For some unfortunate reason I am up good and early today so I am occupying myself with my blog entry for the week. We had a lovely barbecue with our new friends, Guillaume and Babeth on Tuesday, although Matt’s still beating himself up over having overcooked the meat. It was a warm but hazy day so we ate outside, starting with chips and salsa. The main was pork that had marinated in yoghurt and saffron. Matt’s famous brownies capped off the meal and more than atoned for the meat. Both B&G are really good company and, as we seem to have a few more spaces free than anticipated, we’re going to invite them to the wedding too.
Not much happened the next day except I had the first of 15 physio appointments for my jaw. These are happening at Brantome and I have 2-3 a week booked in till the end of September. I haven’t noticed any improvement yet, but the person dealing with me has made some interesting observations and seems to know his stuff. Even better, he’s very friendly and quite attractive too, so I don’t mind so much having to make the journey.
I had an earlyish start on Thursday when I went to La Chapelle Verlaine to meet the guy who’s installing Mum & Dad’s fosse septique. The first step in the process is an “Etude de Sol” or soil test, which basically involves digging various holes in the ground, filling them with water, then seeing how long they take to drain. It all seemed to go OK and we’ll get the results on Thursday. Conveniently, Mum & Dad are out this week on their working holiday: they’re clearing out the house in readiness for the renovations to get underway. As soon as we get the soil test results, we’re going to meet the Maire and get his permission to proceed with the fosse.
On Friday, Carol came round to measure our trousers for the wedding, which need taking up. We’ll be calling around to see her this week so she can double-check the measurements, and then they’ll be sorted. That evening we had a social activity: we invited Manu & Mathilde over, as well as some mutual friends, Sylvie and Olivier. We’d met the latter a few times around M&M’s and also at a few NYE parties, but this was the first time we’d had them over to ours. Like M&M they’re really good company. They’re originally from Marseille and while you can’t tell so much with Sylvie, Olivier has a really strong southern accent that I find very entertaining. As the weather was still cooperating, we squeezed in another barbecue and spent the whole evening outside. Having learned from his previous mishap, this time Matt nailed the meal. After guacamole and salsa to start, there was chicken in the aforementioned yoghurt marinade, and pork in a spicy rub, which he didn’t cooked as long. Both meats came out great. The meal was capped off with a peach cobbler, fruit courtesy of Lucien, who dropped off a good 2 dozen or so the other day. It was gone 1 am when we finally came inside and it was still very pleasant out.
We had a quiet and lazy saturday in, and a tame Sunday too, although Lewis did join us for an aperitif as he wanted to talk to us about websites. He and Pary are returning to Paris imminently and by all accounts, are not looking forward to it.
Yesterday afternoon we went and met with Françoise at the campsite where the wedding’s happening. We had a list of questions to go over and we spent a good hour and a half firming up our plans and benefiting from her advice. We ended up with a list of things to do/buy as a result of that meeting so will get onto that asap. By the time we returned, Mum and Dad had arrived. They left the UK the previous evening and took an overnight ferry to Caen. From there they had a fairly painless drive most of the way, until the sat-nav decided to play silly buggers and they ended up on some tiny country roads somewhere in the environs of Nontron. It was a really hot day yesterday too, but luckily they had aircon so weren’t too cooked. Knowing they were driving, we’d ordered a number of items from the UK that we had shipped to their place in the UK and they brought all that with them. They also brought us a load of wood – offcuts from Dad’s bench-making – that will be used as firewood this winter. We unpacked all that and then enjoyed the afternoon sun out in the garden. This of course meant another barbecue – salmon and chicken this time for the meat, along with potato salad and grilled courgette. Dessert was a peach cobbler that almost but not quite used up the last of Lucien’s peaches. And that’s about all I have to recount. I am off to shower in readiness for my 9am physio appointment.