So it turns out my theory about shit years occurring triennially was incorrect. After an interminably wet winter, 2024 began with equal wretchedlness: nothing but rain, day after sodden day. When it kept going into June, it really started to get me down. In fact, I wasn’t alone in pining for the sun for once: everyone seemed to be suffering.
In the end we did get some better weather – and a few other things to celebrate too, not least being the glorious annihilation of the Tory party in the UK. As nice as that was though, it was utterly eclipsed by the return of Trump. But even leaving aside the US election, 2024 was still decidedly shitty. Anyway, here’s a month by month recap. And then let us never speak of it again.
January
It was, unsurprisingly, a cool, grey and rainy month. The only newsworthy item was that we made contact with a local architect to discuss our kitchen renovation plans. After an initial skype chat, we arranged to meet her at Port 80 the following month.
February
Another cool, grey and rainy month – and it being a leap-year, we had to endure an additional day of it too. On the 19th, we met up with the architect and got that ball rolling. She made notes, took a tour of the house and promised to come back to us imminently with her drawings. The 19th deserves another mention as it was also the 5th year anniversary of Mum and Dad’s return to France.
Fabienne turned 60 in January but decided to celebrate it at the end of Feb so that the weather wouldn’t be quite so bad (hah!). Her party took place at the Salle des Fêtes in Milhac and comprised a meal followed by karaoke. Anathema to us Roberts, but Matt had a ball, as you can well imagine.
March
The month of March was cool, grey and rainy (are you sensing a pattern yet?). The first newsworthy item is that Nan turned 90 on the 21st. We couldn’t make it to the actual party due to a combination of Ryanair crapness and selfishness on the part of certain family members who will go nameless. Instead, Mum, Dad and I flew over a few days before for a brief visit. After a nice evening with Dave & co, we retired to our nearby Air BnB. The next day, Trace and Frank brought Nan up to us and we all had a lovely meal at a local bistro pub. We were up at 4am the next day (thanks again, Ryanair) to make our flight home.
On the 27th, Marielle the architect came back to show us her plans. There were three options, of varying complexity. We decided on what we wanted and she went away to flesh it out.
Our big holiday of the year came at the end of March. This was to Portugal and was dual-purpose. We wanted to get to know the north a bit better to see if it might be somewhere to spend our winters in the future. (The answer to this, we learnt, is no). The other reason was to meet up with Ben, Ione and their eldest, Miles. Ben had recently won a hefty chunk of money playing poker so decided (to Ione’s bemusement) to spend it on their first trip to Europe together.
We left on the 29th at 9am, with 11 hours of road ahead of us. It was raining lightly as we left and this gradually increased in intensity, turned to sleet, eased off and then picked up again in a grisly loop that lasted the entire way to Villa Réal. We ate at our at hotel and had an early night. The next day we had a quick wander around but finding little of interest, headed on to Porto (in the rain). This is Portugal’s #2 city and is pretty, but also hell on earth for motorists. After a morass of one-ways and steep, narrow, cobbled roads, we finally parked – reverse parallel on a 45 degree incline, in the pouring rain – and fled to our hotel. This was a 5-star place with very friendly staff and a convenient stock of complimentary umbrellas. After two days there, we drove on to our next town: Giumaraes. It isn’t very remarkable itself, but the hotel we stayed at, the Pousada, was stunning – a former monastery, it was all vaulted ceilings and plush red carpets, set in beautiful grounds.
We had an adventure planned for the next day: the Passadiços do Paiva walk. It was a few hours’ drive and the rain did not stop. In fact, it was coming down so much that we had to abandon our plans and head straight on to our next stop. This was Alverio, a coastal town with art nouveau-style buildings interspersed with canals. We stayed there one night and then drove on to Lisbon to meet up with Ben, Ione and Miles. To our relief, the weather down south was a big improvement and we finally saw the sun. We had a chilled few days there, including a trip to nearby Sintra, famous for its Moorish palace. We left early the next morning and drove 10 hours to Zarautz in Spain for a stopover, completing the final leg home the next day.
April
The middle month of spring was (yes, you’ve guessed it) cool, grey and rainy. We did have a couple sunny days at beginning of the month that serendipitously coincided with a weekend, but it was then back to weeks of dreariness. Nothing happened.
May
May was a meteorological repeat of April: cool, grey and rainy except for one weekend. It was also the beginning of gig season for Mazerock. We played at Parenthèses Imaginaires on the 18th. This was for the 60th birthday of a friend of Pascale and Natalie’s and he insisted on paying us 900€ for our troubles. It must have been the pressure of playing for money, but to our surprise, it went quite well.
