Then came the disaster of Brexit and we'd arranged an evening with the locals which wasn't as jolly as it might have been. Nearly 40 people turned up, only four not French. We had told everyone not to bring anything, but would they listen? We were inundated with gifts and had a very touching card saying how welcome we were despite the referendum!
Anyway, as we'll no longer be EU citizens we won't have the automatic right to live here so we went to the prefecture to apply for a "titre de sejour". If it's approved - which could take months - then we should get a permanent one as we've already been here 5 years.
We headed for the beach for a week at the beginning of July before Montreal's events started. We cooked duck for the first medieval evening in mid-July, went to a couple of superb concerts (one ballet from Paris, one full orchestra from Toulouse) in local towns then seemed to spend a lot of time eating and playing the local skittles game.
One of the walkers from Condom arranged a small group visit for a theatrical spectacle at Gavarnie in the Pyrenees, with two days of walking. When we said we'd go he immediately asked us to lead the walks, so we had to spend a few days reccy-ing the walks before doing it for real.
The real thing went well and we came back for the fete in Montreal where we cooked moules-frites the Saturday night, then more frites and bits Sunday mid-day. The next medieval followed on the Tuesday and we cooked 400 confit de canard - a record we think!
Judy was in a team of skittlers who qualified for the national chamionship, so we had to go to the Aveyron for a weekend. Other teams from Lauraet had qualified too so they organised a coach and accommodation. The weather on the day was foul - rain, rain and rain - and that was the only day we'd seen rain for a while. Judy's team didn't make it through the heats to the main competition but they also run a competition for the non-qualifiers on the day and her team came second! So more partying. Next day we came back via a visit to the Millau viaduct and a very protracted lunch!
It's serious drought here so we're trying to keep the garden alive and the afternoons are so hot we retire to our super-insulated house. The house is looking good, sits well within the plot and we finally got around to making a photo-book of the build.
Off to another meal tonight!
