With apologies for the lateness, here’s what’s been going on at Port 80 this week. It’s been largely back to work for both of us, with me making headway on the site I’m doing for my author client and Matt trying to clear his desk of several small jobs in anticipation of starting a largeish project in a few weeks for his friend Abby in the States.
Aside from work, the other main activity here has been band practise for our gig at Francoise’s leaving do. She called round on Thursday for a drink after her and Matt’s weekly conversation group and we asked if a date had been set yet. Apparently it will be on the 15th Feb, so we’re feeling the pressure – we’d originally thought we had until the end of the month. Unlike our 2 previous gigs, we’re not playing ‘unplugged’ this time – I’ll be playing my electric and Matt will be playing his neglected bass guitar. We’re very conscious of our lack of drummer but have discovered a website where you can download drum-only versions of a surprisingly large array of songs, so we’re currently experimenting with those as backing tracks. Our setlist is very Francoise-focused, featuring 3 songs by her favourite band, The Cure, as well as a few well-known French tracks – nearly all of which are new to us as far as playing them, so we’ve a lot of prep to do!
The weather here has continued to spoil us lately. We’re averaging 10-12 degrees in the day and not much lower than 6 at night. Our geranium that ought to have died quite some time ago has started flowering, which shows just how mild a Jan we’ve had so far. The fair weather peaked on Friday when we had a full day of blue skies and a high of 14 degrees, to the delight of humans and cats alike. Matt decided to take advantage of this by going out for a run – something I have known him to do only a handful of times since we met. He was back in less than half an hour, having run non-stop for that time. He spent the next 2 days barely able to climb the stairs and moaning like an old man every time he sat down, so I’m not sure he’ll be rushing to do it again anytime soon…
On Friday evening, we went round to Francoise and Philippe’s for dinner. She’d planned to have her sister Nadine and her husband Jean-Claude over anyway, so asked us as well when she was here the previous night. The only small fly in the ointment for me was that the planned menu was slow-cooked beef (with Matt bringing brownies for dessert), but it’s very hard/impossible to go hungry at a meal out here. Despite going v easy on the meat portion of the meal I was very well fed at the end. We’re going to be making a lot more effort to see Nadine and JC from now on to help fill the gap that Francoise will leave when she heads off. They’re both excellent company too.
Typically for a night round there, we were both late and drunk when we got home. Our normal routine in such situations is to have a recovery day in front of the TV, and we did indeed do just that, but only until 5 or so when we had to spring reluctantly to life and prepare for guests. Matt had been to see our Kiwi jeweller clients earlier in the week to help them with an IT problem and while he was there, invited them over for a meal on Saturday. I did an emergency clean while Matt prepared dinner (roast chicken with a side of couscous/bulgour mix and some green beans, with more brownies for afters). Despite us starting the day in less than fine form, we had a lovely time with William and Clare, who seemed to enjoy the meal a great deal. They even bought us a pair of hand-made cufflinks each, which was very sweet of them.
And that brings us to the end of the week, and of this entry too, so I shall leave you there. Until next time.