I’ve just remembered that with his last entry, Matt brought us back around to Monday blogging, so I’d best get on with it and relate our news. After a long spell of sun, it’s turned rather cool, wet and windy here – and it’s due to remain so all week long. The cats are taking this about as badly as I am and are already starting to drive us a little nuts. To be fair to them, they’ve had a lot of trauma recently with us being out at various events but they’re both very down in the dumps today.
Monday was spent playing catch-up on emails and little bits of work and then in the evening, we went around to Gilles and Myriam’s for dinner. Gilles is really keen to get involved with Musique en Herbe, but we’re not so thrilled with the idea, based on Matt’s previous experience of playing in a band with him. For now, we’re hoping the fact that the Friday practises don’t start till 9.30 and go on till gone midnight will be enough to put him off: he’s normally a-bed by 10. We had a nice evening with them but left on the early side as we were both a bit tired.
Lucien came around the next day and collected a load of our ripe figs which have since been turned into 18 jars of fig jam. Matt assisted with the process as Mauricette is recovering from an operation to her shoulder and has limited movement. Apparently there’s nothing to it so we might try and make our own in future years. Matt had his first choir of the season that evening and despite a few absences, it went better than feared.
On wednesday, one of our english gite-owing clients came around to see us. He and his wife went totally radio silent for all of august, which was a little vexing as I was halfway through a project with them, and they owed Matt some money for something else. He came over, cleared his debt and gave me a couple other small bits to be getting on with. In other work news, I have a new site to do for a family business that sells spas out here in France. They’ve an existing site but it’s fairly atrocious and they want a shiny new one to coincide with the opening of some new showrooms. She is a lovely lady and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this one. It’s refreshing, rare and also reassuring when a client says “I don’t care what it costs, I want it to be good”. The only downside is a non-negotiable deadline of late October, as I’ve already got another site to do by then, as well as a few other ongoing bits. Work’s still a bit slower for Matt, who’s keen for a new big project. but he’s being pestered fairly regularly by existing clients for now.
That evening, we had Richard and Bridget over to dinner at ours. Matt made a tasty meal of cheddar and tomato tarte with an apricot cake for dessert which was well received. We also did a furniture exchange with them. They liked the old sofa in our mezzanine that we’ve been meaning to get rid of for about 4 years now, so they took that and in exchange, left us with 2 wooden ikea-type lounge chairs. We’re now on the lookout for a replacement sofa and once we get that, we can get rid of the 2 old armchairs too. Rigit are sounding increasingly keen to move back out to France, which would be great. They’ve got a few wrangles to sort out as far as mortgages etc first, but hopefully that will be resolved in the next year or so.
I’ve been having more issues with my tooth/jaw recently. I’m taking ibuprofen every day, which works a treat for the pain but is not an ideal solution. I’m off to the dentist tomorrow to review the x-ray and will know more after then about what, if anything, can be done.
I don’t think much happened on Thursday apart from more work, and in the evening, conversation class for Matt, so I shall skip ahead to Friday, when we had band practise. This started earlier, at 8.30, so we could spend some time going over our set list for Sunday’s gig. This was only the 2nd or 3rd practise we had to prepare for the gig, and it showed. About half of the songs were repeats from the last gig but the rest were new and even if they were songs Matt and I knew already, we’d never played them with the band before so it was a bit ropey.
We spent saturday getting in as much final practising as we could take and that evening, went to Nadine and Jean-Claude’s for dinner. We’d not really seen them in ages so were pleased to finally catch up. They’ve bought a house near the town of Uzès in the Gard departement (down in the south, near Nimes and Avignon) and will be moving down there gradually over the next year or two. We get on really well so it will be a shame to see them go – but as they point out, while we’re losing neighbours, we’re also gaining a holiday destination. Along with us was a friend of theirs called Sue. I’d met her once or twice before and Matt knows her as she goes to his choir. She’s a lovely lady who’s lived here nearly 30 years and has excellent French. After a lovely meal of poulet Provençale we headed off home for an early night in readiness for our gig the next day.
Alain, the organiser of Musique en Herbe, is a bit of a motorbike enthusiast and is a member of an association that throws a festival every year. The goal of the festival is to raise money for a local child in need and they have stalls, raffles, food and drinks, and live music. Alain always provides the sound equipment for the whole weekend and Musique en Herbe (or just Music’ Friends as it was this time) is one of the groups who play. This year the festival took place in St-Laurent-sur-Manoire, a small town outside of Périgueux.
Unfortunately, just as with our last gig, a spell of nice weather ended dramatically just in time for the concert. It was cool and drizzly all day, so what could have been a packed audience turned out to be about 30 or so bemused and damp bikers. Matt and I got there at 10:30 as advised, then had a wait of 30mins for the rest of the band to show. Upon arrival, they realised they’d left the rhythm guitarist’s guitar behind. They managed to coerce someone into bringing it out, but it meant we played later than planned. We were supposed to be on at noon but it was more like 1.30, so we had lunch first, courtesy of Alain, then got onto the stage.
Well, I say stage: it was actually a lorry parked perpendicularly to the crowd and with the side rolled back. This was to keep our gear out of the rain. We played our 14 songs mostly OK but with a with a few hiccups here and there. It would have been good to get a little more of a reaction from the audience, but we’re used to being ignored at gigs by now! At the end, Alain urged us to keep going so we bashed out “Come Together” by the Beatles, a track we’d rehearsed a grand total of once. Amazingly, it came out OK – well, we thought so anyway. After the gig we stayed for a beer or two and then came home to chill out. Now that gig is out of the way, we’re giving next friday’s rehearsal a miss as it’s curry night in Milhac. But I shall leave that for Matt to recount next week.