Welcome back to Frog blog. The picture below is of a print that Matt got me for my birthday. If you can’t quite see the detail, it is a series of portraits of David Bowie, with each one roughly corresponding to one of his albums/personas. They go chronologically from him as a teenage hippy through to modern Bowie. It’s fab and will be framed and up on the wall as soon as possible. Thank you, Poppet!
But I am getting ahead of myself, so here’s a quick round up of the preceding week first. Work-wise things are quieter for me now, although according to my newly set up project management spreadsheet, I still have around 10 confirmed sites to do, and a few other potentials too – it’s just that at the moment, none of them are moving forwards.
For Matt, the large potential project he mentioned in his last post has, much to our surprise, gotten the green light. This will be around 3-4 months’ work, and will require input from both of us, so is a really substantial undertaking. Lewis, the client, came back to us over the weekend to confirm acceptance of the quote, so we’re meeting with him tomorrow to discuss it.
We also had a meeting today with some lovely new clients who found us off Google. They live in Miallet (about 10 mins down the road) where they run a gite/campsite. They have several existing sites, and plans for several more, all of which we are to take over construction and management of, so they too represent a really good new acquisition. They actually rang us at about 10:30am on Saturday. Normally not a problem, but we’d celebrated my birthday the night before so weren’t at our best. In fact, I was still in bed at the time so Matt took the call. Despite being in a state, he must have instilled enough confidence for them to want a meeting.
OK, enough of boring work. In other news this week, we went to see Jean-Claude on Monday to ask a favour. I wanted a native to look over my citizenship application before I submitted it so we went down for an aperitif. Nadine has just sold their apartment in Paris (the one we stayed at in September) so they’re now getting very serious about moving down south and are off there to do some property hunting soon. We really enjoy their company so will be gutted to see them go. Anyway, JC reckoned my application looked fine, so the next day, I finally plucked up the courage to send it off. It was a little unnerving entrusting the postal service with a folder that cost around 600€ to assemble, but I reminded myself that La Poste are nowhere near as bad as Royal Mail and bit the bullet. I have had proof of receipt since, so now it is the (long) waiting game while it is processed.
In other news, we’re having cat trouble again at the moment. Not from ours (we have that all the time, so it’s not blog-worthy) but from another local one who is encroaching on our boys’ territory. According to Lucien, feline turf wars tend to start this time of year. We’ve not seen the aggressor so don’t even know if it’s the one that sent both of ours to the vets last year or not, but there’s certainly been a lot of racket this last week. Both our boys have sustained mild scratches, but I think the worst injury they’ve suffered so far is to their pride.
Ok, on to the birthday weekend! This was Friday night (the night before the day itself) and we were joined by Nat & Jill, Carol, and Lee and Richard. We ended up doing a Mexican themed meal again (even though according to this blog, that’s what we’ve done for the last three years running now) and it was a big hit. Carol also made a yummy cake, with a candle and everything, which was very sweet. The ladies all left some time after midnight, and then us and the boys pulled our usual trick of staying up far too late drinking. It was great fun, despite the sore heads the next day. They left in the morning and we then had a quiet day mooching around the house doing very little. Lucien and Mauricette called around in the afternoon for a chat, and to give me a present of a lovely looking 2008, oak aged St Emilion that I am dying to sample.
On Sunday, we’d decided we would go out for lunch somewhere, but it was a grotty, damp day, so we didn’t feel like being too adventurous. We decided we’d go to our local pizzeria in St Pardoux, but true to form, they were closed – as they tend to be whenever we fancy a pizza. Instead we went to a place in Brantome that we took Chuck to last autumn, called La Récré Gormande. The food and wine were excellent as before. We noticed their website is still “under construction” so we promised to email over a quote to see if we can get them up and running. That evening, Philippe called round briefly for help completing a tourist visa application as he is off to Australia this summer to spend time with Francoise. It was nice to see him but we packed him off after one drink as we were tired and stuffed from our meal.
Right, I think that’s all I have to say, apart from a big thanks to: Mum & Dad, Nan, Jan, Auntie Tracey, Dave & Amy and Suzie & Steve for all my Amazon vouchers! You’re all too kind. Bisous xx