A long title, befitting this lengthy post. There’s been a lot happening in the past ten days, starting with dinner at Alessandro’s last Saturday night. Our mutual friends Hannah and Louis were meant to attend but couldn’t, so we didn’t know any of the other guests. They were Alessandro’s mother who was visiting from Italy, another gay couple who live in the area, and a family with two young boys. It was a pleasant evening of Italian food, including meats and salad to start, followed by some beautiful pasta, then cheese and dessert, served with champagne. We enjoyed meeting the other gay couple, but not sure there was enough in common to see them again. They both have proper jobs, one in Angouleme which is a 30 minute drive and the other in Pau, which is at least 4 hours away! They are country boys at heart, so don’t mind doing the commute to live out here.
We made it an early night since we had band practice the next morning at 10. This went ok considering we hadn’t played some of the songs together before then. We have one other practice this Friday before the gig on Sunday. Normally, this would freak us out a bit, but many of the songs were overlaps between our repertoires, so we all have experience playing them, just not together. We’ll find out what the actual set will be on Friday, and Will and I will try to rehearse in the meantime. The gig itself is at festival called “American Cruising”, and the theme is motorcycles and cars. We’re one of a handful of groups that our playing, and our set is during lunch on Sunday. The weather is looking great this week, but changes just in time for the weekend, so we may get rained out again.
The other reason for taking it easy on Saturday night was in preparation for Sunday, the Fete de St Augustin in Villebois. This is the end-of-summer festival in Lee and Richard’s village, and they throw a party for it every year. We had great weather last week, with temps in the mid-30’s, and this peaked on Sunday with a high around 35C. We headed over in the afternoon, after I made some brownies and a pasta salad to take along. They boys invited nearly 20 people, so they were busy preparing while Will and I got started on the beer. The guests were mostly local Brits from their village, with a few others from nearby areas, plus Glenda who was visiting from the UK. We said hello to those that we knew, but mainly, spent the evening chatting with Josiene and Rene, their former neighbours who now live in Angoulême.
They are a lovely couple, very warm and funny, and we enjoyed getting to know them. Josiene has five kids, one of whom is gay, plus two gay grandkids. They don’t speak any English, so were very helpful in helping the boys improve their French. They invited us over for dinner at their place in Angouleme so hopefully, that will happen at some point. We also met a couple who have recently moved here with their kids, and hope to have a games night with them when winter sets in. Most of the guests were gone by 2, but we stayed up chatting and drinking until at least 5. The next morning was a bit hazy, but not too bad considering, and we headed back home after breakfast in the early afternoon.
Our next activity was dinner at Rigit’s on Tuesday night. They are over for a few weeks, taking advantage of the nice weather and doing some minor things around the house. Unlike the previous nights, it cooled down considerably at sun set, so we ate outside, but quickly retreated indoors. Dinner was a tomato tarte, with a pasta salad, and a quasi-Greek salad, but with watermelon in place of the tomato. Richard also made a peach cake for dessert. We had a relatively tame evening, and will see them again here for dinner on Wed night.
We took it easy on Wednesday, preparing for our trip, and had an early night. I woke up Thurs am around 5, well before the alarm had gone off, so were were on the road at 6:15. The journey was progressing nicely until we approached Paris and saw signs warning about a “manifestation sociale”, telling us to avoid Paris if possible. I’m not sure what they were protesting, but it was composed of farmers and their tractors converging on central Paris via the ring road. We gathered what info we could from the autoroute radio, and took an alternate route, which lead us into Paris itself for a few km before dumping us back on the ring road. Later we hit some traffic on the Antwerp ring road, where we always seem to go awry. Despite these set-backs, we reached the Park and Ride in Amsterdam exactly ten hours after we left. However, not only was there no P&R ramp, there wasn’t any ramp at all! Since we had a similar experience last time, I prudently made notes of a few other P&R ramps, so we found one, dumped the car and were at the hotel around 5:30.
Gerald had arrived from SF the previous day, and after a quick shower, we met him and started our weekend in Amsterdam. We first had a beer, then found a coffeeshop, then more beer etc. We did a tour of the few remaining gay bars in the area, interspersed with trips to the Febo, which serves delicious Dutch food via an automat. We made it until around 1:30 before heading home for some much needed sleep. We spent the next day shopping, mostly for clothes, but the weather wasn’t cooperative. There were patchy showers in the morning, and we stayed mostly dry until lunch around 2pm. This was at a cafe/diner with a large menu, and we all had nice meals.
