Familiar haunts

Busy day on Thursday.  Via Facebook, I'd learned that someone was after a simple electronic keyboard, since her eight-year-old daughter was expressing an interest in learning the piano.  For years, one such has been languishing on the landing: I bought it second-hand some 30 years ago when I'd kidded myself that I could learn to play.  Well, we hooked it up to Martyn's computer speakers, and, on finding that it still worked, offered it to the woman who had posted on Facebook in exchange for a couple of bottles of Corbières.  It turned out that they live close to where we were heading on Thursday anyway, so we dropped it in on them on our way.  They presented us with no fewer than six bottles of vintage Corbières, which is generous given that the thing had only cost me £90 all those years ago.  It was a huge bonus to find a photo of a smiling Lucie at the keyboard on Facebook when we got home, her electrician father having hooked it up to some old computer speakers.  There's something hugely attractive about barter, isn't there?

Next stop was at the home of friends of friends, who recently moved south from Germany to take up residence in their holiday home, only for the husband to collapse mere weeks later with a bleed from a cerebral aneurysm.  He is in the best possible hands in the university hospital in Montpellier, but remains comatose.  She is holding it together, but struggling with the tiring journeys to and fro, and with the effort of dialogue with an unresponsive partner.  Time will tell.

From there to good old Le Somail for lunch with Chota, Patricia and Martin, who were on great form, and are now proprietors of a little acrylic sketch I did a while back from a photograph that Martin had taken of the sunrise over Sète.  It being the fifteenth anniversary of Martyn's and my first meeting, they had brought a bottle of Muscat de Frontignan as an anniversary present.  The Auberge du Somail was not, however, on form: cold, tough lamb chops.  Had I had the sense I was born with, I'd have settled for the starter course: an assiette Andalouse, comprising a spot of salad, green and black tapenade, some very garlicky red peppers, a generous dollop of jambon cru, sliced melon and a tomato salsa that we eschewed, fearing raw onion in the mix.  

The weather being fine, clear and still yesterday, we headed for our favourite ride in the mountains over to Limoux (though not before I'd rubbed down and sized the shower room ceiling).  This time we took some carrots with us in case we encountered the donkeys we sometimes see at our favourite viewpoint.  That precaution was of course sufficient to ensure that they didn't appear.  The views, however, were fabulous.  We were serenaded by a skylark as we admired the beautiful chain of snowy Pyrenees, and harangued by lambs and their mothers at a farm nearby.  We hope they make better côtelettes than we got at the Auberge du Somail on Thursday.  

Down in Limoux, we headed for a café that had been well reviewed by Le Petit Futé, took one look at it and its rough clientèle, and moved on.  We finished up at the Grand Café, which we'd pretty well decided not to use again after a couple of poor meals.  Martyn had a steak, which was evidently very good.  I had my usual pizza, enjoyed it, and writhed later.  

It was fine enough to sit out on the terrace when we got back, entertained by house martins, buzzards and redstarts.  It was a bit too chilly to sit and wait for the bats.

This grey, damp morning looked propitious for decorating, so the shower room ceiling is now papered, and Martyn has been round again with a pot of white paint.  That's very nearly all the DIY we need to do this time, save, perhaps, a bit of weeding.  Or perhaps not.