After our visitors left us on Monday, we found ourselves quickly thrown into last-minute rehearsals for what is – for now at least – our last gig of the year. This took place on Saturday evening, as I shall get to shortly.
Our cherry tree has decided to have another prolific year this year. It is quite literally laden with kilos of ripe fruit. Lucien has been over picking them and we packed him off with several kilos of sugar. In return we have received about 10 jars of cherry jam, the same number again of jars of whole, preserved fruits and, so far, 2 clafoutis (a sort of cherry tart). We were overwhelmed by this, especially seeing as they refused to keep any for themselves. There’s still load of fruit left on the tree too, so cherry is going to be a theme in our cooking for a while yet.
Our raspberries are ripening nicely too, and are very tasty. Unfortunately, our strawberries have fared less well. They are, or were as I should say, out in the front garden and they weren’t fenced off in any way. They have apparently provided a decent meal for a deer which has decimated the lot. We’re going to have to either fence them off, or move them to the veggie plot, to avoid this happening again.
I shall gloss over the first part of the week as it was uneventful barring bits of work and repeated band practises. On Wednesday last week, I went round to see Ute and John, who again needed some PC help. At our insistence, they finally replaced their old machine for a new one, so I was charged with the task of extracting all their data from the old one and putting it on to the new one. Microsoft created a tool called “Windows Easy Transfer” that claims it will do all this for you automatically. Unfortunately, any time the word ‘Easy’ is used in conjunction with Microsoft software, the usage is clearly ironic. I could have done it all a lot quicker manually, but ended up wrestling with their tool for far longer than I would have liked. I eventually succeeded and came back home for a late lunch.
That out of the way, practises resumed until the evening when we went to meet the organiser of our concert to see where we would be playing. The gig was for Benoit, a very lovely man who, as Matt mentioned in a recent post, normally does the catering at Jenny’s annual party. He turned 50 this year, and his daughter, Eva, turned 18 on Friday, so it was a joint party. After he showed us the spot – a clearing in his small hamlet down the road from us, at the end of a cul-de-sac – we returned to his to meet his wife and daughter and to enjoy a beer out on their terrace. It’s a shame that Eva will be leaving soon. She’s off to Bordeaux to study visual communication and is a very lovely and outgoing young girl. She’s also, to our amusement, a keen grower and smoker of the same rare herbs we enjoy, so we got to see her plants, discuss growing tactics, and of course, taste a little sample too. The three of them are really excellent company.
The following day was again focused on band practise with a trip to the shops thrown in, and also Matt’s last official conversation group before the summer holidays. The group has agreed to keep meeting throughout the summer, but meetings will take place at peoples’ houses instead. Friday too was all about band practise, but it was not a very good day for it. We were both stressed that we still hadn’t got the knack of our new songs, and in general we were making lots of silly mistakes. Luckily, Saturday’s last minute sessions went better.
It had been a hot and sunny week, but since the start, the forecast had predicted a big storm would break – on Saturday evening, no less. This forecast stubbornly refused to change, and as Saturday rolled around, we watched the sky darken as the afternoon went on. We held our last practise session sometime around 4 in the afternoon, by which point, the first growls of thunder and the flickering of our lights confirmed the storm’s steady progress.
We got to the venue at a little after 7 to give us time to get set up and to down a medicinal beer or 2. A large marquee had been set up outside with tables for the meal. A short distance away, a smaller one was made available for us to play under. We’d just started to unpack our equipment when a strong gust of wind upended our shelter. With gusts of 70km promised, we decided to relocate our ‘stage’ off to the side, out of the direct path of the wind. Despite this, we still nearly had it ripped out from above us a couple times as we played. Luckily, aside from strong winds, the storm past us by without incident. There’d been an orange alert given for the Dordogne, with instructions for people to ‘stay inside and avoid the use of electric equipment’. So, don’t try playing electric guitars outside under any tall trees, for example. Ooops…
There’s no evidence of our gig to share with you this time, and this is probably no bad thing. In the end, we didn’t make too many mistakes, and everyone seemed to enjoy the set. The main problem was that this was our first time playing outdoors using only our own equipment and, especially given the wind howling around us, it wasn’t really loud enough, as the audience kept reminding us with their yells of “turn it up”. My guitar amp could have gone much louder, but the bass guitar and our backing drum tracks were maxed out. This unfortunate hitch aside, it was mostly successful. It was also over in the blink of an eye. It very strange knowing your set of 12 songs is about 50 minutes long and yet tearing through it in what feels more like 5. We played a modified version of the electric set we played at Jenny’s, with a couple new songs thrown in. Here’s our set list:
1. London Calling – The Clash
2. Is She Really Going Out With Him – Joe Jackson
3. Le Vent Nous Portera – Noir Désir
4. Just Like Heaven – The Cure
5. You Sexy Thing – Hot Chocolate
6. Back to Black – Amy Winehouse
7. Creep – Radiohead
8. Rebel Rebel – Bowie
9. J’T’Emmene au Vent – Louise Attaque
10. Another Brick in the Wall – Pink Floyd
11. La Bombe Humaine – Téléphone
12. Let’s Dance – Bowie
Encore: Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure
Once our set was out of the way, we packed all our stuff into the car and got on with the serious business of socialising and drinking. There were easily 70 people there, including Nat and Jill, who recently employed Benoit to work on their pool, Jenny and Franck, Jenny’s ex, Guillaume + his girlfriend, Nadine, the owner of the local bakery, and Jackie from Matt’s conversation class. Also in attendance were Jackie’s son and his wife, who we’d met once before some time back. Jackie’s son was the ‘main act’ for the evening. He plays in a band in Bordeaux, but he also does a side act performing Ramones covers that he does for a laugh, featuring him on guitar and vocals, a friend of his on vocals… and a motorbike. No, really.
They came tearing into the clearing with music blaring from a makeshift sound system fitted onto the bike, both dressed to the nines as heavy metal rockers, and then proceeded to blaze through a selection of the Ramone’s very punk rock catalogue. It was hilarious. It was also good to see that like us they were lacking in a drummer and made do with a recorded backing. It did not detract from the atmosphere!
Once their raucous set was over, we sat down to eat. The meat was roast pork, and it was served with homemade baked beans. Also on offer were quiches, bread, and the most monstrous plate of cheese I’ve ever seen.
All of this entertainment was for Benoit’s ‘half’ of the party. Eva, meanwhile, was in a field next door with her younger entourage, where a giant sound system was set up and was playing techno music at an ear-splitting volume. The grown-ups invaded this field briefly for a bit of a boogie, with the kids respectfully playing us some Clash, Queen and other classics, but this soon gave way to pounding techno again, so we beat a retreat to our marquee for dessert.
Unfortunately, neither of us really had our party hats on, and though the night was young and the party in full swing, we left them all to it at around 1.30. We came home and treated ourselves to a nightcap and a silly film so we could unwind a bit before crashing. We’ve just completed a run of playing 3 gigs in as many weeks and it was excellent fun – but I think next time, we’ll try and avoid such tight clusters as trying to prepare for them all was very time-consuming.
Yesterday was a quiet, DVD day – the first one for us in quite a long time! The weather remains cool and cloudy but is due to return to 30 by the end of the week. We’ve a gap of several weeks now before the next visitors come out to see us, but there are several social activities in the calendar that Matt will be able to recount next week. Until then…