I am days late writing this but with good reason, as you shall soon see. Mom arrived on Wed afternoon after spending a night in Paris where she saw cousin Michelle who lives there. Will collected her from Angouleme in the afternoon and we had our standard arrival dinner of confit de canard, served with roasted potatoes. I was unable to collect her, since I have been finishing up the second part of my big project and I was trying to get as much done as I could before she arrived.
Thurs was mostly devoted to rehearsing during the day, but also dinner preparation. We had Lee & Richard plus Glenda who is visiting and their neighbour Trish, sans husband Dave. Mom and I shared the cooking that day and we did bbq chicken with spicy orange sauce, with potato salad. For the starter, we did a carmelised onion tarte with creme fraiche and lardons and dessert was biscotti that Mom made and my default brown butter strawberry tarte. We had aperos outside first since that was the day the weather finally came good. It was a pleasant meal and good to see the Charantais here in the Dordogne.
Friday was all about rehearsing since we wouldn’t have the chance to do so the next day. It was curry delivery day and Manu and Mathilde offered to host. Also there were Philippe and Sylvie and Olivier and their kids. We had drinks on the terrace and then came in for dinner which was plentiful as usual. Will and I had an early start the next day and didn’t want to be hung over so we left around midnight. Mom enjoyed her curry and the full on French evening although we both found it hard to follow as the evening wore on.
Will and I went down to Jenny’s at 8am on Saturday to get the equipment set up for the gig. Jorgy, who was lending us the gear, had to work that day, hence the early start. We got everything ready and then returned home where we put together the music playlists for the parts of the evening when we weren’t playing. We asked Manu to consult his daughters for some current pop songs, since they are the same age as many of the attendees at Jenny’s. We also asked the interwebs for suggestions and came up with quite a few. Unfortunately, none of the songs ever got played since the girls took over the dj’ing as soon as we finished playing. But more on that later.
Jenny invited us to lunch that day, which was Italian deli prepared by Alessandro, our new friend. We watched a voltige performance by some of the students, including a young man who recently won the regional championship. Voltige is best described as gymnastics on a moving horse, which is as difficult as it sounds. Certain moves involve two or three on the horse at the same time and they do handstands and other manoeuvres. After lunch we went home where Will and I started to get nervous.
We went down around 7 to do a final soundcheck and then waited for what seemed like an eternity. We had a few small beers each, and then started the acoustic set around 8:30. Will’s camera mysteriously stopped working just then, despite being fine the day before. Luckily, Mom came to the rescue and recorded clips of most songs on her phone. The turnout was even smaller than last year, with around 50 people. The set was received with polite applause, but most people were chatting while we played. The surprise hit was House of the Rising Sun, which a lot of people seemed to know. We didn’t make too many errors, and in general, we played pretty well.
Dinner started after that, which started with salads, cous cous etc. brought by the guests, followed by chili con carne. This was prepared by Benoit, one of the new municipal councillors, a jovial fellow who does building work by day and moonlights as a party chef. This was followed by cheese and dessert, and Will and I were getting itchy to play our next set. People had started to leave by the time we started, and there was a group of girls playing drinking games, who often made more noise than us.
Despite this, the few people who listened seemed to enjoy the set. One of whom was Benoit, who has asked us to play a party at his place at the end of the month. Jenny told us that she has since received a number of calls and emails paying us compliments, so at least some people enjoyed it. The surprise hit of this was was Rebel, Rebel – one of our new ones. We suffered some technical difficulties, the main one being that we couldn’t hear our backing track, so our timings were off. This was largely due to the table of drunken girls, but also because the speakers were pointing away. The lights were pointing on us, making it hard to read my music/lyrics sheets, a crutch I still rely on for most songs. Despite this, we actually did pretty well.
Here is the video evidence, thanks to Mom:
Sunday was mostly about relaxing. Mom has been hard at work in the garden, weeding in the front. I did a bit in the back and trimmed the wysteria, which is starting to flower again due to the heat we’ve had. It’s been in the high 20s and into the 30s since last week. We’ve had a few storms, but no power cuts or strong winds. The garden is coming along nicely now, including a few shoots of corn. It’s probably too late for it, but it may still serve as camouflage for our other plants, that have really started to come alive. We had a bbq that night, with salmon for Mom and I, and chicken for Will.
On Monday, we had lunch at Clare and William’s place, along with her mother, Alex who lives not far from Brantome. It was another lovely day and we had lunch in their massive garden, alongside the Isle river under a shady tree. I thought we’d end up leaving by 3 but stayed until 5:30 soaking up the atmosphere and pleasant company. Alex is a vivacious lady who speaks her mind, and is very entertaining. William is the chef and made a lovely meal of stuffed mushrooms with lardons to start, followed by chicken breast stuffed with bacon and cheese, along with cheesy swede. I told him about Mom’s garlic allergy, but forgot to mention that she doesn’t eat pork so she politely made do. Dessert was strawberries and cream atop homemade meringues. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we relaxed for the evening at home, eventually having some leftovers.
We also had to cook, in preparation for our outing the next day. It was an annual outing for the Milhac Loisirs where I do my convo group. This year, it was Miallet, just up the road from us about 15 minutes. We walked around the Plan d’Eau, which is a man-made reservoir that looks like a natural lake. It is 7.5k around, and it took us 2.5 hours to do so. It was cool that day, starting around 17 which was perfect temp for walking. Afterwards, we had a picnic, where we shared the second version of the onion tart, this time with roquefort and rosemary, as well as salmon salad made from leftovers. They were visiting a nearby bison farm in the afternoon, but we’d had enough at this point and decided to head home.
There’s loads more to tell, but in the interest of keeping this to a reasonable length, I will stop now and let Will recount the rest of Mom’s visit.