In today’s news, it’s very quiet out here at the moment! And after a sustained busy spell for the both of us at work, it is very welcome too. I have just one project on the go, for the luxury apartment rental place in Ribérac. I have submitted my design proposal to them and am waiting to hear back. But given that the whole country tends to shut down in August, I am not holding my breath.
For Matt, he has embarked on a big server upgrade for our clients with WordPress sites. The new server’s now up and running, and very fast. So far, our new site is on there and one client site. The rest will be shifted over too in the coming days. Otherwise, we have been taking it easy and enjoying the sunshine. Outside of a cooler blip over the weekend, it’s been mainly in the 30s out here lately and we’re due for an intense few days of 36 and 37 this week so we may take advantage of Benoit & Virginie’s standing invitation to use their swimming pool, or drive over to the lake at Saint Saud.
Right, onto our weekend which kicked off with dinner at Rigit’s place in Champagnac on Friday night. Their youngest son, Alex is over visiting for a few weeks, along with his Australien girlfriend, Lucy. It was the first time we’d met her, but we’d met Alex a few times before. It was a lovely evening so we spent it in their garden, admiring their potager (and their special plants) and enjoying our apéritifs. They have a wood oven and dinner that evening was home-made pizzas with a side of pesto pasta. It was all delicious. We had a nice time chatting about the state of the world and made plans to meet up the following night at Spardos.
A storm was forecast that night and though it never properly materialised, it was cooler and less muggy the following day. Matt took advantage to mow the front and back lawns – his first time since his operation. He also managed a swim earlier in the week. He was a little sore after both activities, but is more or less fine now. That evening, it was St Pardoux’s annual fete, Spardos.
We went down with Manu & Mathilde and their youngest two daughters, all freshly back from their annual holiday down south, and with the suntans to prove it. We were also joined by Françoise, who is in good spirits as it looks like she’s found a buyer for her house. We had aperitifs around M&Ms first, getting to St Pardoux a little before nine. We were due to meet up with Marie & Christian too, but they unfortunately had a sudden death in the family and had to leave town. We were also supposed to meet up with Benoit & Virginie, but despite doing the rounds several times, we never saw them and assumed they hadn’t made it.
We did an initial survey of the different groups, and had an obligatory “Spardos” apiece to get us in the mood. We started off watching a very quirky and bizarrely-dressed group that were playing mainly ska music and were doing a good job at animating the crowd. Down the road behind them was a quartet doing bluesy numbers. They were skilled musicians, but the performance was flat and stilted, so we pressed on.
The star act (for us anyway) was definitely the young group from Bordeaux doing their AC/DC tribute act. We blogged about them after last year’s Spardos. They’re all extremely talented musicians, as well as being engaging performers on stage. However, Manu preferred the ska band, and Mathilde the blues band, so we kept doing the rounds taking in a few songs at each.
At 11pm, they put on an impressive firework display – a Spardos tradition since 2014 when bad weather called off the planned Bastille Day fireworks. Surprisingly, the evening seemed to come to an abrupt halt soon afterwards. All the bands started packing up, leaving just the AC/DC band who played a handful of encores and then also called it a night. We returned to M&M’s for a digestif and ended up chatting till around 2am, when we came home to bed.
Tired and slightly hung over, we had a very lazy sunday at home. We even fended off an invitation to B&V’s for drinks that evening. Instead, we Face-timed my folks. They’re mostly well and had just spent the weekend hosting Dave, Amy and Elvie. Mum has now handed in her notice and, what with her remaining unused leave, will be free by the end of August. And not a moment too soon, given how much she loathes the place. Dad had some far less good news from his nice-but-not-that-bright accountant. He’s been hit by a substantial income tax bill as the sale of the business pushed him over into a higher tax threshold. Had the sale of the business been delayed by a mere few days, it would have gone into the following tax year and this wouldn’t have happened. Death and taxes, eh?
Right that’s about it for the roundup. Except I am afraid that a mini-Brexit rant has been building in me and needs letting out. (Feel free to stop reading here…). So, this is where we are…
1. Both the official & various unofficial leave campaigns have now been found guilty of massive campaign overspending and of illegal coordination by the Electoral Commission, the UK regulator. Individuals involved have been fined and are currently under police investigation.
2. These campaigns were funded largely by one man, Aaron Banks, who made the biggest single political donation in UK history when he gave £8.4 million pounds to Vote Leave. He is also currently under police investigation for numerous reasons, including that this money appears to be of dubious (lit: Russian) origin.
3. Talking of Russia, that they attempted to sway the referendum through a social media propaganda campaign is now considered fact. And talking of social media, 90 million individuals’ Facebook data were illegally obtained by a company called Cambridge Analytica, whom Vote Leave employed. This data was used to create highly personalised adverts to sway segments of voters.
4. There are currently no laws in place to regulate this kind of campaigning, so the adverts adhered to no standards. They were a blend of exaggerations, outright lies and racism. They were often unbranded, giving no clues they were campaign adverts. A week before the referendum vote, a UK MP was killed for her pro-EU views. All campaigning was suspended for three days afterwards. Except the leave campaigns’ Facebook adverts, which they deliberately continued to diffuse. Hey, in for a penny….
The UK parliament’s recent response to the above, while hugely overdue, has been encouraging. Unfortunately, the UK government’s response is more of an ostrich/head/sand nature. That none of this has caused the government to call an immediate halt to brexit proceedings while the (in)validity of the vote is ascertained, is beyond mere troubling. One can’t help but feel it might be due to the fact that several Vote Leave board members happen to also be senior government ministers…
Meanwhile, a petition for a new referendum has attracted nearly 400,000 signatures in mere days. And according to the latest polls, the “Will of the People” is now firmly to remain. Seems to me there’s an easy way out of all this. Who’s got the guts to suggest it? Anyone? Bueller? (or should I say “Jeremy”…)