We were invited to Alasdair and Maria's wedding in Paris on the 15th June, and had an absolutely lovely time!
[Apologies: my photos are so completely rubbish that I'm not posting any of them, sorry!]
We travelled to Paris on the Friday, and once we'd battled the périphérique we got to our hotel in the 15th arrondissement, which was fine but really expensive. No surprises there, just wish we'd had time to use the swimming pool/spa!
Saturday morning, we took a taxi to the Mairie of the 6th arrondissement, and met up with Hilary, a schoolmate of David's, and her daughter Molly, and Matthew (a college friend of David's) and his wife Gilly, and were waiting in the courtyard. None of use expected to know anyone else at the wedding, so we were just trying to follow the crowd.
Well we did follow the crowd, but luckily were halted by a phone call from Alasdhair [thankfully David hadn't yet switched his phone off] asking where we were - "we're just coming into the room" - "you're at the wrong wedding"!
Oops!
We'd just looked at the time and as it was already nearly midday followed the other people heading upstairs. In our defence, the invite said 12 o'clock.
It was only later that we realised Liam and Alyssa would have been there if no-one else we knew!
[Later we met up with another guest who shall remain nameless, and he had not only the wrong ceremony, but the wrong venue; he'd been at the church of St Sulpice across the road, had seen two groups of people and chosen the better dressed group only to find out he'd joined a funeral!]
The ceremony was at the conducted by the mayor (as I later found out, of the 7th). She was gorgeous (and she was definitely one of those French women we hear so much about: slim, beautifully turned out, at ease), but spoke quickly enough that I missed some of the details.
I understood her giving biographies of Alasdhair and Maria [it was totally unlike an English civil ceremony where the vows take up a lot more time, with the law taking up much less].
I was musing that perhaps in Paris there's some sort of rule that you are only allowed a glamorous mayor [no offence intended to any English worthies, but the photos I've seen of UK mayors show distinctly homely women!], when she mentioned that she'd not always had an easy time with journalists [Maria is a journalist], so I thought "oh, perhaps mayors in Paris have more trouble from the press".
It was only after the ceremony that Matthew asked if I knew that she was Rachida Dati - I didn't, but that explained the bother she'd had at the hands of the fourth estate! I thought she handled it very graciously: making a little joke when she could have been stony-faced or just ignored it.
Maria had organised taxi's to the restaurant, so that was one worry removed.
The wedding "breakfast" was held at the Tour d'Argent which is a really spiffy Parisian restaurant; the food was lovely, and the views were fabulous - sixth floor, overlooking the Seine, with Notre-Dame off to the left - it's a fantastic setting.
We started with amuse-bouches with champagne Tour d'Argent Grand Cru, then there were quenelles of pike "André Terrail" with Château de Tracy (pouilly fumé) and Vendéenne duck breast with vegetables accompanied by Saint Joseph (chave). Gâteau de Mariage [scrummy chocolateness] and mignardises to round off a delicious meal.
[I had asparagus for starters and a vegetable medley for mains; both really good, and I was really grateful to Maria for organising that, and to Alasdhair for remembering I'm vegetarian!]
Under Matthew's influence [and that of several bottles of the chave! I wish I'd been drinking alcohol; everyone was raving about the wine], we left the restaurant last and then we tried to find a taxi rank (with taxis!) before giving up and taking the metro.
Sadly, we arrived back at the hotel five minutes before the taxi was due to collect us for the evening reception, and still had to get back to the room...
So no evening outfit for me [I felt desperately weird being the only woman who hadn't changed].
Had we known the taxi was going to be 20 minutes late, I would have scrambled into my other outfit!
Not that it mattered - we were in time for the departure of the Ivoire for the cruise on the Seine (unlike one of the other guests), and it was a brilliant evening. I was nervous that I was going to be boat sick, but I was fine, and really enjoyed seeing Paris from the water.
By the time the boat docked, David and I were ready for our beds [another huge thank you to Maria for organising the taxi guys to take us back to the hotel], so passed up on Matthew & Gilly's offer to go clubbing...
Unlike Liam, who apparently didn't enjoy his four hour wait for the Eurostar at the Gard du Nord the next day!
Fab time, and hope they enjoyed the honeymoon in Honfleur, and that we see them soon in the Aube.
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
Monday, July 01, 2013
Snippets
We had a lovely visit to France last month - we'd gone for Alasdhair and Maria's wedding [which was lovely, and about which I will post another time], but stayed on for a week's holiday.
