Here’s the news from Mazeroux for the last week. The weather has continued to spoil us lately: it’s been clear and sunny and around 10 to 14 degrees in the day, and not going too far below freezing at night either. It looks set to continue like this for the foreseeable too, so we’re in no danger of a white Christmas here.
We’ve had a fairly quiet week all told. Matt’s had a few bits of work but nothing like the pace of recent weeks. His big charity client, Media Trust, seem to be undergoing some internal turmoil with several members of staff resigning at once. The effect of this is that they’re reviewing some of their projects and there won’t be as much ongoing work from them in the future unfortunately. Still, they’re a relatively small (therefore, volatile) organisation, so that could all change again in a few months. There’s still no news for me from any of my potential clients, but then at this time of year you really don’t expect to get anything new off the ground, so I suppose we’re more or less in holiday mode now until the New Year.
On Wednesday last week, Bryan and Carol invited us down to dinner. They’re off to the UK for the holidays on Wednesday so wanted to have us over before they set off. Carol made a yummy meal of pumpkin soup followed by roast pork. Dessert was an apple pie with ice cream. Afterwards, we had a few rounds of Anna Perna before returning to the pusses at Port 80.
Nothing else of note occurred during the week so I’ll skip ahead to the weekend, which was quite a full one. Jenny emailed me in the morning to ask for some urgent PC help on behalf of a friend whose laptop was experiencing the dreaded Windows “Blue Screen of Death” error message every time it was turned on. I collected it from her and between the two of us, we managed to nurse it back to full health. I thought it might need a new hard drive but luckily, it just needed some general maintenance and is now a happy machine again.
That evening, we had Lucien & Mauricette and also Bryan and Carol over for apéritifs at 6. The guests stayed for a couple hours, with the two of us interpreting. On Saturday, Françoise and Philippe invited us over to theirs’ for dinner. We were also joined by another lady from Matt’s conversation class, Sabine, and her husband Alain. I’d never met either of the latter before and Matt had never met Alain before. They’re a really lovely couple and Sabine in particular speaks excellent English.
Françoise served up a yummy spinach quiche for the main, followed by a creamy pineapple cake for dessert. And now I come to explain my odd blog title. Back in our recent Anniversary Entry, I made reference to the new friendships we’ve made and how lucky we’ve been, but how I feared for their permanence. Françoise had invited us over to share her big news with us. It’s still “officieux” and not yet “officiel” (ie, not yet officially confirmed, but will happen): she’s secured the funding needed for her to return to Australia in March next year to complete a 3 year PhD. We’re obviously thrilled for her: it’s been all she’s wanted since we’ve known her so it’s great it has worked out. However, it’s a blow to us as she’s been an excellent friend and we’ll really miss her. It made me wonder what the odds are of us even still being here in 3 years’ time – we might well be saying goodbye for the last time when she goes in the spring.
In the same vein of being right but not wanting to be, Lee and Richard are officially off my Christmas card list at the moment. The last few times we’d caught up this year, we’d arranged to get together for Christmas, seeing as we were all of us staying in France. I heard from Richard a couple weeks back and when I reminded him, he said they’ve been invited to spend the day with some friends in their village instead. This means that we’re now having a very quiet Christmas with just the 2 of us (and the pusses too bien sûr). I’m a bit disappointed in the boys for this, especially seeing as it is the second Christmas that they’ve left us in the lurch at the last minute. I’ve decided to leave the ball in their court as far as making plans to see each other again. If they can be bothered to contact us, we’ll do something, but we’re not going to continue to be the only ones to make the effort any more. The good news is that Nat & Jill are definitely not going anywhere until the housing market improves so at least they’re still around.
Ok, that’s it, grumble over and back to the story. We stayed round F&P’s till around 1ish and when we got in, decided we weren’t tired so had a final cleanser and put on a film. This meant we didnt get to bed until 3, so it was a late start on Sunday. We’ve been downloading lots of new films recently. It’s slightly south of legal, but we only download things we wouldnt consider spending money on and still purchase the rest from Amazon so it’s not totally amoral, honest. We spent yesterday upstairs ploughing though some of our new acquisitions, to the great pleasure of the cats who had not been impressed with us going out the night before. One of the highlights was Titanic, which neither of us had seen since it first came out in the cinema in 1997.
Otherwise, there’s not too much else to report. Matt has his final conversation class of the year tomorrow and Barry will be calling around beforehand to give us copies of the videos his sister recorded of our recent concert. I already have a few that Nat & Jill took, so once I get the rest I will put together a highlights clip and will post the link on here. Barry’s keen to keep jamming and has a few French songs he wants to try his hand at, so we look forward to keeping the band together in 2014. Our friend Gerald from the States arrives on the 29th. He’s having a stopover in Paris, then after us, heads up to Amsterdam, the lucky thing. I just hope he appreciates that in between these two destinations, he’s in for a very quiet and uneventful Dordogne New Year! We do have one activity lined up at least: we’re planning a trip to Bordeaux while he’s over. We’ve no idea what it will be like at this time of year, but even if it’s dead, it’s a lovely city to visit.
OK, I think that’s all from me. Matt should manage to squeeze in one more entry before the day, but just in case, we wish all our readers a very merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Bonnes fêtes/delete as appropriate.