Summer finally arrived last week with a vengenance. Records were broken in the south of France in the Gard, the department where Nadine and JC moved to, where it reached 46C (114F). It reached 36C here for a few days last week, which was plenty hot with the humidity. It’s turned cooler and stormy this week, but will climb back into the 30’s in the coming days.
Will started the week with a trip to Perigueux for another scan which didn’t provide any new info. He also started kine (physio) in Brantome so hopefully that will help. I had my last choir practice on Monday, and everyone brought a little something to eat, most of which was cherry clafouti (there were at least five of them). I mowed Mon and Tues am to get it done before the heat arrived. Both of us have a lot of work that we can’t do since we’re waiting for clients. We have two new sites to build, both large and complex so we can’t relax completely, but enjoyed the time off even so.
Not much else happened until Wed night when we had two invitations. We started at Bryan and Carol’s for an apero since it was their last night before heading back to England for 6 weeks. They’re taking care of their grandsons, and visiting family etc before returning with the boys in mid-August. It was a very hot day and we sat on their terrace in the shade, sweating nonetheless. After a few vodkas, we headed to Paul and Nathalie’s for dinner, along with Francoise. Manu and Mathilde were invited too, but didn’t make it due to a scheduling mix-up.
We had nibbles inside where it was a bit cooler before moving out to the covered deck for more nibbles. The meal was similar to the previous time, with strips of meat (turkey, magret and aguilettes de canard) served with three homemade mayo-based sauces, plus potatoes and curried veg. I was asked to bring dessert and decided to try my hand at cherry pie, due to the aboundance of cherries this year. Normally, it’s the larger tree with darker cherries that’s full, but this year, the small one had even more so I mainly used those, with some of the darker ones and a handful of rasperries. It turned out ok, but wasn’t cooked enough in the centre so didn’t hold together very well. We were all a bit tired from the heat and left before midnight.
On Thursday, we practiced for our upcoming gig at the weekend, and wrote a song as a gift for Eva. It’s called Darling Eva and is sung to the tune of Pretty Woman. We didn’t do much else until the evening when we had end of the year apero for Milhac Loisir in the room des asso in the village. It was mainly just the people from the conversation club plus a few others. One of the women’s son had recently got married and she showed up with a few bottles of champagne. The small room started off cool but quickly warmed up with all the people, so the champagne was easy to knock-back. We were all sweating quite a lot by the time we left.
Eva’s birthday celebration started on Friday night. We were the first to arrive around 6:30 and helped set-up the tables and the sound system. It was meant to be a low-key evening with just her close friends and family but it turned out to be the biggest night of the weekend (for us anyway). Everyone brought something to eat, mainly salads since it was still very hot plus loads of booze. Her friends from Bordeaux showed up around 9ish and we finally sat down to eat around 10. It turned very pleasant later on and we drank and danced in the field until around 4am when we came home and stayed up a bit longer playing Wii.
It was even hotter on Sat with very little wind and lots of humidity so we stayed in the house most of the day (or the afternoon, to be more precise). We rehearsed our set a few times, mainly our new song so that I could memorise the lyrics. We headed back to the party around 7pm to get our equipment set-up which wasn’t much since it was just Will’s acoustic guitar and the two mics. It was mainly the same crowd as the previous night with a few other friends, and the apero started around 8pm. We did our set an hour later and it turned out fine, with very few mistakes. We printed out the lyrics and handed them around so that people would know what we were saying / could sing along. There is even video evidence, provided by Sam except that it’s mainly him singing (off-key) instead of us.
We then moved on to the meal which was rice salad, ratatouille and meats on the plancha including lamb, kofte and merguez. After the meal and long pause, we moved onto the dessert which was four Omlette Norvegians provided by Fred. Benoit wasn’t happy about the wait, lost his temper and stormed off to the house so missed the dessert. We were fairly tired from the night before and a cool wind had arrived, so we headed home around 1 and then stayed up playing Wii. We got a (relatively) good night’s sleep and planned to have a nice quiet Sunday. As we were about to start lunch sometime before 2, the phone rang. It was Benoit wondering where we were since the others were just stirring and lunch would be soon underway. So like the gluttons we are, we went back for a third day.
We had a few vodkas on arrival and then headed down to the party area mid-afternoon. We had leftovers, of which there were plenty and then made our way back to the house for a few more drinks. Most of the guests had cleared off by then except for a few local guys, mainly freeloaders who were still enjoying what booze remained. We headed down around 7 and started breaking down the tables, which they finally took as a hint to go. This left just us plus our hosts (and Sam) and we had a few more drinks before tucking into even more leftovers. Benoit had an early start so went to bed around 9 and the rest of us headed to the field where the sound system was set-up. We demolished a bottle of lemoncello while listening to music until midnight when we headed home and quickly passed out. All in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend and I just need to rest up for a few more days before my trip to Edinburgh on Thurs to celebrate Gerald’s bday.