We [David, mostly] finished putting the subsoil back into the trench left by the wall that M. Milesi had built for us. We started to transfer the compost heap there [in the four or five hours that we moved the upper layers, we didn't come across any broken down matter!], but stopped when we realised that if we bought the long-debated shredder it might help to speed up the whole process.
So we've put it on hold, and we have a chipper/shredder on order [it will cope with all the hedge trimmings, too] that, fingers crossed, will fit in the car easily...
If not, we checked that the hopper removes without too much bother [four bolts], so it will still be easier to transport than if we had needed to use the trailer.
I'm desperately hoping that the shredder will make light work of our current compost 'mountain' and will prevent future build-up...
When we've finished moving the compost, I'll post again about the trench [too many photos at the moment to cope with the thought of going through them; I'll sort them out in Picasa and then should be able to face it].
We continue remarking about the weather - the Canal de la Restitution is much lower than it was on our last visit, but still massively higher than we would expect at this time of year; it's been great for planting [although it went really hot for four days] - warm and wet, just what the plants love - but there has been more flooding. We saw horses up to their 'armpits' [there's probably a technical term, and that's probably not it?] in water in their field, which worried me, but the level was dropping all the time, so when we saw them later only up to their 'elbows' [vide supra re: technical term], I was a lot less concerned for them.
Philippe who owns the place next door [he's not really our neighbour, as he lives about five miles away] said the daughter of a former mayor of the village had her house (on the way to Chatillon) destroyed by hail stones about the size of an orange, and there was a tornado that hit less than 20 miles away. We're more glad than ever that our valley seems particularly lucky when it comes to the worst of the weather!
We did have some weather-related damage - the bells stopped; odd that the absence of sound impacts us more now than the bells themselves ever do. We also had "thunder storm stops play" when we were planting - it hadn't stopped raining, and we were desperate to get the remaining plants in the ground before the heavens opened - but it felt that the lightning was getting too close, and I don't want to be hit for a third time!
[OK, it wasn't dramatic either of the other times, but I have learned (the hard way) not to use a telephone during a thunderstorm - huge blue flash, Gibbs-slap to the side of the head, temporary deafness; not bad for a strike, but better avoided in my experience.]
Before the rain set in as though we were in England, we had a couple of days of low 30s, and a low of 18.5°c [weather when the shutters don't open for fear of letting in more heat; the only downside of really efficient insulation], and it only dropped out of the 20s because of the first thunderstorm!
All the plants are settled in, the ground is still very damp, we watered them in well so we are hoping that they will all survive.
It's so odd seeing France much greener than England; our hay was shoulder height on David, with no sign of a break in the weather for Jean-Luc to cut it - we only saw one field of cut hay the whole time we were there, so we haven't missed out on his attentions. The (few) walnuts are between a petit-pois and a marrowfat pea in size, whereas I would expect them to be (nearly) full-sized by now - one recipes calls for green walnuts and suggests 25 June as a harvest date - not a chance! The elder flowers were out at about the same time as I previously when I made some liqueur; I'm not sure I hadn't left it a little too late, but I was waiting for a day when they were dry [should have picked them when we first got there, but we were prioritising the plants at that point] - we shall see.
I'm trying to espalier train the plum seedlings David had moved to near Philippe's "hangar" - not sure that's what I should be doing, but I can't let them get huge, so I've got to try to 'tame' them before that happens. Philippe thinks I'm mad, but in France we just don't see smaller trees over there like we do here in Kent. It may be a crazy idea or it may just be a function of France being huge compared to England when population/square area is calculated - I will get around to looking up online whether I should be doing it, and if so how, but we're always so pushed for time when we are in France that I often find out later what I should have done.
Oh well, as long as I don't kill the trees, we're good!
We had a bike ride-through go through the village as we were scrambling to get last minute work done on the Saturday. My French Googling abilities are unequal to the task of finding out what was going on, but there were a lot of motorcycles heading past the church. I kept thinking "oh, it will nearly be finished, there's no point going to look" for a good five (if not ten) minutes, but eventually I went to peer through the elder bushes. I counted 95 bikes go past, so there must have been hundreds. I do wonder what they were up to.
The trip was only slightly marred by missing our Shuttle, and the following one that we were booked on being subject to hour-long delays - could have been worse, and they did bring round water as we were waiting, but I'm not sure why they gathered our details. David said we might get a refund of some sort [I voted for unlikely; we've waited for over four hours without even an apology, so an hour doesn't seem to merit anything] - which we didn't. I guess that Eurostar has different standards they apply.
