Christmas 2009

It felt a magical Christmas: we had snow for almost the entire journey down; OK that bit wasn't great, but arriving to a covering of white, and seeing the Christmas lights outside the Mairie really set the scene.
We hadn't got the heating sorted out at that stage, so when we arrived the temperature in the house was about 8 or 9°C, but got up to about 12°C by the next morning.

M. Antoni's visit helped massively with that, but that was later...

We were incredibly glad when M. Monnier's men showed up in their van; and even happier when, after 20 minutes of trying, they managed to get the van up the road to our house!

We were worried that it was going to be "snow stopped play", but thankfully the poêle was installed and started off the warming up the house properly process.

We never did get it above 14°C, but given the lows of -19°C [and the stove!] we were fine with that.

I had planned to do the housework and set up all the Christmas decorations after David had gone back to London, but the Eurostar "wrong kind of snow" collapse meant that he stayed with me.

A bonus, and he got to help with putting up the decorations!

I can't believe that I didn't take any photos of the mistletoe I hung up in the imposte above the front door, but as I can't find any, I have to believe it.

Shame, everyone we speak to regards mistletoe as a menace, so they don't mind you helping yourself to masses of it; they'd see that as a service!

I think the enforced early start to David's holiday helped him to wind down much quicker/sooner than he would have done otherwise - he was still logging on to the office and working, but there was a 20 second commute and an hour's time difference in our favour had a massive impact on his sleeping.

Because there was so much snow about, we did our "shop" to last us the fortnight we were there and we had no need to leave the house...

Apart from to try and work off some of the food!

We had one idyllic walk that could have come out of White Christmas, and managed several shorter ones on less sunny days, and just relaxed, read and allowed ourselved to be hypnotised by the flames of the fire and the candles.

I did 'fess up to my autumn's liqueur-making activities, but only after a blind tasting; he did identify one, but not the other two!

David is looking forward to when they have matured a bit; although he's not keen on my plan to lay most of it down for years!

I explained that I could make some more next year, and if we have spare mirabelles, they could be "sacrificed to the cause"; he cheered up a lot at that idea.

We are looking forward to being able to invite guests, and offer them a glass of homemade damson gin...

In the meantime, posting this has got me looking forward to next Christmas already - and you don't often hear me say that before December!