Welcome back to Frog Blog, your only source for the latest happenings in Mazerouxcity. Today is a bank holiday in France – barely worth mentioning as virtually every Monday in May seems to be – but noteworthy as it is also a holiday in the UK and the US. I didn’t realise we all shared one, but apparently we do. It is as such a very quiet day so I’ve abandoned any pretence of doing work and am getting my blogging done nice and early.
I’ll kick off with work to get it out of the way. This is more or less steady for me, and currently a bit quiet for Matt. I’ve had a couple small sites to keep me busy whilst I contemplate getting my teeth stuck into the skiing holiday site for our new clients. Matt has the language school site, but there’s not tons he can do until some actual content starts to filter through from the client. I also had a bit of a run-in with a client of mine recently. It’s my french wedding caterer who, for 5 weeks solid, drove me up the wall his ceaseless requests for changes. He’s now very late paying and when he finally responded to my calls, it was to say he was shocked and unimpressed by my bill. It seems that despite what we told him at our meeting, he thought I was working for a fixed fee. The whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially seeing as he still hasn’t paid despite ultimately agreeing to do so.
Next, les chats. They are both on good form, but perpetually laden with ticks. The Smoo came in to see us one evening around 11pm with no fewer than 7 ticks all crawling across his fur. At least they’re easy to see on him! I’ve wanted to avoid treating them chemically but if it is this bad now, we won’t have much choice if/when summer finally arrives.
We had a welcome visit from Bryan and Carol on Monday. They’d only been back in the country for a week or so and the following day, were on a flight back to the UK. They’ve obviously had a lot of sorting out to do following Bryan’s mum’s death, but I think on the whole it’s going as well as these things can. They’re going back again this time to see their son Mark who lives in New York and hasn’t visited for over 5 years. He is disabled so doesn’t get around too well on his own, so they’ve gone to collect him. They’ve a few days planned there, then they’re all coming to France so he can see their house out here. After a few days, they’ll take him back to the UK so he can catch his flight home. It’s been a very unsettled time for Bryan and Carol and they’re very keen to not go anywhere else for a long time when they finally return for good next month.
Garden update: lots of flowers are now in bloom out in the front including roses, our gorgeous peonies, our late-but-lovely irises, the bougainvillea, and my gerbera daisy. The latter hasn’t flowered since I got it about a year and a half ago and it turns out it was just sulking because it didn’t like being indoors. Out on the doorstep now, it’s coming along nicely. The veg plot’s doing ok too. The storm forecast for last week fizzled out before it hit us, so our newly planted crops escaped a battering. Unfortunately though, watering has become logistically challenging. We rigged up the hose and pump recently and nothing happened, even though the engine was clearly running. We hoisted it up to discover a huge hole in it where it has become totally rusted. So, we’re in the market for a new pump, or an alternate irrigation system. The current solitary watering can is not equal to the task on its own, even with a much smaller veggie plot.
On Friday, conscious we were otherwise facing a very dull weekend, we invited Hannah and Louis, and Alessandro the mad Italian, over for dinner. We realised we hadn’t seen any of them since last November so a catchup was due. It was a big challenge for Matt the chef as Hannah is currently on the most impossibly restrictive diet you could imagine. She has to avoid: red meat, alcohol, sugar, salt, white flours, rice, pasta, vinegar, soy and probably more besides. This really doesn’t leave much, but a meal of carrot soup to start and roast chicken and roast veg for the main did the job. The guests are all doing well. Louis is busy, but Hannah not, and Alessandro is… well, the same as ever – ie, larger than life and far too loquacious.
We’re due another double-whammy of visitors soon: first, our friend Katherine from London is coming to see us along with her new beau, Jules. She’s immense fun, if a bit of a force to be reckonded with (my pet name for her is Dionysus, if that tells you anything), so expect an entertaining resumé of her visit next week! They get here on Sunday, stay for a few days and then hot on their heels, Jan arrives for her annual summer visit. We’ve started planning a few activities for her trip already, and as ever, there’s always plenty to do in the garden.
Our only other activity was to call in and see Lucien and Mauricette yesterday. He rang just after lunch with a laptop issue so we popped around. We arrived to find they had guests and had just finished what was almost certainly a copious meal. It took a while to solve the PC problem, but afterwards, we stayed for a slice of cake, a sweet wine or two, and then a digestif. In attendance were Mauricette’s mother and their friends who live 5 mins away on, for want of a better name, the main road. We were a combined age of somewhere in excess of 4 centuries. We talked about this and that for a while, buzzing on a small but deadly eau de vie in my case, and then left them to it.
A ropey and ill-advised band practise followed and then we vegged out in front of a film. On rehearsals, in general we’re making good progress. The one part of the setlist we can’t sort out is the Beatles: we’ve tried at least 4 songs now but they’re either too hard to sing, too hard to play, or too hard to sing and play at the same time. We may have to admit defeat and drop them from the set altogether. Once we’ve ironed out the last creases, I’ll post the setlist. In the meantime, I can reveal that I’ve talked Matt into doing a third Bowie song, the excellent “Ziggy Stardust”. We’re also going to have a bash at “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits, although that one’s taking a bit of learning on my part. Speaking of, I think I might go and have another run through now. A la prochaine fois…