An international evening

Another first for me in commuting terms, I am sitting at La Rochelle airport and it its 8:45 on a Sunday morning and I’m once again waiting Mr O Leary’s air-bus back to Stansted. August is definitely a strange travel month, and I’m at La Rochelle now trying to keep the price of my weekends down a bit, so I am saving about €150.00 by taking this flight instead of the Sunday evening flight from La Rochelle to Stansted.

I arrived in Sigogne on Thursday evening so I still had 2 full days here, its just that one day was a full work day, for my weekday job as opposed to my weekend job. Friday evening ‘after work’, we had some visitors and what started out as a reasonably quiet weekend for the B&B turned into quite a busy one. Our visitors were a Belgian couple and their two dogs who had ‘discovered’ us via Franca’s blog, they don’t live that far from us, in French terms at least, so they came over for an aperitif. At the same time we had guests from Paris coming to stay with us for the weekend having booked at the last minute. They had asked if they could come early to drop off their things, but in the end they did not arrive until about 7:00pm, we thought maybe we had a no show on our hands, but luckily not. So whilst we sat chatting with Jan and Simonne the Parisiens arrived, so they joined us for an aperitif, then Franca got a phone call from another B&B, asking if we had a room for guests they could not accommodate, and so 20 minutes late a car with Italian plates arrived with a very nice Italian family, then 5 minutes later their friends came too (though not to stay). So suddenly Jan remarked just how international this gathering was. When we looked at it, we had Belgians, Dutch, French, English and Italians in the garden. This was amazing because, to us, this is what running the B&B is all about. It only lasted a moment as all the guests then dispersed for their evening meals and left just the Belgians Dutch & English to carry on chatting.

Jan and Simonne are a lovely couple, they have two dogs which are equally lovely, and well behaved, though because they were a bit big, and one was particularly bouncy it took Fleur a while to get used to them. She is still wary (scared is the wrong word) of young bouncy dogs as they do things unpredictably, but in the end she was walking the oldest one around the garden, and asking us again if she could have a dog. So it was a lovely evening, even though I have to admit to struggling to understand Jan and Simonne's Belgian accent at times, and I believe we have an invitation to a barbeque in September at their house, to look forward to. I have to say thanks also for the very original presents too, which we will be tucking into soon.

With guests in the house it is difficult to get work done, especially as I was in charge of our quick change around on Saturday morning, in charge is a big word, Franca said I should clean the room the Italians were using, because I can do it faster. We were due to receive a family who had asked to check in at 11:00 as they had a family lunch to go to. All went well and the Italians left on time giving me 45 minutes to get the room ready for the next guests, so no problems there. In the afternoon I had planned to put up the main support for the joists for the new floor in the garage, I thought this would take a couple of hours to do because I didn’t know until I started drilling, what the wall was made of. In the event the wall was solid and the support went up in half an hour, so I also managed to install 6 of the eight joists, so for once I am a bit ahead of schedule.

Saturday night was a nice lazy evening, no cooking to do as all our guests were eating out, and so we just have some standard food, with the luxury of sitting down together, just the three of us, and after dinner we just played some games with Fleur and listened to some music, and were generally lazy, it was nice to do , a change from the hustle and bustle we have been going through recently.

Well the plane has arrived so time to join the boarding scrum….

Hotel AuBellefleur in full swing.....

Well here is a first for me since moving to France, its Saturday night and I am sitting at Angouleme airport waiting for Mr O Leary’s bus back to London Stansted. I have been at home in the Charente for a week to help Franca with our first full week of guests. Full week to us means that all three of our completed rooms have been rented out.

I arrived in Angouleme on Thursday night and our guests, the family of my old boss from the time when I worked in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam, at de Zeeuw & de Keizer, arrived Friday lunchtime, a little earlier than expected, but we were ready. He had always said that when we went into business he would be one of our first guests and true to his word he and his family arrived in Sigogne for a week long stay. Little did we know what a test he would put us through, and I mean that in a good way so to speak. We thought they would eat in with us for maybe three evenings during their stay, but in the end they ate with us every night except one, where we already had an appointment which we thought was going to be drinks and dinner, and turned out to be just drinks and nibbles. Our guests also stayed at the house for two whole days just relaxing, so that meant providing lunch as well, so I am now sitting at the airport waiting for my plane back to the UK and looking forward to going back to work for a rest.

I must say it was good fun but hard work, because in a way we had hired ourselves and our house out for a week, which is a step beyond a B&B but also very rewarding financially. We also learned a great deal, and at the end of the week lots of my old kitchen knowledge finally started to creep out of the back of my head where it had been sleeping for the last 20 years. Unfortunately too late for this time but we will be much better prepared next time. We did too many visits to the shops and were not very well organised with our time, and probably not disciplined enough in ourselves either. What it would be like if we had the swimming pool as well I really don’t know, though we already have our first volunteer to come and work for us during the holidays, as the eldest daughter of our guests was quite enthusiastic about come to work for us next year, at the moment we do not have a room for her, but we’ll have to work on that, because with 5 rooms in full swing and possibly a pool we will need help.

The family consisted of mum & dad, and three children aged 14, 10 and 7, which meant Fleur had three playmates for the week, which was just as well as I had no time to play with fleur. The whole family were ideal guests, the children were very polite, as were mum and dad! The whole family werehappy and enjoyed playing together, and when mum and dad wanted a chance to rest they could, though dad’s idea of a rest was a 40 mile cycle ride.

We managed to come up with unique recipes and menus every evening, and thank goodness nothing went wrong until the very last day when I let the children help me with the pasta, it was the first time I had made pasta in France and we ended with something that we just could not use, too dry and no matter how carefully I added more olive oil it just dried out again, so with three pairs of hands trying to help and time running out I had to give up and use that old standby stuffed tomatoes.

We are putting all the menus down on paper (which is what we should be doing anyway) so that planning is not such hard work next time. The work was full on for the whole time from 8:00am until midnight, I was able to wimp out around 11:00, as I had to read Fleur her bedtime story. It certainly reminded me of my time at the Rubens Hotel in London all those years ago.

The weather was not bad, though very changeable during the week, at one point the thermometer went off the top of the scale, and this morning when we put our guests in their car at 6:00am it was very pretty cold, not the best weather for the Charente in August when it should be fairly consistently around 28 degrees and sunny most days, but there is always next year!!

After we waved au revoir to our guests we went back to bed until around 11:00, and just played games with Fleur, until we summoned the energy to clean the kitchen. Luckily we have not guest tonight so the rooms were left until the energy returns, maybe tomorrow, though of course I will be in London.

We get a short rest before the next short invasion next weekend, though these guys are only staying for one night, and they are going to a family party, so we probably won’t notice them until breakfast.

So this is my first departure from my local airport, I’ve arrived here twice before, and it is the usual fun of a small airport, however it is very nice little airport, everyone is helpful and friendly, and although the arrival and departure lounges are basically tents they have made it very friendly, not your usual departure lounge. We of course have the usual chaos of a regional airport, but this also has a charm that La Rochelle, Poitiers and Bordeaux lack. I only hope Mr O Leary will make this a daily flight next year, and maybe every an all year round flight, but the chances of that are pretty slim at the moment. With the flights the way they are it does not lend itself to bringing and dropping off clients, though the Saturday night flight is not as bad as I first thought, so if it runs next year perhaps we will try a promotion and see how it goes.