It’s time again for a roundup of the latest goings on at Mazerouxcity, where we continue to be unusually active both socially and work-wise. We’re trying to get into a rythmn of blogging every week on a sunday so I’m a day late here after yet another busy weekend. Apologies. After Dave and Amy left us, we were back to work with gusto and have since made lots of progress. Matt is now very close to being done with his Media Trust project and the extra bits of work from Alan, our other UK client. We’ve also both done lots on our jewellery site, which is finally starting to take shape.
Our friend Morgan rang us on monday to see what we were up to. He sometimes drops by for an hour or so and normally, we’re free at a moment’s notice, but with the current workload, we had to say we weren’t free until the evening. He called by at 5.30 and stayed long enough to be initiated in our new favourite card game, Anna Purna.
On tuesday, we had another client meeting. 2 english guys run a service called “Supplies 4 U” – shipping stuff back and forth from the UK to France. In fact, they are the ones who shipped over lots of our furniture when we moved to Mazeroux. They’ve found that often people moving back have stuff they want rid of, so want an ebay style auction site to help them sell it. This is going to be a very large project indeed. We had the intention of trying to discourage them in fact: to us it makes more sense for them to just use ebay, but having been up front with them about likely costs and timeframes, we failed to put them off so that will go ahead as soon as we can get around to it.
That evening, we were invited over to our new neighbours’ house for dinner. We were also joined by the Beaufils and Martine and Joelle, 2 other french retirees who live down the road. Odille put together a huge spread of different dishes, all very delicious, which were all laid out at the same time. Being so accustomed to the Périgordine style of eating, we’d assumed this was just an extremely copious first course (something I am sure the other frenchies thought too) so we were actually quite relieved to discover that in fact, that was the whole meal. More of an apéro-dinnatoire, as they call it out here. It was a nice evening and we enjoyed getting to know the new couple better. We’re both very charmed by their strong southern accents – much slower and broader than the local one, so very easy to follow.
After a day of working more or less full time, we had another dinner that evening. This time it was at Nadine (Francoise’s sister) and Jean-Claude’s house in the village. Francoise joined us too, but sans Phillipe who is away visiting his family. I managed to forget to warn Nadine about my dietary fussiness, although she’d already gathered that red meat is not my thing, so opted for a fish based meal. Doh… Luckily, she had some cured ham in the fridge too so that comprised the bulk of my meal, which was lovely nonetheless. We’re really glad to have the 2 Lermite sisters nearby as every evening we spend with them is a great laugh, that night certainly no exception.
I think the next event was our monthly curry fest on Friday, this time hosted by Francoise. Jenny joined us too, although due to working late, she didnt pitch up until just after 10, by which point, we’d already had a few drinks and had demolished the starters. It was Jenny’s first curry but I think she liked it well enough. The french really don’t like spicy food in general and sometimes even the mildest dishes are too much for some, but she seemed fine with her lamb korma.
All this mid-week socialising meant we had some catching up to do work-wise over the weekend, followed by yet another dinner invite. This one was from Sylvie from Matt’s conversation group, and had been in the calendar for several weeks. We’d offered Jacqui and Barry & Carol a lift, so collected them and got there for about 7.30. We’d been to Sylvie’s before a few weeks ago (for a breakfast) and were impressed by the copiousness of the food. This meal, however, she really went to town. There were 8 guests in total, but enough food to feed about 30: lots of amuse bouches to start, 35 beef kebabs, dozens of sausages, veggie skewers, salad… Apparently, she’d been preparing for about 3 solid days, and it showed: not a single detail overlooked. When we were done, all of the guests were packed off home with a goodie bag of kebabs and sausages and we left Sylvie to deal with a massive load of washing up and clearing away.
With all that spare meat, we decided to throw an impromptu BBQ of our own last night. We invited Nat and Jill over who luckily were free and in need of a break from their guests. This being August, their 3 gites are all totally booked out. They’re both well, though Jill of course is still having occasional bad moments and missing her mum. We spent most of the evening outside and Matt and I noted how much warmer it was than the previous night at Sylvie’s where we’d all had to don sleeves not long after the sunset. The weather did have a bit of an iffy patch over the last week or so, with a low point of 21 degrees earlier in the week. Fortunately, it has come good again – 30 degrees today and no sign of cloud. My kind of weather! After the ladies left us, Matt and I had a final cleanser and went back out to look at the meteor shower. On a cloudless night out here, the sky is crystal clear and we saw a fair few shooting stars, although tonight is supposed to be the better night, so we’ll no doubt be out stargazing again later.
I think that’s more or less the news to date. One thing Matt didnt mention in his last entry is that when Dave and Amy were over, we all piled into our car to go to the lake but had to turn around again immediately as an engine light came on and she refused to accelerate properly. The following day we took her to a garage down the road, who called us the next day to say they couldnt see anything obviously wrong, and that if we needed a more thorough diagnosis we’d have to take her to a Toyota garage in Périgueux. Since then, the engine light hasnt come back on and she’s mostly running fine, but still sometimes wont accelerate properly. She is due a service in any case, so we’re hoping that a bit of TLC will sort her out – so this afternoon, we’re off to the big city to throw some of this money we’re earning at the car. Joy…
On the plus side, once that chore is out of the way, it’s back to socialising again tonight. Our friend Lee is currently alone while Rich is working in London, so he’s coming over for a meal to keep him out of mischief. I feel an Anna Purna tournament coming on…!