This blog post is brought to you from suburban Minneapolis, MN. I am here for my dad’s 80th birthday celebration and to catch up with friends and family. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s been a while since our last post so there’s a fair bit to report.
Dave and Rosie arrived on Tuesday in the early afternoon. They were amongst our first visitors back in December and they are the first repeat visitors, hence the blog title. We had lunch and then hung out in the garden since the weather was good. Later on, Sharon joined us for a bbq; we served our usual Greek style kebabs and Greek salad, with cheese for dessert. Sharon left early the next day to get the train to the UK and Dave and Rosie were tired from the journey so we went to bed early. The next day was more or less a repeat of the previous. Will and I had to run up to Nontron to turn in some papers related to my getting health cover but otherwise, we hung out in the garden, sometimes joined by the cats.
With Sharon away, it was up to Will and I to look after Oscar, which is fairly straightforward. He misses his mommy so he often mopes around but he decided to be social this time. Most days, we took him for a swim in a nearby lake in the afternoon so he could cool off. We tried to entice him into the pool but he wasn’t willing to take the plunge without his mum around. The cats and Oscar have yet to reach a detente so we have to ensure that both parties have access to the garden, just not at the same time. Unfortunately, it didn’t always work out that way.
One time, Oscar decided he too would like to be in the garden when the boys already were. Smeagol bolted for the house but Louis headed for the nearest tree and before he knew it, he was sitting on the first branch, which was 25ft off the ground. He then realised his predicament but was too scared to do much about it. So we got a step ladder and Will went up it and then had to shimmy up the tree with Dave giving him a boost. At first Louis started walking away down one of the branches but then turned around and got onto Will’s shoulders and they came down like that. A few days later, Oscar came out when the cats already were but they froze and although Oscar really wanted to give chase, we managed to get him back into the house.
On Wed night, we made spinach ricotta enchiladas with some of the spinach from our garden. We stayed up playing cards and demolished a box or two of wine. The next day, we headed into Brantome for lunch at cute waiter restaurant. We got a table next to the river and mostly had warm goats cheese salad, with Dave opting for the cassoulet. It was too hot to do much else so we headed home and hit the pool / garden. Anyone sensing a theme here?
Dave and Rosie wanted to stock up on French goodies so Will joined them for a trip to the Carrefour in Angouleme. He was also preparing for Anna’s visit so needed to get some supplies (mainly beer, wine and vodka) for her visit. I stayed back to try to fix an annoying bug that I’d been battling for the past few days, to no avail. The rest of the day was spent, you guessed it, by the pool in the garden. We had dinner and crashed on the early side since our visitors had an early start the following morning.
They left around 10 on Saturday and it didn’t take long for Will to realise that he couldn’t find his phone. This isn’t a rare occurrence but this time, he wasn’t to blame. Rosie has an iTouch, which is exactly like an iPhone except it’s not a phone. It looks almost the same except that it’s a bit slimmer. Anyway, Dave grabbed what he thought was the iTouch but was in fact Will’s phone so that’s probably on its way back to France as I write. The rest of the day, we just prepared for our next visitor, Anna. She is Will’s best buddy from home and flew into Limoges on Sunday.
The original plan was for her to hire a car there and then make her way to Brantome where we’d meet her and escort her back to our place. Anna picked up the car but got freaked out about driving on the other side of the car and the road. I’m sure this was in no way related to the fact that she was out until 3 the night before at a Baverian-themed beer festival… Anyway, she returned the car and got a taxi to Brantome. I shudder to think of the cost but, thankfully, she made it there in one piece.
What Anna didn’t know was that she had been volunteered to drive me to the train station in Angouleme the next morning in time for my 7:30 train. This would have meant leaving our place around 6:30. Sharon would have done the deed had she been in town so instead, Richard stepped up. He was going to stop by on the way back and take Oscar so he and Bridget could spend some time with him before mommy arrived later that night.
This entry is getting long so I’ll leave it here for Will to fill you in on the rest of Anna’s visit. I will regale you with details of my trip in my next entry but as a teaser, I can tell you that the portions are still huge and shopping is plentiful.
Adieu