A beautiful Sunday in Paradise

A Beautiful Sunday today, puffy clouds passing over, in the 70's this afternoon and with The Queen and her Prince coming for dinner tonight at 6. We have several such pairs hereabouts, mostly Brit ex-pats but a few French ones too. We have had several of the British variety to dinner over the years and it's always an enjoyable bash. We like to make formal dinners, 5-6 courses are normal, tonight we will have the following:Cold Potato Soup with Garlic and Parsley as a first course. Pork Roast with fennel and garlic with Orange Cinnamon Carrots and Italian White Bean salad, the second,Cheeses from The US, a Tillamook White Cheddar, Great Britain is represented with a fine Stilton Blue and locally produced creamy Goat Cheese with Garlic. All this on toasts of the local bread. The Third.Raspberry Tart with Chocolate Sauce, the fourth.Dessert Wines from Sicily, Italy and France. A fifth.Espresso, the 6th.Just enoiugh to fill out the entire evening til about midnight given our level of drinking and general bullshitting.The tart is made, the white beans are made, the carrot dish is cooking, the soup is cooling it's heel in the fridge and the Roti (pork roast) is waiting to be skewered on a rod and insewrted into the rotisserie.All is well. The house is as presentable as this particular pile of rocks can be right now with many unfinished rooms. The guests appreciate such a scene as it is one threy themselves are quite familiar with, having an uncompleted 12th century castle as their abode.

Moonday in Paradise, Jour du Grande Marche

Market Day in Lignieres, the Monday 1st in any month is the BIG market, many vendors sprawled along the winding streets and under thge cover of the 14th century open air Hall. Vendors yes but people, no. Rain you see or the threat of same kept people away and vendors closed up early to avoid the rush. A sad market day when this happens but there will be many more. We went to the tourist board to collect MC, she had come in early to go with us to the Marie (City Hall) to sort out who owns the garage next door to us asa we would like to either purchase it or rent it so we could better use our backyard sans car. We learned that it was owned by the same man who runs the little Proxi Market just across the shared alley. So we will go to him and ask someday soon. Then to the bank to deposit a small refund check from an impound account associated with our purchase of the Grande Maison du Bourge. It rained and stopped, rained and stopped. Stoped at the dentists office and sat patiently while she finished up some poor soul's mouth, we got a dual appointment for this Wednesday at 11am. Then abled down the block to buy a loaf of compagne (whole wheat) bread from the corner boulangerie and walked home. Upon our return I noticed that the neighborhood cat has torn up one of the planters I just filled with planting soil and destroyed my seeding (zuchinni seeds) of it, so I stuck 6 inch pieces of wire into it and wet it thouroghly to keep the beast from pooping in it again tonight. Guess I'll have to put some wire cover over them soon. The house is still clean from our weekends labor for the Queen and Prince so we just sat around and watched the intermittant rain and slept like cats.