Fast forward to the 26th: Dave, Amy and the kids came out for a visit and we all met up at the coast. We stayed in a nice little town called Thairé, a few kms outside of La Rochelle. It was a nice property: modern, spacious and with a swimming pool. Luckily this was heated as it wasn’t terribly sunny out. After three nights, we returned home to the ceaseless rain, which by this point had broken records.
June
Not one to buck the trend, June was cool, grey and rainy, with the exception of the odd day or two. Miserable. To add to the anguish, the EU elections took place on the 9th and went catastrophically. In France, one of the worst offenders, the far-right Front National destroyed Macron’s party, outperforming already dire poll predictions. The next day, Macron made the single stupidest move of his career. Not content with the utter thrashing he’d just received, he called snap legislative elections for the following month.
Mazerock’s 2nd gig of the year took place on the 22nd, at a local campsite called La Bucherie, whose website we did. It was cool and grey evening which made it hard to play but it went ok.
On the 28th the four of us left for the UK to celebrate Jo & Michael’s wedding. We had dinner at Market Harborough and got to spend a bit of time with the kids, who were staying with their other grandparents for the rest of the weekend. We then pressed on to Olney where we stayed at the Queen hotel.
The UK had been having similar weather to us, but the sun decided to smile on the happy couple for their big day. This took place on the grounds of a farm in the nearby pretty village of Newton Blossomville. The Pimms flowed on arrival, then a very sweet, short and totally non-religious ceremony, followed by rosé, esspressotinis and beer. Things get a bit hazy from there on out but there was some food at some point. And definitely a few vodkas.
I felt quite dreadful the next day, although breakfast helped somewhat. We flew back home just as France voted in the first round. As expected, the far right won, with Macron’s group coming third. A depressingly avoidable disaster. I still felt bad the next day but began to suspect it was more than just wedding-related excess. Sure enough, I’d caught covid which wiped me out for a few days, and ended a 2-year streak of not being ill.
July
And so to mid-summer, which began cool, grey and rainy. The UK elections on the 4th provided a vanishingly rare instance of good news. As predicted, Labour won by a landslide, clinching themselves a chunky 172 seat majority and ending 14 years of Tory chaos. About fucking time.
That weekend was Paul & Fabienne’s wedding. They had the legal ceremony at the mairie, then one later on at Parenthèses Imaginaires, which was followed by meal, karaoke and dancing. I wasn’t able to attend as I was still contagious. Also failing to attend was the sun, but it was apparently a lovely evening, despite the karaoke.
The 2eme tour of the elections was held the following day. Fears of a far-right parliament and prime minister turned out to be misplaced – Le Pen’s group finished third. However, it was the unstable left-wing coalition (Nouveau Front Popularie) who got the most votes. They are led by a loony far-left party whose policies are often just as extreme as Le Pen’s. No group secured a majority, leaving the country in a political deadlock where it languishes to this day.
On the 13th we played a gig at La Grelière which proved to be among the most fun and relaxed we’ve done. We returned the next day – La Fête Nationale – to help them use up the leftovers. Even the weather cooperated for once – but it did of course revert to cloudy the following day.
Towards the end of the following week, it began to look like summer had finally arrived, with a forecast of nothing but sun as far as the eye can see. That weekend we left for Le Gers to celebrate Marie & Christian’s 50th wedding anniversary. We got there in the late afternoon and immediately threw ourselves in the pool. We knew most of the guests from their last party and enjoyed getting caught up over dinner and drinks.
The next day was the official day of the party and a few more people showed up. We sat down to eat at the precise moment a big storm broke overhead, so relocated to their covered terrace where we all squeezed in as best we could to eat our meal. This was followed by a mini concert and numerous digestifs. We left for home soon after lunch the next day.
What else for July? Ah yes: on the 21st, Joe Biden stood down from the presidential race, gifting the world a tiny, fragile glimmer of hope for November. Thank you, Joe – better late than never. Shame it did us no good… The Olympics started on the 26th, with an oh-so-French opening ceremony that pissed off all the right people. The sun deigned to return a couple days later, and built up to an intense, 3-day heatwave that hit 38 degrees. Despite that though…
August
Began cool and grey as the heatwave broke and the clouds returned. The forecast for the first half of August was for 28 – 32 degrees and sunny every day, but someone up there obviously didn’t get the memo.
The sun did however make a brief cameo on the 5th, which was serendipitous as we took part of the day off to have lunch in Brantôme. My old school friend Ben and his family were over for a holiday and as they were passing close by, we all met up – for the first time in 11 years. The toddler and new-born we met last time are now virtually teenagers.
