Well, it’s been a quiet one in Mazeroux this last week so this should be brief. Matt’s just getting started on his big new project for Abby and will be more or less full-time on that for the foreseeable. For me, work’s still too quiet. I did put my drone photography website live recently (and got paid for it, more importantly) and I’m oh-so-very close to putting a gite rental site live too, but I could use a bit more new stuff coming in. Mind you, if all my on-hold clients came back to me at once, I would be utterly swamped!
We can confirm that Chuck really did have bad luck with the weather – it’s been mostly nice and sunny since he left, if not quite 30 degrees any more. Our veggie plot is at last yielding fruit too. Lucien told us there was no chance any of our tomatoes would ripen as we’d planted them too late. It’s true we might not get all of them, but the first few have finally ripened, and most delicious they are too. Our special plants are also progressing nicely. There are two that are more advanced and very much laden with flowers, but the other three are beginning to catch up now. We’ve nearly completely burned through our reserves and need to be very parsimonious with what rests if it is to last until harvest time.
There really isnt too much to say about our week, which was quiet and eventless, barring the usual activities of choir/conversation group for Matt and lots of guitar practise for me. Our figs are all ripening, bringing with them the annual invasion of hornets. Lucien came over on Tuesday and harvested a load so we are once again very, very long on fig jam.
On Wednesday we had our second rehearsal for our upcoming gig. The first one two weeks ago was disastrous, so we went into this one with low expectations. We realise that, unlike before when we had pre-recorded backing tracks, there’s little point in Matt and I practising at home if the drummer hasn’t found the time to learn the songs too. Luckily for us, he had indeed spent some time learning the set, and it showed.
Even better still, Céline gave us a welcome surprise by showing up with her keyboard. We’d been encouraging her to think about playing on a few songs to fill out the sound more but she seemed reluctant. Like our drummer Harry, she’d obviously spent some time practising and the rehearsal went a hundred times better than the fist one. After a year of Musique en Herbe sessions where we’d leave every evening in a bad mood, it was a great feeling to leave a rehearsal and feel really encouraged. We’ve also now finalised the set-list so all told, we’re feeling good about the concert.
The only other news was a day of double client meetings on Friday. One existing client called around to request some v minor changes to his website in the morning. He’s another real success story – he had an old site that was frankly just awful. Since we put his new one live, he’s reported a large and sustained increase in business and the website has “more than paid for itself”. Then in the afternoon, we met a potential new client. She runs a gite / equestrian centre in nearby Miallet. This makes her a competitor of another gite client of ours in Miallet, and also of course of Jenny’s equestrian centre down the road.
Her name’s Gill and she’s a very lovely lady, with two existing websites that were built by her son (who, let’s just say, is almost certainly not a web designer by trade). She’d like us to enhance them but at the same time has a very little budget. We gave her an idea of costs and are now waiting to hear back. If anything comes of it, it won’t be much. And that was probably the only noteworthy thing to happen all weekend, so I will leave you there! Short and sweet, as promised.