Another late entry, sorry about that. OK, to follow straight on from Matt’s post: last weekend was a fairly busy one. First off was the usual Friday Musique en Herbe practise. This was not terribly productive so was a bit discouraging. It’s difficult when so many other people come along too, all wanting to do songs of their own. Fortunately, between now and our gig on the 21st, we’re now also practising on Saturday afternoons. These sessions are a lot more focused and we always come away feeling more optimistic.
On Saturday evening, we had Manu & Mathilde and Sophie & Dom over for dinner to celebrate Matt’s birthday. In fact, it was a dual celebration as Manu’s is the day after Matt’s. We hadn’t seen either couple in quite some time so it was good to catch up. We served up southern fried chicken with macaroni cheese and Sophie made a cake for dessert.
The next day we decided to check out our special harvest that had been drying out in the loft. Several hours later we found ourselves with a very satisfying 10 ounces of fine smelling, sticky and seed-free product – our best ever result, so we’re really pleased about that. It’s such a bumper harvest that we should be covered now for close on to a year.
Our friends Louis and Pary invited us to theirs for dinner that evening. As they’ve both been hectically travelling back and forth between here and Paris for work, Louis gave us his one and only plant to look after in his absence. So, we were able to present him with the results of his harvest that evening, for which he was very grateful. It was good to see those two again, something that should be a little easier to do from now on as their workloads are due to calm down a little.
Ok, on to the week. I shall gloss over Monday as I don’t think anything much happened. On Tuesday I went to see Alain, the head of Musique en Herbe, to give him a crash course in editing his new website I made for the association. He seems very pleased with it all told, although I’m not sure how much of the tutorial he actually absorbed – he has quite a short attention span and constantly interrupts you (and himself).
On Wednesday, we took Delores for a sojourn down south to Lot-et-Garonne. We have some clients who live down there that we inherited from Colleen at the start of the year. They’re an english couple called David and Tina who have lived out here for just over 2 years. They’re both a bit entrepreneurial, him especially, and have ordered at least 3 or 4 websites from us since we started working for them, so they’re among the best clients we have. They’ve been keen to meet us in person so we finally found the time to do so.
They live in a small hamlet near Duras, about 2 hours from us. It’s a geographically stunning part of France so it was nice to see the area, but we didn’t have too much time to explore. We got there for lunch time and were greeted with a glass of wine and were introduced to their team. David in particular is an interesting case – an engineer through and through, he literally spent the whole meal discussing some form of new building material he believes will revolutionalise property construction worldwide. An odd man.
We couldn’t stay too long so hit the road soon after the meal. We had only an hour or so to chill out at home before we were off out again. This time it was to Rigit’s for dinner. Well, of the 2 it was actually just Richard as Bridget couldn’t get the time off to make it out. Instead Rich was joined by one of his 2 sons, Alex, plus his lovely italian girlfriend whom we’d not met before.
OK, a little fast-forwarding again: on to the weekend. We have next year’s wood on order and expected it on Saturday morning. We realised that last year’s order was still out in the garden – nothing like leaving something to the last possible moment – so we got that stacked in the log shed in readiness. Never a fun job, this took the 2 of us a couple hours to do. In the end, the new delivery never showed up but at least we’re ready for it now. That evening was Musique en Herbe again, and again, the session was only somewhat useful, with lots of time wasted.
Saturday’s session was better and I think we’ve now nailed down the setlist, which is a relief. Now we just have to learn it all! I checked the post when we returned and found a large brown envelope addressed to me, from the Préfecture in Gironde. It could only be one thing: news about my application for citizenship! Last time I heard from them, back in July, it was to return the whole thing to me with a request for additional information. This time the envelope was too thin to contain my full application, so for a moment I dared to hope that all that stood between me and a final decision was a letter-opener.
However this was of course not the case. Instead it was a letter asking for yet more bits of paper. This time they seem more interested in Matt and wanted his tax returns, pay slips and the Acte de Vente (deeds) for the purchase of our house, which they thought we co-owned. As the Acte de Vente is nearly 100 pages long I wasn’t too keen on photocopying it, so I rang them to discuss. Luckily, seeing as that the house isn’t in my name they’ll be happy with just Matt’s tax and income info, which we have to hand. So, the application will be winging its way back to Gironde tomorrow, for its third go. In the interim, I shall not be holding my breath for more news any time soon.
Sunday was a gorgeous and sunny day, very mild for the time of year. At Matt’s insistence, we took advantage to give the garage a thorough clean ready to house Delores come winter time. That done, we turned our attention to the chimney, which hadn’t been swept in over 2 years (and then, not by us). We’ve had all the kit, we just haven’t dared to try and do it ourselves for fear of dousing our kitchen and lounge in a cloud of soot. Luckily enough it all went very smoothly and the mess was minimal.
Ok, I think that’s about it for our round up. Just quickly, Delores is currently back in Périgueux getting her paint job and polish re-done. It seems when they originally did it, they accidentally got some tiny specs of white paint on her exterior, but we would never have noticed if they’d have kept quiet about it. Anyway, she’s spending the next 3 days there getting worked on (all free of charge) and then we’ll collect her on Thursday. In the interim, they’ve lent us a courtesy car – also a Toyota.
Right, c’est tout. Tune in next week for our 6th (can you believe it!) anniversary entry! Au revoir.