We didn’t quite realise the importance of the task when we took it upon ourselves to organise the village Petanque. The stress levels have been gradually rising and reached fever pitch today when Hermine discovered we hadn’t yet made the score chart and had a bit of an episode. Julie was visibly shaken afterwards. We escaped across to the village hall to set up, only to set off the alarm which was extraordinarily loud and alerted the whole village to our whereabouts. Mind you, they seem to know where we are at all times anyway. We have stuffed the 3 large fridges with the booze (surely they can’t drink all that white wine, its insane!) and put up our posters everywhere. Just one more trip to LeClerc (corkscrew, Hermine couldn’t possibly let hers out of the house in case it gets mislaid and then what would she do?) and we are ready for the big day tomorrow!
Here are the trophies, what beauties. We are slightly less confident about our wooden spoon prize now that we know a journalist is coming from a local magazine. Not sure they will get it and we don’t have the language skills to explain that our painting is intentionally in a naive style. Honest.
We picked up the larger than life Brucey from the station, in his straw hat and flip flops. When we got back Hermine had started the bonfire which was threatening to take the whole place down. Seems a tad on the large size for a few bangers.
The evening was a hoot. Hermine ran around the table swapping napkins making sure we had the grubby ones and the guests of honour had new ones. The drinks consisted of: sparkling Rose Pamplemousse to start, followed by homemade Sangria brought by Didier (Hermine’s elusive builder), then vin rouge with the sausages and a special Rose wine to have with the dessert (strawberries with ‘fresh cream’ which is creme fraiche with icing sugar). Conversation at dinner turned to what Brucey did for a living. “But you’re a newsagent!” Hermine exclaimed horrified. “Oh, I’ve never met one of those before!” After the meat and huge barbequed onions, Hermine and Didier kept throwing wood and foliage onto the fire, then running about getting whatever they could lay their hands on to feed the flames, by now 30ft high and lapping at the barn. Our exhibition venue was looking increasingly in jeopardy. Hermine then appeared with a pot of sage tea and announced no more wine as there was work to do tomorrow, much to Bruce’s dismay. She reluctantly brought out a bottle of vin rouge and the party continued. (Side note: we taught Julie how to say vin as in the ‘van’ a builder drives, and the Frenchies were in hysterics “Not quite so aggressive Joo-lee!”
We have left the party in full swing, hopefully someone is keeping one eye on the bonfire.
