I cannot believe it’s October already. It’s just ridiculous, and unacceptable. Still, there it is whether I like it or not. To be fair, we’re still getting away with some very pleasant weather for the time of year, but there’s a definite decline in the highs and a noticeable chill at night. We’ve still yet to have any rainfall, and Lucien has started his inevitable fretting on the matter. It always makes me smile: if there’s one thing you can be sure of out here, it’s that during winter and spring, it will rain. And rain.
Benoit and Eva have made good progress on the terrace, with all the stones now laid. They’re back here tomorrow to do the joints and then the cement is being poured on Friday, which is the final step! We’re thrilled with how its turned out, as is Benoit for that matter.
Matt had a very successful meeting in Périgueux about his carte de séjour on Tuesday. He arrived early but was ushered in immediately, and was all done a mere 30 minutes later. They did, of course, ask him for some documents he hadn’t brought and that they never asked for to begin with, but he was able to email them over and now he just has to wait. So, he should now be insured against Brexit. Well, maybe. He also saw the doc about his lingering Belgian plague and was told not to worry as it was clearing up OK.
On the work front, I have done a design for the website I am doing for Jenny’s caterer boyfriend and I am pleased with it. He said he was going to be busy for a little while, so I don’t expect to hear back imminently, but hopefully he likes it. I also had a good result with the gite client: we refused to budge on price and so they went elsewhere. We don’t like turning work down but we aren’t prepared to lower our prices as much as they wanted, and in any event I’m not sure how many more gite websites I can handle without going insane.
On Tuesday we were invited down to Bryan & Carol’s for dinner so we could bid them goodbye before they headed back to the UK for the winter, which they’ve now done. We got there at 5pm and had apéritifs on their patio, followed by a copious barbecue of pork, sausages, salmon and various crudités. At sundown we moved indoors and finished off the meal with a very tasty cheesecake Carol made. We left soon afterwards and had a final cleanser.
On Thursday morning, I went to Mum & Dad’s house to meet our electrician and Enedis (who deal with the mains supply in France) to finally get the house connected. They’ve apparently done whatever they needed to do and all is now in readiness (although they have asked to meet me there tomorrow for something or other so we might not be out of the woods quite yet).
That afternoon, I was back to Saint-Saud again, but this time with Matt. This was for our interview with Réussir Le Périgord, a weekly economics journal, about the site we made for Périgord Beers. We got to the brewery a bit early so we could have a quick chat with the owners a bit beforehand. We were worried about the fact that no orders had been placed via the site to date and feared an ambush. As it turns out, the guys are still very pleased with their site and aren’t in the least worried about the lack of sales, which is more to do with the logistics of delivery than anything else.
The interview went very well, focusing on how they found us, and how we built a website to match their requirements. It comes out this Friday so we’ll share it when we get our hands on it. I can’t imagine the paper has an especially large readership, but it’s always good to get free press.
As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, that evening we were invited to Marie & Christian’s for dinner. Part of the reason for the invite was that she’d been given a load of her late brother-in-law’s clothes by her sister and she asked if we wanted any before she got rid of them. We showed up at 7pm and started with the clothes. The chap had at one point been quite slim before putting on a lot of weight, so there was a surprising range of sizes on offer. Matt did better than me, but we both found a few things we liked.
That done, we sat out on their terrace and caught up over aperitifs. Marie made a divine smoked pork dish served with puy lentils. As with all her cuisine, it was to die-for. After a few more beverages than was probably sensible, we left on the early side and watched a little TV before bed.
On Friday, it was our turn to entertain. We realised we’d only had our new neighbours Paul & Nathalie over once since they first arrived in Mazeroux, and as Françoise wanted to meet them (they bought her sister’s house) we invited her too, along with Manu & Mathilde. All three of the ladies celebrated their birthdays the week before, so we kicked off with some Prosecco courtesy of Françoise. The meal was a hit. Matt made his now-famous fried chicken with sweet potato wedges, and a side of broccoli. For dessert, he made a banana cream pie, and it was every bit as tasty as you’d imagine. Work on it began the day before and involved a daunting amount of different steps, but it was well worth it.
Paul, Nathalie and Françoise were all working the next morning, so it wasn’t a late one. This was just as well as we were flagging from having done two nights in a row. Luckily for us though, we had the rest of the weekend to recover as we had no other plans.
I shall end with the story of Mum & Dad’s recent holiday to Greece, which I am relieved to report they survived! After a great start with several days of decent sunshine, things all started to go awry. It started with the threat of gale force winds up of to 180km an hour. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a wildfire broke out on the mountain, and with the winds fuelling it, it quickly spread out of control. More and more villages were evacuated as it made its way down the mountain and at one point Mum & Dad weren’t sure they’d make it to their apartment.
Luckily, the next day the winds died down and it rained. You’d think that’d be the end of it, but at the same time, a Mediterranean cyclone – a very rare event – was building up steam and looked set to pummel Greece. It was due to hit on Saturday – the day Mum & Dad were to fly out, so we weren’t sure they’d make it. In the end, the cyclone passed lower to the south and they were OK, although they got a good soaking while boarding. So, they’re fine, but they could probably now use a holiday to get over their holiday!