Daggly is a great new word Mum & Dad taught me while they were over here this week. It’s peculiar to East Anglia (my home county) and means “damp, grey and cold”. It’s just one of many bizarre colloquialisms that orginate from the area.
Anyway, despite it being a cold and grey few days, we had a lovely time entertaining our guests and, as is traditional, putting them to work on a few household projects. I got them from Limoges on Tuesday morning and we had a mostly quiet day at home but did go out for a post-lunch stroll. We made a thick veggie soup for dinner, one of our oldest recipes: Santa Fe Chowder. It’s chock full of cheese, veggies and milk, and thanks to a large green chili, also packs a little punch. This was followed by cheese and then later, some patisseries from the adulterous baker.
The next day was our weekly band practise down in Milhac and, as Matt and I had missed a few of our normally-daily rehearsals, we went over the setlist in the morning. After lunch, we all piled down to Milhac and Mum and Dad got to hear both the Abba set and our gig in full. We’re all sounding lots better than a few weeks ago, which is fortunate given that the gig is now less than a week away. On the subject, we’ve just made a last-minute change to our setlist. We’ve eliminated the Cure song as we’re sure no-one will know it, and we’ve replaced it with Purple Rain by Prince. They may not know this either, but we’re playing it in honour of our friend David as Prince was to him what Bowie is to me. We’re normally very badly-organised (for the last gig we played, at least 2 of the tracks were learned and added to the list just a couple days before the gig itself) so it seems right to have a last minute scramble to learn a song with just days to go. We’ve also just decided to dust off both London Calling by the Clash and You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate as encore numbers, should we get any calls for more.
We learned this week that David’s memorial is taking place on Friday the 14th, the eve of our gig. We explored various options, but travelling to the UK for it and still making it back in time for our gig (and indeed, actually still being in the mood to play) just wasn’t feasible. We’re really upset we’ll miss the ceremony, so playing a Prince song for him helps us feel like we’re doing something to mark the event.
We got back home for another evening of food, cocktails, wine and cards in front of the fire. As the practise took up most of the day, we decided Thursday would be chore day and made up a list of supplies we’d need from Nontron. I took Mum & Dad to the Brico (DIY) store in the morning while Matt dealt with a little bit of work. We managed to score everything we needed, so got back and got to work (well, Dad did mainly). He re-sealed our shower door which had been leaking, and also replaced the seal on our stove door which was coming loose. This meant the fire was out of action for the day, so we put the oil-filled radiator that Lee & Richard gave us to the test for the first time. We were impressed that it did manage to heat our lounge eventually. Dad also had a look at our Velux, which is prone to leak during heavy rainfall, and has hopefully solved that too. The only other chore was dealing with some of our houseplants which were very root bound. Mum and I got them sorted and they seem to be doing fine. I think all the plants are very pleased to have been brought in for the winter as it’s cold at night here now. Soon time to dig out the winter duvet…
We’d planned to go out for a meal to the Hotel de France on Thursday night. Despite it being a favourite of ours, we’ve only managed to go with mum and dad once, thanks to their erratic opening hours. We called on Wednesday, and were told they were open both Wed and Thurs evenings. We reserved a table for four for Thursday evening, only to get a call from them that morning to say they’d made a ‘mistake’ and weren’t in fact open at all (ie, yours was the only booking and we can’t be bothered to serve just you). We were obviously unimpressed at the snub, not least because it left little time to find an alternate. We ended up going to a Logis hotel/restaurant in Brantome that we’d never been to before, despite it having a decent Trip Advisor rating. It was a nice enough place and the service was great, but the food was something of a let-down all told. Mine was tepid when it arrived and given that there were only 2 other tables, there’s no excuse for that kind of thing.
Mum & Dad left around lunch time the next day, armed with a Port 80 sandwich apiece. We had a lovely time with them as ever and are grateful for their help around the house. Now the focus is very much on last minute rehearsing. I think we’ll be utterly sick of Purple Rain by the time of the gig, but hopefully we will do it justice. Right, that’s all from me. Matt will be able to give you a blow-by-blow account of the gig in the next entry. Au revoir.