Looking back over recent posts on my blog, there seem to be quite a lot of pictures of people eating! I’m afraid that it’s just one of the penalties of living here; food is very important to people, as it sharing a good meal with friends.

New Year’s Eve was no exception to this general rule. The cycle club was holding its annual reveillon, so we went along. It was a smaller affair than the Caupenne one of the last two years, but 34 people, cyclists and non-cyclists alike, had booked in. Jeanneau, who cooks for the monthly dinners, did us proud, with a seafood starter, comprising huge plates of oysters, king prawns, bulots (sea snails?) and clams; I’m not a fan of seafood, but managed a few oysters and a couple of prawns that Nick prepared for me; however, one clam was more than enough and I got as far as extracting a bulot from its shell before deciding there was no way that was going in my mouth! The next course was avocado with tuna mayonnaise, followed by ris de veau in a mushroom sauce, then a trou Gascon, a lemon sorbet served in white armagnac, to refresh the palate. By the time we got this far, it was fast approaching midnight, so there was a break before we tackled the main course of quail wrapped in bacon. As midnight struck, so the kissing started; everybody had to kiss everybody else on both cheeks, blokes included. It got to the stage of being difficult to remember who you’d kissed and who you hadn’t! Midnight out of the way, it was back to the serious task of eating; the main course was followed by cheese and salad, then omelette Norvegienne (baked Alaska), coffee and armagnac. A good job the meal was spread over 4 hours!

Our French has improved enormously since we arrived here and I’m frequently asked to translate for Philippa, another English cyclist. We were doing quite well, having discussed the antics of Gerard Depardieu, France’s answer to Oliver Reed and who, I read recently, “is affectionately known as Gégé”. Well I don’t know which Frenchman the journalist asked, I’ve yet to meet a French man or woman who regards him with anything other than utter contempt! But we came unstuck when Joseph started to talk about his favourite films, starring somebody whose name sounded like Low-ray-lardy. He couldn’t believe we’d never heard of this megastar and the discussion soon developed into an impromptu game of charades, until the penny finally dropped – Laurel and Hardy!

We got home at 3o’clock, feeling that 2014 could be a very good year.