Fast Aude

The Mighty Aude is up but we've all seen it much upper.... way to go yet. Rain constant and light here, still not snowing despite my aps assurances. Only the heron was out this morning.

 

weather warnings

 

Claire is back!! With Peter Dunn, who is having a break from treatment and looks marvellous (unlike my photo) Pete is flourishing and, fingers crossed, his medical stuff is magic. They're not here for long, only till Tuesday, so make the most of them while you can.

It's raining all over the world, it seems.  The river is brisk but not high. Lots of flood warnings everywhere but so far... mind you, my ap assured me it was snowing this morning (it wasn't). Anything might be happening.

Birthday girl Louise

 Celebrating another glorious year!! We went to the Tibetans in Quillan and had a slow and tasty lunch, padded out with cocktails for me and Louise, Chinese beer for Norbert and fizzy water for Bob. Ate hugely; three courses (Norbert and I did anyway, the others aren't made of such stern stuff)

Got the latest on the old Tibetan restaurant in Esperaza; its going to be a sushi place in February, maybe with Tibetan overtones - blame the blue cocktail, not sure what was being said. But deffo sushi.

Despite the rather pleasant day we are being given warnings about flooding.

Tremendous Tuesday

 Totally lovely day yesterday. Began at the Cafe by the station, coffee with Charlotte and a bumping-into Thomas. They shared their political expertise - and explained a lot of middle-eastern/ French interaction to me. Spellbinding!

Thence to prepare for lunch. Actually, I'm self-aggrandising; all I did was set the table. Siggi had kindly decided to bring lunch to me and Bob since we couldn't go to her house (=Bob unwell, my allergies to her beasts) and then made a party of it by also inviting Kat, Norbert and Louise and Ole-Bendik.

This is now my favourite form of entertaining!

So, this is Siggi who did all the work.

Vegetable soup, very thick, delicious.

Seafood Choucroute, haddock, giant prawns, scallops, possibly other stuff. Amazing ( and a brief silence descended during the feeding frenzy as we were all absorbed...)

Cheddar -as introduced to Siggi by Phil and eaten in his memory - , Tomis de chevre, camembert

Diary free tiramisu with chestnut puree and heaven know what, which we loved!

Huge thanks to Siggi for that. All agreed she should do it again.

Kat and Norbert

Ole-Bendik

Thoughtful Louise

My role consisted in opening a bottle of mysterious digestive, a gift from Kelly. It was billed as a fashionable shot amongst the young as it is mixed with tequila and is gum pink. It was only later, as Kat read the ingredients, that we discovered it should have been cold - cold enough to change the colour of the flower on the outside of the bottle. What will they think of next.

The evening spent in recovery mode.

Many many thanks to all for friendship and the amplification of life's pleasure!

Prosperity

Yesterdays market was sunny and fun if under resourced.... keep hearing travellers tales of ghastly weather everywhere else, whilst we persist in being a safe haven. 

Here's Claudine at le Pont this morning where we did a speed gossip session :)

Some thing I've been meaning to share that may be useful to fellow denizens... we have a French bank account, of course. Had it for nearly thirty years but it can still surprise us. Was using it as a holding pen for some dosh that had come in, prior to the appointment with an actual money advisor, and by chance looked at it a couple of weekends ago to discover that a very large sum had gone missing.  Panic!!

We are not money savvy people. I rang the banks emergency number and after a lot of faffing about was told that I had authorised the moving of said dosh; nope, I'm sure I would have remembered. Man-on-phone said go talk to the bank when open. That was effectively two days away so me and himself spent an unhappy weekend wondering what to do, if anything, and what terrible event had occurred that I'd authorised and forgotten.

Doorstepped them on the Monday. Turns out that there is an automatic process that moves money into a savings account, in your name but without telling you. The bank was very sympathetic. Ha.

 

Hail joyful morn...

Caught Roy as he was opening his shutters this morning! As you can see, his eye op is done and successful. All well.

Was so charmed by this photo that I forgot to snap todays (welcome) visitors; Norbert was first, then Kat arrived. Life has been so quiet, what with the flu, the cold and the wet. Maybe corners are being turned.

Bob and I went to Ginoles for a swim this afternoon, marvellous. Such a treat. Now keep falling asleep.

 Norbert remarked what a fine Pope Roy would make...

Philosophers lunch

Testing the air... we went with Jim Hankinson to la Chapaire which I had the foresight to pre-book. Not a spare table and punters turned away.

An age since we've seen Jim so much chattering going on, on my part anyway - and for the first time we used the buffet which is where you take as much as you like of whatever it is (little salad, stuffed eggs, stuff) whilst waiting on your main course, todays plat which was a spicy chicken and potato thang. Or in Jims case, a pasta dish.  We were all most content. And I bagged pudding, pineapple and chocolate and an almond whatnot.

Not going to give up the day job to become a food writer, for sure!