Summer Daze

The week has just got better and better. After very heavy levels of humidity (last weekend it was so humid the floor of the Grange gite was permanently wet and would not dry out) which ended in some heavy downpours we seem now to have at last arrived at true summer temperatures and weather.

Our guests in the gite were blessed as it was the best stable patch of weather we have had in a while. We had two couples from New Zealand in the Grange gite and a lady and her daughter from UK in the studio. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves with swimming, barbeques and a day trip to the Atlantic sea coast near La Rochelle. At night we could hear their great guffaws of laughter as they sat under the stars and enjoyed themselves. It was a good sound. Only Maggie, our Battersea dog, disgraced herself on the last day by stealing into the small studio gite while guests were sunning themselves by the pool and opening a sack of garbage and spreading it happily about the gite. And that was after they were telling me what a lovely dog she was and how attached they had become to her!!

Other grand events this week include the resurfacing of the mile long road that leads into our hamlet that was previously full of potholes and bumps and bone-shattering ditches. It is now all smooth and resurfaced and looks wonderful.

They have harvested some of the wheat this week although I think the level of ripeness this year must be very dispersed as normally the harvest carries on in all one period but for now some fields have been harvested while others remain untouched.

We have enjoyed some cycling with Avalanche and of course the vegetables are growing at a speedy rate.

Went to a concert in Tours that Stephen was playing in on thursday. It was a celebration of Vivaldi and the small orchestra played the four seasons and some choral works. The choir were not very good having never, I think, sung with an orchestra and being quite elderly. But all in all it was a good concert. However, a nice surprise for me was to meet a friend of one of the musicians - a lovely girl from Italy called Valentina. I told her my mother was Italian and from near Trieste. She looked surprised and asked where and I told her my mother came from Gorizia which - very bizarrely - is the same town Valentina comes from. It cemented a good friendship in a very short time!!