That Friday we played our 4th gig, at Champs Romain. We were very cramped on their small terrace and didn’t enjoy the show too much, but it seemed to go down ok. Then on the 16th, we played at the municipal campsite of St Pardoux. It’s a really nice spot and the new manager, a young lady from Charente, is lovely. Despite it feeling very relaxed though, we all managed to play quite poorly.
Jan arrived for her annual visit on the 27th. We squeezed in quite a bit of socialising, culminating with a gig at Sophie & Dom’s on the 31st. The sun was out, we all played well and a great evening was had. That, it turned out, was the last day of summer because…
September
Began cool grey and drizzly, with a bleak long term forecast. Matt came down with a cold a few days after the gig and both Jan and soon I caught it too. They left on the 8th for a the annual Frisch family reunion, taking place this year on the East coast. I demurred and stayed at home with the cats where we had our first fire of the season as the nighttime temperatures plunged.
Matt returned on the 18th, bringing some slightly better weather with him. That weekend, Marie & Christian came to stay with us as they were back in the area for a visit. We attended Matt’s choir concert in Brantôme on Saturday afternoon then had a pleasant but chilled evening at home. Moving on…
October
Began cool grey and drizzly, dashing hopes of an Indian summer. Abandoning the cats yet again, we left on the 4th for a long weekend in Amsterdam, via a stopover in Gent. Paul & Karmen joined us and we stayed in a posh and very centrally located air BnB. We spent an enjoyable and surprisingly sunny few days with them and all partook of the coffeeshops’ bounty. After an all too short trip, we headed back to the Dordogne, enduring 11 hours of wind and torrential rain that battered us the entire way home.
Back at Port 80, we found ourselves plagued by internet issues, frequent mini-power cuts and poor water pressure. This continued for several weeks and proved highly vexing. Fortunately, the weather felt the need to apologise for having been so appalling and came good at the end of the month. We had a glorious run of several weeks of ~20 degrees, sunshine and clear, blue skies. This meant that….
November
Was the sole month of the year to begin sunny and clear. It also marked our 15 year anniversary of moving out to France. We didn’t do much to celebrate it, but it was nice to spend it under a blue sky.
But of course, the only news story that matters for this month is Trump’s return to power. America had a choice between a liberal, progressive, well-educated, centrist black woman, or a white, male, racist, fascist, misogynistic convicted felon. And, eyes wide open, they chose. Not only was it an Electoral College wipeout; he comfortably won the popular vote and gained control of both houses of Congress. This is orders of magnitude worse than 2016. We are no longer stumbling into the darkness. We are sprinting. I have never felt more alienated from, or hostile to, America as I do now. I really don’t know what else can be said about that, so moving on…
Our welcome run of blue skies came to an end soon after, when it reverted to its comfort zone of grey skies and rain. The exception was a short reprieve around Thanksgiving when the sun returned. Paul, Fabienne, the folks and Louise, Pauline and their mum Annick helped us eat the traditional meal here at Port 80.
Around this time, Matt put his back out and has since been suffering with sciatic pain in his leg. He needs an MRI to see if it is related to the herniated disc he had back in 2016, and more importantly, what can be done about it.
December
Michel Barnier became the shortest serving Prime Minister of the 5th Republic when his government suffered a no-confidence vote after just 40 days. It feels like France is on a long, tedious aroad that ends with the far-right winning in 2027. Assuming Macron doesnt resign before then that is…
We had a nice visit from Suzy & Steve on the 7th and 8th. Steve has recently started a new job and had a conference to attend in Paris. As the two of them are (nearly) empty-nesters now, Suzy decided to join him. Matt went and spent two nights in Paris with them, then they all came to the Dordogne for a few days of duck, potatoes, wine and general merriment, including a meal at Mum & Dad’s.
Port 80 was brought into the 21st Century on the 17th, when at long, long last, we got hooked up with a fibre internet connection. We’d been suffering with 2 megs for weeks. This has now jumped to a hilarious 800.
After a rainy, dreary spell, the sun returned in time for Christmas, treating us to blue skies and unseasonally mild temps. We spent the 25th at La Chapelle Verlaine, chilling, overeating and sampling various cocktails. Dad put on an excellent spread and they packed us off with leftovers.
Gerald and Jess came to stay with us at the end of December in a repeat of their 2022 visit. As they did last time, they showed up laden with kahlua and tequila, so the cocktails flowed throughout their trip. We got in some socialising during their stay, culminating with NYE at Manu & Mathilde’s where we were 12. It was an extremely drunken evening and everyone did a good job of letting their hair down.
Our guests left a few days later, and as I write this, we are now steeling ourselves for the terrible and tedious return to work. And whatever happens after that will be the subject of the next roundup. I shall end by wishing us all good luck. I think we are going to need it…
2024 summed up in one David Bowie song: “I’m Afraid of Americans”
Nuff said really.