The weather stayed nice for a few days after we returned, then turned rainy and cool on Saturday, and has stayed that way since. We even lit the fire one night, although it was probably unnecessary. It’s meant to stay this way for another few days, including for our next concert, this Saturday.
We took advantage of the nice weather while it lasted. Mom weeded out all of the front garden, and even unearthed some strawberry plants we put in a few years ago. Will and I put up some fencing on top of the existing fence to block the wind. Of course, it’s also provides a bit of camouflage, which can’t hurt. I mowed the back lawn, which had reached jungle proportions.
On Thursday, we had our first bbq of the year with Bryan and Carol. We started with margaritas and nibbles outside, then moved in for the main which was sausage, chicken and salmon served with Mom’s potato salad and a cold broccoli salad. Mom made a batch of her famous mandlecotti cookies for dessert. We have since learned that B&C have put their house on the market. Bryan had a bad time last winter, and since his mum died earlier this year, they now have a place to live in England. Carol doesn’t want to go back, and they’re now talking about keeping the house here too.
I skipped over Tues and Wed, but there’s not much to report. I had a Wed deadline, so I was working most of the time. I had choir practice on Tuesday at the venue, which was the Milhac church. The rehearsal went very poorly, perhaps because it was the first time we’d sung there, or nerves. Regardless, I wasn’t looking forward to the performance after that. We also had our final rehearsal with the ladies on Wed evening, and happily, that went very well.
We had curry on Friday night, with garlic-free dishes for Mom. Afterwards, she accompanied us to rehearsal at MeH so she could see for herself what we’ve been complaining about. There weren’t many people there, and the rehearsal went fairly well. Mom took some videos with her phone so at least there’s some evidence of us doing a decent job.
Saturday was spent getting ready for, and fretting about the gig that night. Will and I had an early start (for a Saturday) and collected the equipment from MeH around 09:30. We then took it to Jenny’s and set up the speakers and mic for the day’s events. The two of us had a practice, which was a bad idea since we made loads of mistakes on things we never mess up. We didn’t do much during the afternoon, and I wandered down to check on how things were progressing around 17:30. They said it would be at least an hour, and figuring that they needed time to clean up and prepare for dinner, I thought 20:30 would be when we should start setting up. The ladies came by around 19:00 and we had a drink, then headed down.
To my surprise, there were loads of people there, and the evening was in full swing. So we quickly gathered the equipment, and started getting things set up. We ran into loads of technical problems, but finally got everything sorted after nearly two hours. We then had a quick bite to eat, and started playing around 23:00. There was still a decent crowd at this point, but it dwindled as the evening wore on. Although it wasn’t raining, it was quite cold and with dinner over, people started to leave.
So as usual, we played to an unappreciative, small crowd. In addition, because we didn’t have time to properly balance the sound, the backing was louder than it should have been, and Will’s guitar is too quiet. Having said all that, we were all pleased with our performance, and didn’t make many mistakes. We only had the apero at ours, and then a beer before we went on, so that certainly helped our playing. Anyway, there is video, courtesy of Mom, so you can judge for yourselves. It was after 1:00 by the time we got everything taken down and into the car, and then we chatted a bit with Jenny before heading home. Like always, we had to stay up and review the concert footage and discuss it at length, so it was nearly 4:00 by the time we got to bed.
We had a lazy start on Sunday, and finally got ourselves ready for the 2nd concert of the weekend, the choir concert at the Milhac church. The main event was women’s choir from Perigueux, and they were kind enough to let our amateur choir open for them. Our concert at the choirmaster’s wedding the previous Saturday went poorly, as did the previous rehearsal, so I had low expectations. These were lowered even further after our warm-up / slash practice just before the concert when we made mistakes on songs that we don’t normally have problems with. I’m happy to be proved wrong, and in the end, we actually did very well and only made one small error.
The women’s choir then sang for an hour or so, mostly classical songs and hymns and there were very good. The acoustics in the church are excellent, so that helped. Afterwards we had a drink outside with them, and this gave Mom a chance to catch up with some of our local friends. We ran into Ulysses and his wife, whose house we went to on NYE a few years back. We hope to see them again this summer (if we ever get one). Afterwards, we went home, had leftovers, some cards and an early night.
We had Lucien and Mauricette over on Monday night, so Mom and I went shopping that morning. I had to work the entire day, so she prepared most of the meal. We laboured over what the serve them, and finally decided on an Asian themed meal. This mainly followed my usual menu of late, which was carrot soup to start, followed by stir-fried chicken and beef with cashews and veg. This is normally broccoli, but Sophie gave us some asparagus from her garden the previous day, so it made an excellent substitution. This was served with fried rice and followed by a dessert of chocolate tart from a new recipe that Mom found. Both it and the soup called for ginger, so that qualifies them as Asian in my book.
We had a really nice evening with them, much like the last one. It was they who told us about Bryan and Carol since they had seen the house for sale on line. They also told us about the chasse meal they went to with B&C the week before. It was one of those that is actually two full meals at the same time: soup, venison in white whine, sorbet with eau de vie, then more venison with potatoes, cheese and dessert. It lasted a good five hours and B&C were the only English people there. They had a really good time, despite language issues and have encouraged us to attend the next one. Lucien and Mauricette said they’d be happy to take us, so perhaps we’ll give it a try.
I did some work on Tuesday before taking Mom to Angouleme in the afternoon. Although her train wasn’t cancelled due to the strike this time, it was already going to be 10 minutes late before we even left the house an hour and a half before. It turns out this was fortunate, since she would have missed it otherwise, due to roadworks and traffic along the way. But she did make it, and has since arrived home without too much hassle. It was a very nice visit, and it’s always nice to spend time together. Next year, she’s going to come in late Aug or Sep, so hopefully, she’ll get some decent weather for a change!