Well what can I say another glorious weekend has come and gone, more wall to wall sunshine and temperatures in our favourite corner of the garden reaching 30 degrees. This was the first weekend of 2008 that everyone was in shorts for at least part of the time.
We also had guests staying with us, not only for the weekend, but in total almost a week. They arrived on Thursday evening and with them came the good weather, if a bit unusual for the time of year. Franca picked them up from Saintes railway station as they flew into La Rochelle but did not want to drive down to us. They were house hunting for a place to retire to somewhere in the Charente. They were a very nice and friendly couple, full of stories so they were fun to be with. For the first three nights they ate with us, which to be honest took us a little by surprise but was none the less fun, as we spent the weekend doing things we wanted to do such as cooking and researching food and drink. With them eating in more than we thought it allowed us to check the routine we will need when we are fully up and running and by the end of the weekend we had things under control and it was good fun. We even had time to experiment with Fleur at making a home made French fruit tart, we got the pastry worked out and that was fine, but we need to work on our fillings a bit more.
With guests around it meant that major messy building work was out of the question, that all gave way to cooking and cleaning, but we did have time to visit the small valentines market in the centre of Sigogne, with the fine weather it was a nice walk round to the town centre, and of course we met with a few people we knew, before having to rush back and carry on the dinner preparations. On Sunday I also found time to chop the fire wood I had collected on Saturday so even though the weather is not lending itself to evenings round the fire side we now have enough wood should the weather take a turn for the worse. I have now moved 6 car loads of wood but it still does not look like I have dented the pile of wood that represents our old roof. Luckily our neighbour does not appear to be complaining as technically it is all on his land, the bit we would like to buy if he ever decides to sell it.
Next weekend we have the last French family who lived in our house coming to look around and have an aperitif with us. We hope we will get some history of the house which will give us some much need input to create some character and ambience, as we continue with our rebuilding, and it will be another severe test of my poor French. They promised to come armed with photos and other info so it will be very interesting, I wonder if we will get any shows of Gallic emotions as some of the older members of the family return to their house, in all I think 3 generations that know the house are coming and one that doesn’t but he knows Fleur and that’s where this all started.
I am back at the airport and Franca is left to look after our guests until they decide to leave, I think it is either Wednesday or Thursday. Franca is very good at looking after the guests, her corporate hospitality and hosting skills are obviously coming back to the fore, which is great to see.
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