A couple of weeks ago, the band played at the music festival in Lannux, a tiny village with big ideas. We started in the church, where we accompanied Cathrin, our harpist; we were followed by a superb choir. Everybody then headed down the road to the salle des fetes for the serious business of eating, drinking and making more music. There was a display of African dancing and a band played during the meal, then, because it was France’s national fete de musique, when anyone can play/sing any music they like without having to pay royalties, several villagers got up to perform a variety of stuff, mostly very lighthearted and received very enthusiastically by the crowd. It was then our half hour slot, followed by a blues-rock band and a “proper” rock band as the night wore on into morning.
Since then, the weather has changed and summer’s now arrived in a big way; 35ºC in the shade today for the fete at Magnan. Nick and Chris did the mountain bike ride this morning, Chris looked the part in gear borrowed from Nick; then we joined the rest of the village for lunch, held in the air conditioned salle des fetes as it was too hot to be outside. Chris has taken to South West cuisine like a natural, tucking into several plates of duck hearts and chips; not bad for someone who was vegetarian until a short while ago!
The maire of Magnan, one of my students, looked a lot happier and more relaxed than last Wednesday, when he had an English lesson. His wife was away for a few days, so he had to feed the dogs, cats, chickens, water the garden, look after himself and organise the final details of the fete. He’d recently found that a helper who should have arranged insurance cover hadn’t done so, and during the lesson had a phone call from the caterer to say that the ovens in the salle des fetes weren’t working. He sorted that lot out, but still had to mow the 15km mountain bike course and make 200 individual servings of tiramisu, amongst a miriad of other tasks. He’d obviously accomplished all of it as everything ran like clockwork today. Monday, he says, he will be playing golf; well-deserved, I say!
Back at the ranch, work goes on; we discovered that the lads had put all the wall insulation in place the wrong way round, so it all had to be turned round so the paper side faces in; we live and learn!
