A better Friday

This is what greeted me when I opened the shutters last Friday morning: 

 Later we went for lunch at our favourite restaurant. 

Cram Chaban!

I’ve always been fascinated by the name on a sign post we’ve passed over the years when we were travelling North. Cram Chaban sounds like a magic word. Yesterday we set off to visit the village.

In fact Cram Chaban consists of the community, Cram and another part of the village which is either called Chaban or Cram Chaban? It’s tucked away in the middle of nowhere and is quite a pretty village.

As there was nowhere to have lunch there, we travelled to the next village to find somewhere to eat and happened on Basil Fawlty. When we asked if we could eat outside he said “We don’t usually serve meals out side. Do you really want to eat outside? Well I suppose if you must eat out side I’ll serve you a meal outside…” and so on. There was no menu, just the menu du jour which was simple and quite good. He told Rob off for being on his phone at the table (timetable problems – I was secretly pleased though). We were handed a selection of cheese on a plate, each piece wrapped up, but it was all the same goat’s cheese. If he hadn’t reminded us of Basil Fawlty we wouldn’t have stayed – it was quite amusing.

We then enjoyed a good walk around the beautiful, old village and went into the tourist office where there was an exhibition of work by Michel Moro, who combines paint and mosaics. The website does not do justice to the colours. His workshop is open to the public and is in CRAM! I think that we will be returning soon.

It’s called Friday 13th

The end of last week was a particularly bad one here. The Maritime Museum caught fire in town. The museum is/was in a ship which had just been renovated at an enormous cost ready for the season; an electrical fault.

 The weather on Friday itself was very wet, windy and cold. The music festival that the town was holding over five nights was delayed for that evening, and then cancelled. Olivier had a job for the five days and nights of the festival on a food stand. This involved us collecting him from town around four o’clock every morning. Fortunately Rob was on holiday for four of the days, but we still found it very tiring. We did have an early night on the evening that was cancelled – if you call 2 am early.

This year I have been growing some sunflowers and they were doing very well, especially the one that was taller than me. The wind blew it over. I put the top in water but after a couple of days it was obvious that it was dying.

Here is one in the fields

Nearly a month has gone by…

I’m sorry that there hasn’t been an update for so long. Rob went back to work this morning – 5 weeks after his accident. Our 27th wedding anniversary passed without divorce proceedings due to my driving. It’s not that I drive badly I just don’t drive like him and get nervous when I’m constantly ‘given advice’.

I met up with another blogger for the first time ever in my blogging career. Caroline and her partner were passing through La Rochelle on their way home by car. They usually wave as they fly over, so it was nice to see each other for real. We sat on the port and drank coffee and chatted. I wish I could have stayed longer. Here’s the proof:

 (Weather was a bit windy)

 Dom and J-M came for the weekend as it was Rob’s birthday on Saturday. Dom made one of her wonderful cakes; Chocolate on Chocolate (can’t get more wonderful than that). It’s always good to see them and we all spent Sunday morning browsing around local Brocantes/boot sales/garage sales. I found a lovely leather wallet and the partner to a candle holder we found last year under similar circumstances. Dom’s paper has now been accepted completely for publication. She’s just submitted her second and I think, has started on a third.

That about wraps up the update.