Apologies for the lateness of this entry. I blame work. We had a lovely visit with Kevin, who arrived Wed of last week. Will collected him from Limoges, and they swung through Nontron for food and for Will to get some goodies to take back to the UK. We had some lunch, then started work on the veggie plot. Kevin and I rotovated, then planted yellow and red onions and garlic. On the way in, we noticed that last year’s garlic was starting to sprout, so we planted that too.
There were still large clumps of grass in the soil, most of which we took out. The next day, Lucien came by and mentioned that he had planned to do another round of soil-turning, but it was too late since we’d already planted. He plants according to the moon, so thought it was a bit early for onions, but I’m not worried. We had margaritas and nibbles outside, a first for the year. Dinner that night was Sloppy Joes, followed by some cards.
Will left the next day so Kevin and I took him to Angouleme in the morning. We then had a stroll through the town centre before heading to Villebois for lunch chez Lee and Richard. It was Lee’s mom’s 60th that day and they were preparing a surprise dinner for her at their place that night, for 25 people. We had sarnies on the terrace, along with some rosé before heading off. The boys are both well and we have trip planned with them to Bordeaux at the end of May.
Kevin and I stopped off at the Villebois Super U, which is newer and bigger than ours. We picked up some scallops and steak for dinner the next nights, foods that I only have at home while Will is away. That afternoon, Kevin finished rotovating the veggie plot and I mowed the front garden. It was around 20C that day and the previous one, but turned sour after that. While we were outside, Nadine and Jean Claude came by on their horses and invited us to the cinema that night. We agreed, so had an early-ish dinner of pan fried scallops, with egg rice and asparagus. It was all lovely, although a bit hurried. Jean Claude collected us at 8 and we went to Nontron to see Dallas Buyers Club, about a man who gets AIDS in the early 90’s and forms a club to distribute medication.
It was cooler and rainy on Friday, so we stayed in. I did some work in the morning and then we had a long walk in the afternoon, timed to avoid the rain. That night we had Thai beef noodle soup, which came out rather well. We also played a game of Scrabble which Kevin won, despite that I had used all my letters twice in a row. On Saturday, we needed supplies to so went to Nontron around lunch-time. I had the crazy idea of having pizza, but unsurprisingly, both places were closed. To make it worse, we parked about 5 minutes away and it started pouring just as we parked. So after walking around in the rain for 15 minutes, we went to the store and got supplies.
We had planned to do moules/frites, inspired by the moules we saw at the other Super U. In Nontron, however, there were no moules to be found. I asked the lady at the fish counter and she said they were seasonal, which was July and August. Kevin and I found this hilarious, since we both use the “ok to eat in any month with ‘r’ in it”, meaning not in the summertime. I later asked Lucien and he agreed with us, so not sure if the lady was clueless, or just having fun with the foreigners. Anyway, we found some pre-cooked mussels, and got some fish to go along with it.
That afternoon we went for a 2-hour walk, arriving home for an early cocktail hour. We had a Scrabble re-match, and I can crow that I won the next two games handily. It was nearly 9 before we started cooking, due to our late lunch and game-playing. The moules/frites came out fine, as well as the fish, which was called “lieu noir”, or “black place”. We looked it up online but still don’t know its English equivalent. We watched a film after dinner, then went to bed just a bit drunk.
We got up the next day around 10, and I discovered that our web server had fallen over that morning and was down for the past four hours. I got things up and running again, but then had to spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what happened. This was not that easy with my mild hangover, and I’m still not exactly sure what caused the outage. I stopped to take Kevin to Limoges in the afternoon, then spent the rest of the day and evening working on the server. It is always nice to see Kevin, who is a very easy and helpful guest. He just found out that he’s secured an interview for a paid internship at Kew Gardens, starting in the autumn. We wish him the best of luck.
I worked the rest of the week, mostly on my big project. I made some changes to our web server, which caused some problems on the property sites we took on in January. I have traced them to be the cause of the shutdown, so did some investigation and then work on making them run better. I believe I have done that now, and server seems a lot happier, which is a relief. This web hosting racket is a lot of responsibility for very little money, aka a pain in the bum. I talked to Abby about my big project. We are officially a week behind, meaning I get more time to do my work, so I’m not feeling as much pressure as I was last week.
We have plans for the next two nights, and then Cyril comes next week for a few days. All that and more in our next post.