Lunch and Murder

We’ve been out to lunch again.  And it was a really good lunch indeed.  Christian Dardelet, who gives cookery lessons at his chateau outside Sarrazac, also cooks lunches or dinners for groups of people.  He doesn’t have a restaurant as such.  He gives the cookery lessons, rents out gites and also sells great tree trunk loads of wood from his grounds.  So his lunches and dinners are private parties and have to be booked.  As we have a lunch club which goes somewhere different every month for lunch, we asked Christian to cook us something and 25 of us went and ate it today.    



(L to R) Yvette Bickerton, Kerstin Wood, Mary & Alan Rogers

It was a very classic proper French lunch – don’t read the next bit if you’re a vegetarian - foie gras, veal, goat’s cheese, pineapple pudding.  Veal is a different matter here.  It does involve eating very young cows, but the Dordogne prides itself on raising the calves in fields with their mothers and not isolating them or inflicting other cruelties on them.  Not only did we have very nice things to eat, but we were given different things to drink with each course.  We did take our time this afternoon though.  Lunch started at 12.30 and finished about 4.00.    Which is why I’m doing this post a bit late.  I’ve come home, drunk two big glasses of water, taken Dolly for a walk and calmed down.  



Annita Wright, Pamela Roxburgh, Mike Brewer

 

There was a problem with Dolly this morning.  Mike started to walk her down to the river and then came back suddenly.  “Something bad has happened,” he said, “Dolly has killed a coypu”.  When I asked where she was, he said he had left her out in the field as he wasn’t speaking to her.  I do sympathise with him but I don’t know  if dogs realise when you’re not speaking to them.

Apparently she found the coypu in a small stream leading to the river and grabbed it by the neck.  When Mike shouted, “No, no,” she seemed to think he was asking her to bring it, so she brought it.  If anyone hasn’t seen a coypu, they are creatures about the size of cats with long ratty like tails.  They are good if you think of them as beavery, ottery type of creatures and not so appealing if you think of them as very large rats.  I do have a picture of one that was in our fields a year or two back. 

 

When we came back from lunch Dolly was delighted to see us.  She licked us a lot and promised to protect us from any birds, coypu, or other creatures that may be wandering about on our property.  I did originally think she was a gentle collie/spaniel cross, but I’m now thinking she’s more of a Mafiosa - Donna Dolly Corleone.