I’m sure you’re all anxious for news of the concert, so I’ll start there. This was for Françoise’s leaving do, held at their place in the gite next door. The room used to be where the kids ate back in the days when they ran the equestrian centre, so it’s a fairly big space. We brought over the equipment on Friday, and had a “dress” rehearsal for Carol and Bryan who agreed to be our guinea pigs. We also did a run-through on Saturday afternoon, and recorded it, which turns out to be a good thing (more on that later).
Besides the hosts, in attendance were the same crowd as on New Years: Manu & Mathilde and their kids, Ulysse & Odille and their kids, Olivier & Sylvie plus their four kids. Also there were Jenni & Franck, Sabine and Alain, our neighbours with a few of their kids, plus two couples from Limoges that we hadn’t met before. Françoise asked everyone to arrive around 8 so that we could get the performance over with, for which Will was grateful.
We each had a drink, then lined one up to have during the performance. Before starting, Will had a problem with his equipment (a pedal), a recurring fault that happens from time to time. Fortunately, he was able to fix it and we were off. I won’t do a play by play of every song, but will say that for the most part, we both did pretty well. Will was a bit nervous and made a few small errors, but only he and I noticed. Also, his pedal conked out during a song where he could really have used it. Apart from that, I would say it went well, and the audience was very supportive. Later on, after we’d had more than a few drinks, we were asked to play again, and this seemed to go much better. Actually, it was probably a lot worse, but we didn’t really care at that point.
After the gig, we spent time chatting with the other guests, including the two couples from Limoges. One of them is a farmer who raises pure-bred cattle. The other was a lesbian couple, one of whom Françoise met when she went back to school for her masters. The meal was a buffet, mostly made up of roasted meats supplied by the hosts, plus loads of other dishes brought by the other guests. I used the opportunity to roast the leg of deer that had been in Lucien’s freezer since August. I overcooked it so it didn’t come out great, but with all the other food, I doubt anyone noticed. We stayed until the wee hours, and I think it was after 4 when we left.
We did almost nothing on Sunday, which was very welcome. Otherwise, it was a quiet week, mostly spent getting ready for our big day. In terms of work, I had a break from my two big projects and found the time to work on ARBC (Andrew’s site). I hope to finish in the coming days, but am not making any promises! It’s still quiet for Will, so he has made some updates to our site, which now looks a bit more bold and interesting.
Not much else to report, so without further ado, here are the links to various recordings of our show. The recording for the concert itself isn’t great. It was too dark for most of it, and the camera was in front of the food table, so you see kids eating / standing in front of the camera for some songs.
We’re off to Amsterdam on Friday, and just in time since we’re nearly dry. We’ll be back Monday night so expect a recounting of the trip next week.