We have our own car at last! Sharon got back to France on Sunday evening, having had a successful trip to the UK, and was kind enough to run us into Périgueux the next day to collect our Toyota. It had occurred to us a few days ago that before paying for this car, we had failed to find out a few fundamentals like when was it last MOT’d, whether it has air-con, how worn the tyres are etc… Fortunately, all’s well. It had a full MOT just days ago and it is all in good working order – air-con and all. Phew. Anyway, apparently, there is a Frisch family tradition to name one’s car – so to continue in this vein, we have today officially named our car Lola Corolla.
Our first guests, Iain and Fab, got here yesterday evening. We had a nice meal with them, then stayed up till around 1 am playing cards and demolishing obscene quantities of cheese and wine. Today, we made it out of the house around mid-day and headed straight for Brantôme for a spot of lunch in what is clearly set to be our regular restaurant (with the fine, fine waiter). I was shocked and amazed to see chicken on the menu for the first time ever in the Dordogne – for the menu du jour, which we all ordered. Unfortunately, they had just run out – but at least I know it is possible to find chicken in restaurants out here.
As it was still so mild, we decided we would take the walk that Matt and I did last week. It was a great fun, but thanks to some canine intervention, it went on rather longer than planned! Half way round, a very playful dog decided to adopt us. There was no name tag, but we have named him Liability. He could only have been a puppy – full of endless energy and very amusing indeed. After about an hour, we decided he’d come far enough with us and tried to get him to go back home, but he was having far too much fun and kept bounding ahead.
The very last stretch of the walk hits the main road for a brief way, and this was highly nerve-racking: the dog had no concept of self-preservation whatsoever. He was quite happily running back and forth across the road, stopping occasionally to sniff the bumpers of oncoming lorries, forcing them to a screeching halt. I had visions of having to make an awkward phone call to the number on his collar explaining that Fido wasn’t coming home again, but somehow, we got him into town unscathed. We weren’t out of the woods yet though: all our attempts to get him to go home were futile – he just kept bounding back down the road to us, wanting to play some more. Given his suicidal interest in fast-moving traffic, we didn’t want to just leave him alone so we eventually managed to palm him off on a local, who kindly agreed to call the number on his collar and get him collected. Nutter.