Thanks to a certain cat who shall remain nameless, we had an early start this morning so I’m using the unexpected extra time to get my blog post out of the way now. Considering this is officially a holiday week for us, there have been rather too many early starts of late, all thanks to the same pesky culprit (hint: his name rhymes with “screwy”, appropriately enough).
Anyway, so yes we have finally had our first visitors of the year, and this afternoon, will welcome our second set, hot on the heels of the first. Matt’s cousin Michelle, her husband Hervé and their 2 boys Loïc and Maël were the first set, and my parents comprise the second. Before I come to that though, a very quick run-through of the week. Knowing we’d be taking a week off, we wanted to try and clear the decks as much as possible workwise. I finished off the site for the wedding photographer and am just waiting for his feedback before it goes live. I also managed to come up with a third design for the big Language School website that – hopefully – has met with their approval. I have one or 2 other sites to do but this is the lightest my workload has been since December, which is good timing.
Aside from work, I also finished off the hedge trimming last week. It took a full 3 days to get over the soreness from round 1 but I’d done the lion’s share so the last bit wasn’t too bad, and now it’s done for the year. Matt’s had to mow the lawn several times too as it’s in its usual springtime overdrive mode at the moment. On Wednesday, the people from the energy efficiency company came around to take measurements for our forthcoming new kitchen window, which will be fitted next month. They’ll be back at the beginning of may to deliver our new water softener, electric rads, and new water heater too, though the actual installation will happen sometime later. In the interim, I really want to repaint the bedrooms and the toilet. We also have a few other things that are on Mum and Dad’s task list for this week, little do they know it yet!
I also had a translation job to do. One of our website clients keeps recommending our services to her friends which is very nice of her. Problem is that she keeps referring us to people who need their PC fixed, or to people who can’t speak French, and we don’t need or want those kinds of jobs any more. When the client rang me last week though, she was virtually in tears, so I couldn’t say no. She lives down the road and is organising a wedding for her daughter in the village – an ambitious project when you don’t speak a word of French. She needed someone to go with her to the Mairie to attend a meeting and the person she’d found had fallen through.
Our run of glorious weather lasted right up until the weekend, and consequently it was a good hunting time for the cats who between them have dispatched a mole apiece, the odd lizard, and an alarming quantity of mice. Louis is well and truly back to his old habit of bringing his nigh time catches into the house, though we did enjoy a brief reprieve when our guests were here as he was unnecessarily terrified of the boys. We didn’t see him the whole time they were here and he’s only just now forgiven us. I think the early morning wakeup call was him getting revenge on us.
So, on to the visit! The guests drove down from their home near Paris on Saturday morning. Michelle is from the state of New Jersey (although to my mild disappointment, has not retained anything of the accent to prove it) but has lived in France with Hervé for over 20 years. Their 2 boys have always lived here so are much more French than American, but do still speak very good English, and indeed, were under orders to do so the whole time.
They didn’t have the best drive as there had been an accident near Paris and then another near Limoges so it took longer than it should. The boys were very eager to sleep in our tent, but it was a very unsettled day so it looked for a time like it wasn’t going to happen. In the end though, it cleared up enough to persuade all 4 of them to erect our tent (which to our shame they did without instruction manual, and in record time) and sleep outside that night. This was after the obligatory Dordogne welcome meal of Confit de Canard.
Hervé apparently slept like a log, but the boys woke up at first light so Michelle didn’t get as much rest as she would have liked, but they all enjoyed our excessively big tent. We breakfasted on croissants then Matt took them all to the nearby cave in Villars. It was a cold and rainy day unfortunately, but that didn’t stop us doing some sight-seeing after lunch. We did the standard loop of St Jean de Cole and Brantome. After a stroll, we sought out a place for a drink and a snack for the boys and then returned home.
Having eaten a traditional Dordogne meal the night before, we opted for an american classic meal called sloppy joes. We also helped the guests plan the rest of their trip. None of them had explored the south west of France before, so we’ve directed them to the Sarlat area where they will be camping and visiting some of the beautiful towns of the Périgord Noir. They left us on Monday morning after a final breakfast of croissants from the bread lady, giving us enough time to get ready for my parents who arrive today. Right, that’s all from me. Au revoir.