taste in men as Peter is quite odious. He’s ex-military and it shines though in all he says and does. Anyway, with Barry and Carol there too it was a lot more tolerable, and Maggie’s mulled wine was very welcome. Matt sorted the laptop and we left as soon as was polite afterwards.
Unfortunately for Matt, it turned out there was still something up with the laptop, so Peter was round ours the following day for more advice. Luckily, Matt managed to pack him off fairly quickly, although he’s now been roped in to shopping for a replacement machine for Peter. That evening we were invited around Les Beaufils for a Christmas Eve meal. As you might have guessed, this was of gargantuan proportions. We started with some slices of bread, some topped with rillettes and some with butter and both flavoured with truffles. This was washed down with homemade punch. Next was a soup, followed by a foie gras course. For these, we had a sweet white wine. The main was roast turkey legs with cepes and chestnuts, served with an excellent red. We managed to persuade them to leave off the cheese course, but still then had a dessert to get through. This was all capped off with a chartreuse or 2 for good measure. Obscenely full, we came home and digested in a daze in front of a film.
We were still full the next day – Christmas day – so decided to forego breakfast & lunch and have just one large meal later that afternoon. We opened some bubbles and then our presents. Matt got me a new Ipod docking station to replace the temperamental one we’ve been stuck with for the last 4 years. I got him a food processor which has yet to be taken for a spin, but seems all-singing and all-dancing. From the UK, I received a lot of Amazon vouchers (many thanks family!) a good chunk of which I’ve already spent. We also had some nice prints and a DVD from my Nan. We had a skype call with la famille Roberts in the afternoon, slightly marred by a dodgy internet connection, but got to chat to Dave as well so that was good.
With me sous-chef’ing, Matt put together a fairly traditional X-Mas roast – turkey, roast tatties, green beans, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. This has sustained us for several meals since and the turkey remains have already been converted into a large batch of soup. We spent the rest of the day drinking, smoking and watching movies, feeling justified as it was grey and rainy out.
Boxing Day was more or less a repeat (minus presents) so I shall skip over it. For the next 2 days, we both returned to getting some work done. Our jewellery client wanted some 275 or so new products adding to the site so I got the product list translated into French and then Matt got it all organised and uploaded. I also gave the house a big clean yesterday in readiness for the arrival of our last visitor of 2013/first visitor of 2014 – Gerald from San Francisco. He gets in to Angouleme this evening from Paris. We thought he was going to spend a few days in Paris before coming to us, but apparently he only crossed the Atlantic yesterday, so perhaps the plan is to do Paris at the end of his trip instead. More news on that, and on what will almost certainly be the quietest NYE of his life so far, soon…