Venturing out of my hole

Mother in law and Tom have been here for a week and a half now so I have taken to hiding during the day at Maryline and Davids. The end of the roof is now in sight and David has set a deadline of 7th October, Marylines birthday, to complete all works. It's only a couple of weeks until our next softball event and things are not quite going to plan, The mower has totally given up the ghost so I have a half mowed field and am waiting on 2 spare belts that have alegedly been dispatched from the UK. We are incredibly short of players and I haven't got a clue what we'll be eating this time. We managed to escape last weekend to the UK for my cousin Sabrina and Ross's wedding. It was a fabulous party and great to catch up with family and friends. Best of all was that the darling children were in France whilst Jane and I partied until the early hours.

Returning to normality

After all the excitement of a fantastic weekend, as always, we had to return to normality. I call it normality for us however onlookers may consider our life style anything but normal. As the guests slowly departed, so the smile disappeared from my face. Then I would think of shadow rape, ping pong, or lesbian wrestling and once again I'd be smiling from ear to ear. With the kids back at school, I've been back working on Maryline and Davids roof. I feel now that the end is in sight with only 15000 tiles to go. I've also pushed on with the green house, slowly populating it ready for the winter. Today, no expense spared, I went out and bought an olive tree as the main central feature. Although I was toying with the idea of buying a 200 euro monster, I settled for something far smaller and bordering on affordable for a poor french farmer. We also picked up another 18 strawberry plants in the hope that they will thrive in the warm humid environment we have created. Last weekend Jane went out and bought Christmas dinner. We were a tad late getting them this year but I'm reasonably confident we can fatten them up in time. It's only 10 sleeps until we come back to the UK for Sabrinas wedding, a flying visit to say the least. We will be without the kids though as mother-in-law is coming here to look after them.

Saturday & Sunday

We're still on last weekend and, the more I think about it, the less I recollect. After lunch on Saturday we returned to the diamond with some revised teams, knocking out another couple of games of ball in amongst vast quantities of humour and beer. After a few drinks, Kim had completely lost her fear of dogs and was getting on well with Sasha and Zorro. She also agreed to a peice of my pork which saved me having to cook chicken for her instead. Although the pig was one of the biggest we have cooked to date, we managed to demolish a fair amount of it. We were joined for dinner by some of our expat friends and the night just flew by. We went for a little night hike to loosen up a bit and help the beer go down, after which people slowly dissapeared off to bed. Sunday morning and crepes all round, as per usual for thos regular attendees. There was every intention for an early start on the field Sunday, and low and behold, we manged an 11am start again. The teams had been carefully selected for an even match up by Dave. For some reason we had about 16 players and he had 9, so a quick reshuffle and off we went. Somebody won, I think, and lunch followed shortly afterwards. Barbecued burgurs and sausages, nothing undercooked and no food poisoning that I'm aware of. The after lunch game brought a tear to my eye as Dave suggested reforming Thames Valley to take on the rest of the world. All of a sudden red shirts kept appearing from bags, and one sad player even found his old grey strides, no names hey norm. Thames Valley stormed to success at an amazingly slow pace, but we got there. A quick break and the arrival of some early dinner guests. On the menu for the evening was Paella and, fortunately for me, the girls had done all the prep so I returned to a stress free kitchen ish. Jane had been checking out who liked fish and who didn't and was rapidly knocking up a curry like substance to fill the shortfall. As I don't do stress anymore, we headed back to the diamond for a game of 3 hit rotational softball, which like most of the weekends games seemed to go on a very long time. It did mean that everyone got to play lots of different positions and get a couple of good hits of the ball. To be continued.........

Boy what a weekend.

Apologies for my absense over the last week but I have been otherwise engaged, aka drunk lol. I have so much to say that it may well be spread over a few days. For those out of the loop, we have just had another weekend party, this time stretching into 5 days of non stop drinking and laughter. The head count for the weekend topped 30. As for the bottle count all I can say is a trailer full and some more. Due to the wasps I am going to refrain from attempting to count the whole lot this time but, from experience, we have more than ever before, even when we had over 100 people here. This is even more impressive as we also managed to demolish a 72 pint keg as well, cheers PJ. The run up to the weekend was most depressing as the rain started on Monday and only stopped Friday evening. In between showers Steve and I managed to sort the field and get the white lines done even though the ride on mower died. The first guests, not including Laura and Steve who virtually live here now, arrived Friday morning. Darren, Lee and Fin, newbies to us but what a great family. Lee is our new domestic goddess to compete with previous dishwashers like Lucy. Fin was in his own little world and pottered round everywhere all weekend, and Darren, in his first year of softball, demonstrated great expertise as a clean up hitter. Throughout the day more and more people arrived giving us our biggest Friday night party to date. Lasagne all round and much humour and drinking followed. Saturday morning I had a lay in and the cerfs sorted breakfast. First arrival Saturday were Gooner and PJ, supported by Tammy and Trish and heavily weighed down with a keg of real ale. Being a serious softball tournament as well as a social event, the first game kicked off around 11:00am once the shoppers returned from the market and super market, seriously stocked with beer. Game one was a gentle warm up, using the names out of the hat technique, the 5 innings were stretched out over an hour and a half. Well done to the winning team whoever you were as I forgot the score books. Lunch of French sausage, various cheeses, fresh bread and salad followed. Well done girls for making sure we were fed. Whilst the starving guests feasted on lunch, I mounted a pig. (you know what I mean) and dinner was put on to cook. To be continued...........