Welcome back to Frog Blog. Before I get on to the story telling, I have to comment on the weather today, which is just gorgeous for the time of year. Were it not for the falling leaves it could be a spring afternoon. It’s 20 degrees with clear blue skies, and the forecast is for the same all week. Who knows, Mum & Dad might even get to enjoy some sun when they get out here on the 4th. That said, we still have the fire on most evenings. The cats don’t really seem to know what to make of this: they were just starting to adjust to winter mode and all of a sudden they’re out basking in the sun. The clock change is adding a slightly surreal tinge to the day too. Well, either it’s that or it was the cheeky Sunday treat of some home-grown we had earlier, thinking about it.
We trooped off to Nontron on Wednesday morning to go and see the insurance people again. We’ve now taken up car insurance with them, and home insurance too seeing as they were offering a deal if we took both. The house insurance protection is actually a bit more comprehensive than our previous contract, and for exactly what we were paying before. The car’s is slightly more expensive, but a far better coverage. If we’d have been clients before my recent unfortunate incident, we would have saved ourselves about 500€. It’s also nice to be with a local company rather than a faceless internet giant. For the record, we’re fairly sure our agent, a lovely lady by the name of Helene, is ‘one of us’ if you know what I mean.
After lunch that day, we had our 2nd band practise session at the venue, and all told it was a more polished affair than the first. Our equipment really isn’t up to the job in a room of this size so we’re having a few technical issues but we’ll have a state of the art sound system on the night, as I shall come to. As well as the weekly gigs in Milhac, Matt and I are taking advantage of the fact that we’ve not too much work on to practise every day, and it’s starting to yield results. We’ve definitely settled on the set list now. It is:
1. Rock Around the Clock Tonight (Bill Hayley)
2. Oh, Boy! (Buddy Holly)
3. Rebel Rebel (Bowie)
4. Is She Really Going Out with Him (Joe Jackson)
5. Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
6. Le Vent Nous Portera (Noir Désir)
7. Son of a Preacher Man* (Dusty Springfield)
8. For Your Love (The Yardbirds)
9. Just like Heaven (The Cure)
10. Stand By Me (B.E. King)
11. These Boots Are Made for Walkin’* (Nancy Sinatra)
12. Let’s Dance (Bowie)
13. J’T’Emmène Au Vent (Louise Attaque)
*Featuring Carol on lead vocals
Workwise Matt has, for the first time in probably close to a year, got nothing on at the mo. He’s waiting to hear back from 2 different quotes so work is around the corner, but for now there’s a lull. For me, I’ve had a few bits from existing clients, including setting up a funky delivery areas map for the curry website (with help from Matt). We also just today received a genuine, bona fide enquiry from our website’s contact form that I shall answer tomorrow. We took out advertising a few months ago in an expat mag called Rootstock Ads. For their last issue; they invited us to write a short piece about websites, and it’s recently come out. This could be the first bite from the magazine.
Ok, it’s time to explain the title. It’s the return from out of the blue of a client from 5 years ago, whose new site never saw the light of day. It’s a long story so I’ll try to be brief. He is an established architect in the UK who had a website in desperate of a redesign, orignally built in the 90s. He knows my Dad, who put us in touch, and we got as far as me producing a design he signed off on, then we hit this bizarre brick wall in the process. He’d go quiet for weeks, and then out of the blue, fire me generally one of two types of emails. Type 1 was “Where are we at with the site? What do you need from me to get it done?”, and Type 2 was “here are some links to website designs that I really love”. Both would leave me struggling to find the words to reply. How many ways are there to say, “see this page? It has no text. And this page? It has no photos”. And as for the Type 2 emails, I struggled to remain polite when reminding him he’d already signed off on the design.
Months later, hoping it would spur him on, I asked for a payment for the work I’d done so far, which I received immediately. Soon after, all communication ceased, and his unfinished site has been something hanging vaguely around above my head ever since. Until a couple weeks ago, that is. I had an email from him, more or less of the Type 1 variety: “are you still in business, what do you need to get my site finished”. It took me a day to muster up the courage to reply – and to my complete lack of surprise, he didn’t answer.
A week or so later, the same emails comes, this time to our work address. I replied to that and again there was silence so I eventually called him. We agreed that we could finish the site, but with a newer design – and once I have the content I need. A couple days later, he signed off on a brand new design and promised the content soon. I nearly burst a blood vessel when he sent me a Type 2 email a few days ago, but am assuming that was a freak blip. I think he gets where we are at now. In fact, through an odd twist, the site is already live. His site’s hosting company suffered some sort of disaster on Tuesday night and his old site was down. They were unable to say when they’d fix it, but were talking days not hours so I suggested he ditch them and transfer over to us and he agreed, so we put what we had live. I predict seeing this project through to the end will be a long and interesting experience…
Right, enough of that. We had a social activity on Friday when Sophie & Dom invited us over at the last moment for dinner. We showed up at 7 and were greeted with a homemade punch or two. The starter was savoury waffles with tapenade, parma ham and carrot, and a small side of pumpkin soup. The main was chicken served with a sort of ratatouille and cepe mushrooms that Dom has picked earlier that day. It was a delicious meal that we capped off with a digestif before leaving on the early side as the hosts were obviously tired from an early start.
Since then, we’ve been taking it easy all weekend, barring rehearsals. Speaking of, the last thing I wanted to mention is where we’re getting our equipment from for the gig, Musique en Herbe. It’s a parent-founded and run organisation based on the grounds of the school in St Pardoux that provides the kids with opportunities to learn and play music. In fact, it’s not just for school kids: they welcome anyone who wants to drop by. Guitar, piano and violin lessons are given several times a week too, free of charge. Apparently, every Friday night from 9pm to 2am, they have music nights where anyone can come along and listen or jam. We’ve gotta check that out.
They also have a staggering array of kit that they lend out for events like ours. Their base is not much more than a prefab shed, but on the inside it is an Aladdin’s cave of drum kits, guitars, speakers, mixing decks and lighting, all state of the art. Seems so incongruous a place in a town like St. Pardoux! They’re supplying everything we need, for free. Now we just need to sound good enough to warrant such nice equipment.
Right, that’s the end of my tome. Tune in next week for the official 5 year anniversary entry!