Our French life - it is nearly here
Well as you will have noticed the need for putting the old ink down has eluded me for some time so I thought if I were to get back in the swing of writing my beloved blog then Christmas and indeed the onset of the brand new year which is almost upon us would be as good a time as any...Christmas... We had planned to spend Christmas on our own this year as John had mentioned that it might be nice for a change but as the year went on and our friends mentioned the usual gathering of the clan we thought it might be better to share it with good friends, we couldn't invite everyone as we all would not have got around the table comfortably so we kept it to 6 of us...this proved to be enough and it took John and I all day on Christmas eve to prepare all the veggies, make two stuffings, chestnut and sage and onion, pigs in blankets defrost half a turkey crown (brought by our friends who have a couple of houses in our village and were here for Christmas) plus a piece of pork, then I made a trifle for one of our guests who doesn't like Christmas Pudding, I did have some Christmas puds but Pauline our very good friend and one of the guests had made one in October so we had that,...this all done we collapsed in our chairs Christmas eve night thankful of the rest (we can't do the entertaining like we used to) getting on a bit now..
Christmas morning and of course John's Birthday we got up fairly early, we had a leisurely breakfast and John opened his birthday presents, we do try to make it special for him, in fact I had mentioned it on a Facebook group I am on and some of the lovely ladies had sent him a card which was quite exciting for him to open cards from ladies all over France and not having a clue who they were (Thank you Ladies of LIFT)
At 11h30 we had a phone call from two of our guests to say they wouldn't be coming as they were both unwell, not to worry we said and speedy good health, then we thought of two other friends who could have come in their place but felt it too late an hour to call and invite them as we thought they would think they were second choice...now the remaining friends would be able to stay overnight and thus enjoy a drink...
We didn't have a starter as such but had Amuse bouche thing's, french pork pie, prawns in little bowls with Mary rose sauce, olives, cornichon and smoked salmon, this filled us up more than we thought so we waited quite a while before eating the main course but thoroughly enjoyed it when we did, we pulled our crackers and put on our silly paper hats, read the jokes and spent some time trying to piece together the puzzles from within, of course we couldn't manage the cheese course and decided to leave the pud until later when we would really enjoy it which turned out to be 5pm.
The weather was extremely warm in fact we didn't have any fires on, it is so different today as the frost has arrived and we have -7 degrees
We all settled down to an evening of TV and chatting then off to bed and it was all over
Boxing day none of us could face a cooked breakfast so just had toast and at 2pm we were all off to another friends for drinks and aperitifs, I was the non drinker/driver so we had to be back before dark, it turned out to be the drive from hell as the rain was of biblical proportions and visibility was non existent, we were indeed glad to be home, there was enough food left from the day before to plate up another meal so after devouring that we both fell asleep in front of the TV :)
Sorry there are no pics as we didn't remember to take one over the whole period.
And so it is almost 2015 and I sit here wondering what it has in store for us (hope it's all good) and I also hope to keep you posted as it happens
I would like to thank you all for reading this blog and to wish you all.....
A Very Happy and Healthy New Year.
