I promise this is the last photo of curtains - amazing what you can do with scissors, map pins and glue!Jean was working on his computer this morning while I was busy cannibalising the very wide short curtains in order to turn them into very long thin curtains, when he suddenly announced that it was the 19th September. I had slight difficulty in remembering what day of the week it was, never mind what day of the month it was, but then the penny dropped. This time twelve years ago, Jean and I were taking a group of friends out for lunch at the country hotel in Zastron, South Africa, prior to going off to the Magistrate’s office in order to get married.
You might ask yourself why it was that we were taking everyone out for lunch “before” we got married. The reasoning behind this was that the Magistrate had informed us that he had to do murderers in the mornings and could only marry people in the afternoon. Since we had to get home by five to feed the cattle and we wanted a bit of a celebration along the way, we ate first and married afterwards!
My goodness. If we only knew what lay ahead of us and where we would be twelve years later, I wonder what our views on the subject would have been. We went back to the farm thinking that we would be spending the rest of our lives there, and here we are twelve years later with no less than three different countries under our belts.
We fell asleep last night to the sound of rain gently pattering down into the courtyard, but were rewarded this morning by the clouds breaking up and disappearing so that by lunchtime we were sitting outside enjoying a barbeque and wearing our tee shirts again.
Lunch was a rather strange affair but very tasty. We had spotted four short kebab sticks with black balls and white balls on them. The word Boudin was written on the packaging and the photograph of them sizzling on a barbeque looked rather enticing so we decided to give it whirl. What we ended up with was the rather sloppy insides of the black balls which we think was a sort of blood pudding, and the very strange texture of the white ones which we preferred to not think about too much. We had also put a variety of red peppers, aubergines and courgettes on the fire and we chopped these up and topped them off with a very tasty tzatziki, and this, combined with a fresh crispy baguette made for the most deliciously unusual meal. Jean had also picked fresh lettuce from the garden and pulled up a handful of spicy radishes and we began to think about planting up the potager for next summer and producing all sorts of delicious things.
I am now wrestling with the yards and yards of curtain material with no sewing machine. The only pins that I can find are map pins with little plastic heads that are bruising my thumbs and fingers cruelly, but I have already completed two sets of 2.5 metre long curtains and have one more set to do. We had a break at about 5.30 this evening and went to track down the lady who does sewing in the village. However, when we saw her smart little van parked outside her house with “Couturier” written on the side, we turned tail and fled. No way was I letting her see my efforts. If I can’t find a sewing machine, then glue is the next option!
So I am off to sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and dream of SACRISTANS because we are going to Sommieres market tomorrow if the weather is good, and I am sure we will be into Sacristan country.
You might ask yourself why it was that we were taking everyone out for lunch “before” we got married. The reasoning behind this was that the Magistrate had informed us that he had to do murderers in the mornings and could only marry people in the afternoon. Since we had to get home by five to feed the cattle and we wanted a bit of a celebration along the way, we ate first and married afterwards!
My goodness. If we only knew what lay ahead of us and where we would be twelve years later, I wonder what our views on the subject would have been. We went back to the farm thinking that we would be spending the rest of our lives there, and here we are twelve years later with no less than three different countries under our belts.
We fell asleep last night to the sound of rain gently pattering down into the courtyard, but were rewarded this morning by the clouds breaking up and disappearing so that by lunchtime we were sitting outside enjoying a barbeque and wearing our tee shirts again.
Lunch was a rather strange affair but very tasty. We had spotted four short kebab sticks with black balls and white balls on them. The word Boudin was written on the packaging and the photograph of them sizzling on a barbeque looked rather enticing so we decided to give it whirl. What we ended up with was the rather sloppy insides of the black balls which we think was a sort of blood pudding, and the very strange texture of the white ones which we preferred to not think about too much. We had also put a variety of red peppers, aubergines and courgettes on the fire and we chopped these up and topped them off with a very tasty tzatziki, and this, combined with a fresh crispy baguette made for the most deliciously unusual meal. Jean had also picked fresh lettuce from the garden and pulled up a handful of spicy radishes and we began to think about planting up the potager for next summer and producing all sorts of delicious things.
I am now wrestling with the yards and yards of curtain material with no sewing machine. The only pins that I can find are map pins with little plastic heads that are bruising my thumbs and fingers cruelly, but I have already completed two sets of 2.5 metre long curtains and have one more set to do. We had a break at about 5.30 this evening and went to track down the lady who does sewing in the village. However, when we saw her smart little van parked outside her house with “Couturier” written on the side, we turned tail and fled. No way was I letting her see my efforts. If I can’t find a sewing machine, then glue is the next option!
So I am off to sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and dream of SACRISTANS because we are going to Sommieres market tomorrow if the weather is good, and I am sure we will be into Sacristan country.
PS Two bits of important news. The two guys who run the Castries Fruit and Veg Market are not twins but they are cousins. We discovered this while purchasing our vegetables yesterday and they thought it was a huge joke that we had decided that they were twins.
The second bit of information is that I went to the dentist this afternoon and made a discovery. "Ouch" means the same in French as it does in English. When I get back from England, we will have further dealings with her. Jean hates the sound of dentist drills but had to be on hand in order to translate. Poor man - what a way to spend his anniversary!
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