We decided to do a different type of shopping after lunch, and headed over to coffee shop with very good deals. Unfortunately, the rain started getting a bit more serious, and by the time we arrived ten minutes later, we were soaked. We weren’t done clothes shopping, so decided to invest in some umbrellas, and sure enough, the rain all but stopped just after that. Gerald found a new jacket, and I got a t-shirt, but otherwise, we didn’t do very well on the clothes front. This is partially because the clothes there are tailored to the Dutch physique, which is tall and skinny, and partly due to this year’s fashion. We headed back to the hotel around 5 to change out of our wet clothes and rest. Will only had one pair of shoes and jeans, but managed to dry them well enough on the radiator in our room.
Cocktails were on the menu that evening, so we went to a swank hotel bar where we all had delicious drinks, including margaritas for Will and I. Next, we had pizza for dinner, where the waiter/owner and much of the clientele were Italian. We all enjoyed our pizzas, and then moved on to the bar crawl portion of the evening. We tried a few we’d been to the night before, and finally ended up in a new place for us all. It’s not a big place and wasn’t too crowded, but the two barmen were a lot of fun. It turns out that one of them is the owner, which was surprising considering he’s around 25 years old. They served us a few complimentary shots and took music requests, so it was at least 2:30 before we left. No evening in Amsterdam is complete without Febo, so we grabbed a few snacks on our wander home.
We slept slightly later than normal the next day, and met-up with Gerald around 11:30. Although the weather still wasn’t great, it ended up being much drier than expected so we continued our shopping excursion and found a few new places to try. Before this, we had breakfast at an outdoor cafe and this helped a bit with our hangovers. The shopping was no better that day, so we decided to check out the new swanky sauna near Central Station. It’s a lovely place, with all the usual facilities, and it got fairly busy later in the day. We left around 5 and decided to check out some of the neighbourhood bars, new to all of us.
We did a mini-crawl, then decided to stop for dinner at a gay restaurant serving cocktails and homemade burgers. We ended up having a few cocktails, both delicious, with a starter of baked nachos, and burgers for everyone. Next we headed back to the usual neighbourhood, and visited a few of the bigger bars before heading back to the small place we found the previous night. It was much more crowded this time, and the party was in full swing when we arrived. We ended up chatting with a number of locals, and had a relatively early night since we had to be up the next day for the drive back. We had one last round of Febo before turning in around 2:30.
Will and I were up at 8:30 on Sunday, skipped breakfast at the hotel and headed out to find our bus back to the P&R. Being Sunday morning, they only run every 30 minutes, but we made it in time and were on the road at 9:30. We made excellent time heading back on the mostly empty roads and arrived home around 6:30. I picked up a cold somewhere along the way, which thankfully, didn’t kick in until Sunday, so I’ll be dealing with that for the coming week. Apart from that, it was a great trip. We did a bit of alternate shopping, although not as much as usual, and didn’t end up spending as much money as planned. It’s always great to see Gerald, especially in Amsterdam. He’s doing well and seems happy, although he’s thinking about quitting his job in the next year or two. He’s always wanted to live in Europe, and is hoping to do a sabbatical there for a few months if he can work it out.
We returned to lovely weather, and it had been nice while we were away. The figs are now ripe, so we’ll be making jam soon. Mauricette had a shoulder operation last week, so the plan is for me to go there and follow her instructions. Our special plants are also doing well and enjoying the heat so I hope it holds out for another few weeks. We also have a few butternut squash from the mutant plant, and a few tomatoes. The cats really didn’t want us to go on holiday since they were already feeling abandoned because of our busy social schedule. Smoo was here to greet us when we arrived, and Louis showed up a while later. Smoo has some fresh scratches and bite marks from the neighbourhood menace, and we’re hoping they don’t become infected. We may have to take matters into our own hands if this continues.
On the work front, Will is very busy with more jobs coming in all the time. Most of them are changes to existing sites, so it’s lots of little things. Not much is happening for me, although I’m doing a bit of work for Clare and William (Kiwi pewter jewellery). We’ve been busy enough with other things in the meantime, but it would be good to find a bit more for me. Now that the school year has started, my weekly activities have too, so I have choir tomorrow and conversation on Thursday. We’re having Rigit over on Wed night, rehearsal on Friday night, dinner at Nadine and JC’s on Saturday and the concert on Sunday. So the busy social schedule continues apace.