As I write this, we are without power, so I hope my battery holds out. This is a planned outage and we’re meant to be wired again by 1pm. The hot water heater works without electricity, but we’re not sure about our water supply itself. It needs to be pumped in order to reach us at the top of the hill and it used to slow to a trickle during power outages. When it didn’t do this during our last outage, I asked Lucien and I believe he said they moved the pump, or the power source. I really hope so since it used to mean no power equals no water.
Not a lot happened during the week. I borrowed Sophie and Dom’s new mower for a few days, and cut the front and back on Monday. I had to do the back on the highest setting since the grass was so long, which meant doing it a second time on Wednesday. It’s all looking good for now, but I must buy a new mower in the next few days or else I’ll have to borrow one again. I’ve been looking for mowers on-line, but I’m a bit reluctant to buy one sight unseen. Perhaps we’ll go around to some shops in the coming days.
I went in to Nontron on Wed to visit the tax office. It’s the height of tax season so I had to wait over an hour before seeing someone, which is rare. Since I owed tax last year, they automatically ask you to pay in advance for the coming year. I have already made one payment, and am due to make another this week, but I didn’t earn enough to owe tax this year, so I’ve paid unnecessarily. He told me not to make the upcoming payment, which sounded odd to me. Since the convo was all in French, I asked him to rephrase this a number of times but the result was the same. So instead, I must now reclaim the money I’ve already paid. What fun that should be.
Thursday was the second of four holidays in May. Since most are falling on a Thursday this year, this leads to a lot of “faire le pont”, or making the bridge by taking Friday off too. I made it to the pool that day, and enjoyed having the lane to myself. I returned the mower that afternoon and had a coffee with Sophie and Dom, who sent me home with some asparagus from their garden. I used it in some impromptu pasta that evening, and it was the best I’ve ever had. I would love to plant some in our garden, but it takes 3 years before you can harvest any, so it’s more of a long term investment. It’s always expensive here in the stores and markets, even when it’s in season, so perhaps it’ll be worth the effort. We also have a small freezer that Lee and Richard gave us, so it would help to have a place to store it.
Friday night was curry night here. We had Philippe, Jenny and Mathias, plus her friend Alessandro and his partner, Emanuelle and their 3 month old daughter, Camille. We’d met Alessandro once before at dinner chez Jenny, but not his family. He is Italian, and has lived in France for number of years, so speaks excellent French and decent English. Jenny ordered enough curry for an army, but we managed to get through most of it. The only downside of the evening was Philippe overstaying his welcome again. The others left around midnight, and he lingered on for another hour or so. At this point of the evening, you don’t converse with him, more just listen to him drone on about whether to side with Russia or the US in the next world war.
The other downside of having Philippe there is that he doesn’t get along with Alessandro. They’d only ever met once before, at the same dinner as us, and there was friction. This is mainly caused by Philippe, who thinks that all Italians are Fascists, and won’t be dissuaded from his view. They mostly got along at our place, although Philippe made plenty of sarcastic and “half-joking” remarks. Alessandro took all of this in stride. He quietly invited us to join them for dinner the next night at some friends of theirs who live near to them. We were meant to go over to Lee and Richards, but the latter is still in the UK and Lee wasn’t feeling up for company.
Instead, we took up Alessandro on his invitation and had dinner at the their friends, Hannah and Louis. They all live not far from Monsec, where we lived at Sharon’s during our first year here. We went to Alessandro’s first. He works with metal, and has a workshop next to his house. Emanuelle does stained glass, so she also works at the house. In addition to them and their baby, they have at least five dogs and three cats. From there, we went to our hosts for the evening, who live about 5 minutes away. They are English, and have lived here for the past three years. We really enjoyed their company, despite their nationality. Seriously, it’s rare to meet Brits our own age here, and even more rare to find that we have similar views. They both speak french, Hannah more than Louis, and tend to hang out only with French.
For dinner that night, we started with mozzarella and parma ham, provided by Alessandro. Then we had prawns with crispy fried chili and lemon. This was the only thing that Will couldn’t eat, since we didn’t get to warn them about his diet beforehand. They made a number of dishes for the main course, including a Spanish tortilla, bean salad, and pork liver in a wine sauce. Louis lived in northern Spain for a number of years, hence the Spanish influence on his cooking. They made a chocolate cake for dessert, and despite being dairy and gluten free for Emanuelle, was really tasty. We had a very nice evening and hope to see them all again soon.
Yesterday, we went to the Floralie at St Jean de Cole. As is traditional, rain was forecast for most of the day. We went around 11, and were pleased that the rain held off until we were driving back and the skies opened up. The Floralie itself was the same as other years, with loads of flowers and plants for sale. We enjoyed the exotic flower show held in the chateau, this year it was orchids, irises and the bluest roses I’ve ever seen. Our only purchase was a bougainvillea for Mauricette, who comments on how much she likes our whenever she’s here. We took it easy the rest of the day, watching films and cooking a bit.
Only two more hours till the power comes back, or so we hope.