Hi. I seem to be getting all the hedonistic events to blog about at the moment. Well, I have a belter for you this time… Before I get to that though, a couple other things to cover. The first is work. Things have actually continued to improve for us on this front, with quite a number of potential jobs looming on the horizon. For myself, as well as the ones Matt described below, I also have another potential site redesign for the work colleague of a friend based down in San Tropez. I submitted a brief proposal of what I would do and what it would cost and am now waiting to hear back. I have also been approached by both Matt’s brother, Ben, and my uncle, Barry in the last few days for various things, so stuff is happening.
For Matt, the potential job for the London bank he mentioned below is starting to look more likely. It will be a lot of work, to be done to a tight deadline, but the money (proper London wages) would be brilliant for us at the moment, so fingers crossed it pans out. He will hear for definite on that one next week. In the meantime, he is in the final stages of the big project he was working on a couple months back, so the timing is pretty good.
Not much else has happened since the last entry up until the weekend, barring 2 driving lessons for me, one on Thursday and one on Friday. My instructor has said to me that she can tell as soon as I get into the car how the whole lesson will go. Sometimes, they are a breeze and I am relaxed. Other days, I get into a state and everything goes terribly. Well, I ended the week with one of each. Thursday was a bad, bad day for driving. I made silly mistakes, messed up manoeuvres and got shouted at, which didnt help. Needless to say, I didnt therefore approach Friday’s lesson with much enthusiasm – but I should have as I drove perfectly for the full 1.5 hours. At the end of it, Catherine my instructor gave me a new nickname: Jeckel & Hyde (which sounds hilarious with a French accent: ‘Jehkel et Eeeede’). Took a few goes before I sussed out what she was saying….
Oh, just one more thing before I come to the hedonism: for the record, it has been a bad summer weather-wise, and I stand by my description of it in my last entry. In fact, I went back over the blog from June to August to see what we had said. Our summer looked like this: (and by the way, as I sit and write this, under an overcast sky, it is starting to rain). That is all.
Ok, on to the weekend and the blog title. Every day in France is named after one saint or another, and 28 August is St Augustin’s Day. Augustin happens to be the patron saint of Villebois Lavalette, home to Lee, Richard and Barry, and every year, the town has a bit of a shindig to celebrate. The timing is good too: end of summer, just before school restarts – a last hurrah, really. A fair pitches up with rides for the kids (and silly grown-ups), there is a parade with floats, and evening meals are served in Villebois’ lovely covered market square, Les Halles.
Matt and I stayed over Lee and Richard’s on Saturday and Sunday, leaving loads of food out for the kitties of course. We were joined the first day by Islay, an old friend of Richard’s and Glenda, a good friend of Lee’s. They had already had a Friday night of drinking and being merry, but everyone had been sensible so no casualties. We got there for lunch time, which, as it was sunny, was out on their terrace – and served with liberal quantities of beer. We more or less hung around at their place all day, chatting and drinking, till the evening when we ventured into town to see what was happening. We were also joined by John, an English neighbour of Lee & Richard and an ex Metropolitan Policeman (with many of the views and attitudes to match). He and Matt quickly got into a lively debate about life, the universe and everything that took them all the rest of the evening. We didnt go on the rides at all that night, instead hanging out in the square enjoying the mild evening and free-flowing beer. Eventually, we stumbled back to Lee & Richard’s where we unwisely kept going until around 3am before all passing out.
Lee was in charge of brekkie the next morning, making us all a fry-up. This was welcomed by everyone other than Matt, who had a bit of a false start and had to leave his and go and lie down for a while, but he bounced back. At around 4ish that afternoon, we headed up to Les Halles to watch the parade of floats go by. We met up with Barry and his boyfriend Simon too, but they didnt seem to want to chat to us too much, so I cant report what is new with them. After the floats, we returned to the boys’ place to meet the last set of guests to arrive: Lee’s best friend from the UK, Gareth, his boyfriend Wesley, and Gareth’s mum, Barbara. They flew in to Bordeaux that day and hired a car for the weekend.
With our numbers swelled to 9, we were now a force to be reckoned with. After a few aperatifs at theirs, we went out to Les Halles for the evening meal. It was spit-roasted pork, and was ok if not brilliant (but then, I was somewhat drunk at this point and dinner is hazy at best, so I didnt miss much, clearly). Afterwards, we hung out in the square having a good old laugh before finally making it to the fair itself and some of us having a play on the rides. Inevitably, it was then back to their place (now thoroughly cleaned out of vodka) to round off the evening. Most of us were sensible enough to crash upon returning, but Lee, Wez and I were supping beer until around 4 in the morning before I had the sense to stop and go to bed. Apparently, Wez and Lee werent even that sensible and went back out to the square for another hour before bed. Ouch…
Monday was a painful day. A very painful day… I would go on from here to bring us fully up to date, but for one, this entry is far too long, and for another, there may be some pertinent news to be told relating to the start of this week, so on that note, bye for now.