La Vie Française, no. 3

Life certainly gets more sociable and interesting in the middle months of the year; it is the time when many towns and villages have their ‘fêtes locales’. This usually involves some sort of event during the day, a meal in the evening and then some sort of music - the most frequent is one of the many local mobile discos.

Recently our village put on a ‘soirée grillade’ - just a meal with no other arrangements to spoil the evening. It was billed to start at 8:00 in the evening but we have learned from all the previous events that we have attended that nothing starts on time, or anywhere close to it. So we didn’t bother to go along to the Salle de Fête until 8:45 thinking that perhaps things would get moving around 9:00. A complete mistake, we stood around chatting and consuming aperitifs until finally at 10:00 moves were made to the tables and the meal began.

In truth not an awe-inspiring meal but it was accompanied by copious quantities of wine, which of course assisted in the business of communication and making new acquaintances amongst our French neigbours! Added to the aperitifs it meant that one of us was a bit, how shall we put it, tiddly/squiffy/ over-happy. And proceeded to go round inviting many of the village neighbours to come to our house to carry on the party as well as also being able to see the work we have done to improve/renovate the house. And of course there is a great deal of interest in seeing what we have done.

So from approximately 11:30 on a steady trickle of people made their way to our house and the fun got under way. Much alcohol was consumed, much hilarity as it took effect and much singing of traditional French, English and Scottish songs, most of it led by the Maire. It took an age to finally get everyone away and I fell into bed at close to 4:30 in the morning with no real recollection of about an hour of the night after 2:00, but I don’t think that I behaved badly as none of the neighbours has said anything untoward!!

Any way we’ve satisfied a great many people’s curiosity about the house at the same time as providing much enjoyment and furthering good relations. Roll on the next village event and a chance to do something similar all over again.