Acrobats and other problems

For the last few days the weather has been stunning – blue skies and hot sun.  Due to all the rainy days in May there are huge quantities of giant wild flowers everywhere - swathes of shoulder high buttercups and meadows full of dog daisies.   There are also large clumps of purple flowers everywhere which I think are wild orchids as well as clover and small daisies and many other flowers.  It won’t last as the farmers will be cutting and baling soon but, for the moment, it all looks wonderful.    

 

 

Dolly and I have managed our walk every day but it has been a rather fraught week catering for a Thursday quiz. 

 

On Wednesday a man came to mend the central heating boiler.  We were expecting him but he arrived early whilst Mike and I were still wearing pyjamas – which caused Mike to have to screech and run round looking for his trousers.    However, the boiler is now mended.  We don’t need it at the moment but it is nice to know that it works. 

 

An hour or so later, the cooker blew up.  As I was supposed to be cooking dinner for 40 for the Thursday quiz night this was a distinct blow.   We phoned for the electrician and I carried on with a little camping hob from the barn.     The electrician arrived early afternoon and sourced the problem to one of the back rings.  I'm told that as long as I don’t use the left hand hob at the back, the cooker will work again.

 

Whilst waiting for the cooker to rekindle, I made dips.  The food processor sadly broke its little body on a carrot it was supposed to be grating the other week, and I haven’t replaced it yet, so I was using the hand blender.  I was just finishing the beetroot and walnut dip when the hand blender got over excited and started supplying my blending hand with mild electric shocks.   I disconnected it with great caution and that’s now also on the scrap heap.

 

Wednesday afternoon we had been promised the keys to the salle des fetes (village hall) where we were going to hold the quiz.  Brenda was bringing some wonderful men who were willing to put heavy tables up.   The lady at the Mairie said she hadn’t got the keys, she didn’t know where they were,  and that we couldn’t put tables up, anyway, as the school children wanted the hall to dance in on Thursday afternoon.   When we got down to the sale to meet Brenda and the wonderful men, we found it inhabited by acrobats who had performed there the night before and had stayed over.  They had filled the small car park with their caravans and were running extension cables from the hall for electricity.   They also had the keys.   “We could leave the wine here,” suggested Mike, “I don’t suppose the school children would want it tomorrow afternoon”.   “No,” I said, “But the acrobats might, tonight”.    I don't have a suspicious nature, but I did think it might be pushing it a bit.  The acrobats promised to give the keys back on Thursday morning.  Mike said he would go down and unload the wine then. 

 

He phoned me from the Salle the next morning.  I thought he said, “The men of cack are here”.  I didn’t expect it.  Not after the cooker and the blender and the acrobats.  It was all a bit too much.  But it seems he meant men from the Club Athletique du Cherveix Cubas and, as nobody seems to talk to anybody else down at the Mairie, the men of CACC didn’t know we had booked the hall for Thursday night, nor that the little children were dancing there on Thursday afternoon, so they had put all the tables up and were busy arranging chairs for a Saturday night function.  It's a grand anniversary celebration - 80 ans du CACC.  They had also hung some gaily coloured paper flowers on the walls.

 

It was really a blessing.  Mike spoke to the Mairie who spoke to the school who said that the little children could manage to dance if all the tables were pushed up against the walls.  So we didn’t have to arrange to put the tables up as the men of CACC had done it and we didn’t have to take them down again after the quiz as the men of CACC wanted them leaving for the Saturday do. 

 

I must say I would prefer not to have to try and organise a hall a couple of hours before a function starts but Brenda Durham was splendid at laying tables and Anne Ingham was splendid at posting quiz pictures around the hall and Mike was splendid at carting things down to the hall.   The quiz participants arrived,  Anne gave the quiz, Mike ran the bar, Brenda and I dished up food and did a mountain of washing up.  I didn’t take any photos.  I was too busy.  But people said they enjoyed themselves and  the gaily coloured paper flowers looked lovely.