Last week was pretty busy; the weather has been glorious recently, so we tackled some outside jobs, such as lasuring the colombage beams on the garage front and crepi-ing between them, painting inside the roof of the balcony and starting construction of some new compost bins. The old compost bins were such a raging success that, built of old, slightly rotten floorboards from the grange, they composted themselves. The new ones will be built of breezeblock.

The highlight of the week, for me anyway, was Saturday night, when the band had been asked to play at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Adrian agreed to provide a mixing desk and play the role of sound man, so we arrived at the salle des fetes in Izotges at 4pm to start setting up. The evening was organised by the village line dancing group; tickets for the meal were sold out by the previous Monday and when we got there, the ladies were shredding lettuce, grating carrots, making mayonnaise and putting the finishing touches to the Guiness casserole for 130 people, while the men were decorating the room and the tables, all in green and orange.

By the time we started playing at 7.30, the room was filling up; those who had left it too late to book a meal came along to sample the large selection of beers and to listen to the music, while those who had booked tucked into a lovely meal. Once the dinner was finished, lots of people made use of the space in front of the stage to dance. Having a “professional” sound man made such a difference to us; not just in the way you’d expect, but it seemed to make everyone raise their game a notch or two and I think we played really well as a result. Certainly everybody was very complimentary.

By the time we finished, at 1.30 this morning, we were tired but elated; and having had just a couple of short breaks from playing during the six hours, I don’t think I was the only one with very sore fingers!

Pendant le beau temps qu’on a eu recemment, nous en avons profité par faire quelques travaux exterieurs, comme lasurer le bois du garage, peindre dans la toiture du balcon et commencer construire des nouveaux composteurs. Les premiers composteurs, construit des planchers un peu pourri de la grange, ayant auto-composté, les nouveaux seront en parpaing.

Mais pour moi, le moment le plus marquant de la semaine etait samedi soir, quand on avait demandé à notre groupe, etCelterra, de faire l’animation pour une fete de St. Parick à Izotges. Notre ami, Adrian a accepté de faire le mixage; donc nous sommes arrivés à 16heures à faire notre préparation. L’association de country d’Izotges avait organisé la fete et quand nous sommes arrivés les dames etaient en train de préparer le repas pour 130 gens, pendant les hommes decoraient la pièce et les tables, tout en vert et orange. Tous les billets pour le repas etaient vendus en avance, mais ceux et celles qui ne pouvaient pas manger sont arrivés à gouter la grande selection de bières et écouter la musique.

Nous avons joué de 19H30 pendant que les gens mangaient un très bon repas; plus tard ils ont dancé jusqu’à nous avons fini à 1h30 dimanche matin. Je crois que les gens etaient bien amusés; certainement ils etaient très flatteurs à propos de la musique.

Nous sommes tous rentrés heureux et fatigués, et apres six heures de jouer, je crois que je n’etais pas la seule qui avait mal aux doigts!