eeeouyyyghhhhh

smelly old J-F came to lunch with some long suffering neighbours he calls friends....and was particularly high on the olfactory scale. You could almost see the fumes rising from his feet. He insisted on sitting next to the radiator, so his odiferousness was accentuated. Yum yum. Not sure his dining guests enjoyed their lunch quite as much as they normally would.

bright lights, big city

St Fraimbault - le shuttle - London - Eurotunnel - St Fraimbault in 24 hours. It IS possible, and we proved it by doing a quickasaflash visit from France to the UK Sunday/Monday. London at its best. Stayed in Greenwich flat, took trains, DLRs, tube, buses and taxis everywhere, ate posh, ate not so posh, drank vodka and beer, trawled the Kings Road and Piccadilly, shopped in Covent Garden and Greenwich markets, chatted with taxi drivers and street folk, gave money to the homeless, danced underneath The Journey *installation* on Trafalgar Sq (now pigeon free), enjoyed the sunshine, and just had a great time. Left when still on a city high, had great and easy journey home. Lones has now got the bug....and who can blame him?

18 years ago 23rd September....

23rd September 1989

Gregoire and Rachel get married....(flanked in the picture by Sheila and Mal)

f**cking unbelievable, the things you do for a party :) and oh how young we look. sigh.

AAAARRRGHHHHHH

MP3. Windows Media. Sonic Record Now! USB keys ..etc etc etc..after spending an hour or so recording and re recording and re re re recording snippets of music we have come to the conclusion that we CAN'T record MP3 onto our USB using Windows. Took us a while - and then we googled it - just in case, and yep, guess what ...it seems it is a classic problem. Hey ho. That was a waste of valuable time then wasn't it? Grrr, grrrrr and double grrrrr. Still, we had a meeting with the mayor of St F and a guy from the French tourist board (director of tourism or some such title...) and it would appear that we have a *USP* that we were previously unaware of. Gregoire, it appears, is the only chef de cuisine in the hexagon qualified to his level of gastronomy, who is completely and utterly bilingual (French-English) and able to offer cookery courses/cours de cuisines dans les deux langues and to the same level. And as the Ameeeericans are apparently about to start coming to France to glean information on cooking skills and habits Gregoire will be the chef de cuisine promoted by la belle France. Cool huh?

Sexis - the re-run...

well, more like a re-stumble. At 94, Georges Sexis still has quite the eye for the ladies, but he assured me (as he flirted outrageously) that anything that happens will be solely in his head. The engine is still there, he explained, but neither the fuel nor the mechanics, and he seems to have lost the key....Yeah right - whatever. Lunch passed well, finishing with much warbling of songs (aided by gargling of calva!). Tomorrow night we have the First Aiders from Passais coming for their annual dinner...at least we know who to call if Gregoire or Samuel cut their finger....

My little pony

A sunny Sunday in September and the local stables had an open day. Scarlet brushed her pony Ma Belle for about 3 hours (enlisting the help of Nicky as groom and stable lass) then proudly led children around on her, until the proud moment arrived. The pony club championship race. Involved traffic cones, a bucket, water, and lots of excited children and bucking ponies. Not too disastrous as it happens, only 3 throws and 2 bucks, 2 boys and a girl in tears, minor amounts of cuts and grazes, and lots of slipped saddles and muddied chaps. What fun. Must do it again next year.

rentrée 2007

Scarlet is back at school. CE2 this year. All went smoothly, and she is now a very grown up 8 year old walking to and from school all by herself.

all change in Papillon

Lones and Sabrina said their goodbyes and bowed out of life at Papillon last night. Their contracts came to an end, and their grown up working lives started. Sabrina goes off to do a banking and finance qualification and Lones heads off to be a fully fledged chef somewhere. So Samuel starts today. Big clumsy good hearted chubby cheeked 16 year old Samuel who is still very much a boy. Gregoire has 2 years to transform him into a man and a chef. I am back to using casual staff to help me out and am frantically putting together my list of helpers!
And to top it all there was a man wandering around St Fraimbault yesterday with a fully grown black rabbit sitting on his shoulder. Surreal.