We [David, mostly] finished putting the subsoil back into the trench left by the wall that M. Milesi had built for us. We started to transfer the compost heap there [in the four or five hours that we moved the upper layers, we didn't come across any broken down matter!], but stopped when we realised that if we bought the long-debated shredder it might help to speed up the whole process.
So we've put it on hold, and we have a chipper/shredder on order [it will cope with all the hedge trimmings, too] that, fingers crossed, will fit in the car easily...
If not, we checked that the hopper removes without too much bother [four bolts], so it will still be easier to transport than if we had needed to use the trailer.
I'm desperately hoping that the shredder will make light work of our current compost 'mountain' and will prevent future build-up...
When we've finished moving the compost, I'll post again about the trench [too many photos at the moment to cope with the thought of going through them; I'll sort them out in Picasa and then should be able to face it].
We continue remarking about the weather - the Canal de la Restitution is much lower than it was on our last visit, but still massively higher than we would expect at this time of year; it's been great for planting [although it went really hot for four days] - warm and wet, just what the plants love - but there has been more flooding. We saw horses up to their 'armpits' [there's probably a technical term, and that's probably not it?] in water in their field, which worried me, but the level was dropping all the time, so when we saw them later only up to their 'elbows' [vide supra re: technical term], I was a lot less concerned for them.
Philippe who owns the place next door [he's not really our neighbour, as he lives about five miles away] said the daughter of a former mayor of the village had her house (on the way to Chatillon) destroyed by hail stones about the size of an orange, and there was a tornado that hit less than 20 miles away. We're more glad than ever that our valley seems particularly lucky when it comes to the worst of the weather!
We did have some weather-related damage - the bells stopped; odd that the absence of sound impacts us more now than the bells themselves ever do. We also had "thunder storm stops play" when we were planting - it hadn't stopped raining, and we were desperate to get the remaining plants in the ground before the heavens opened - but it felt that the lightning was getting too close, and I don't want to be hit for a third time!
[OK, it wasn't dramatic either of the other times, but I have learned (the hard way) not to use a telephone during a thunderstorm - huge blue flash, Gibbs-slap to the side of the head, temporary deafness; not bad for a strike, but better avoided in my experience.]
Before the rain set in as though we were in England, we had a couple of days of low 30s, and a low of 18.5°c [weather when the shutters don't open for fear of letting in more heat; the only downside of really efficient insulation], and it only dropped out of the 20s because of the first thunderstorm!
All the plants are settled in, the ground is still very damp, we watered them in well so we are hoping that they will all survive.
It's so odd seeing France much greener than England; our hay was shoulder height on David, with no sign of a break in the weather for Jean-Luc to cut it - we only saw one field of cut hay the whole time we were there, so we haven't missed out on his attentions. The (few) walnuts are between a petit-pois and a marrowfat pea in size, whereas I would expect them to be (nearly) full-sized by now - one recipes calls for green walnuts and suggests 25 June as a harvest date - not a chance! The elder flowers were out at about the same time as I previously when I made some liqueur; I'm not sure I hadn't left it a little too late, but I was waiting for a day when they were dry [should have picked them when we first got there, but we were prioritising the plants at that point] - we shall see.
I'm trying to espalier train the plum seedlings David had moved to near Philippe's "hangar" - not sure that's what I should be doing, but I can't let them get huge, so I've got to try to 'tame' them before that happens. Philippe thinks I'm mad, but in France we just don't see smaller trees over there like we do here in Kent. It may be a crazy idea or it may just be a function of France being huge compared to England when population/square area is calculated - I will get around to looking up online whether I should be doing it, and if so how, but we're always so pushed for time when we are in France that I often find out later what I should have done.
Oh well, as long as I don't kill the trees, we're good!
We had a bike ride-through go through the village as we were scrambling to get last minute work done on the Saturday. My French Googling abilities are unequal to the task of finding out what was going on, but there were a lot of motorcycles heading past the church. I kept thinking "oh, it will nearly be finished, there's no point going to look" for a good five (if not ten) minutes, but eventually I went to peer through the elder bushes. I counted 95 bikes go past, so there must have been hundreds. I do wonder what they were up to.
The trip was only slightly marred by missing our Shuttle, and the following one that we were booked on being subject to hour-long delays - could have been worse, and they did bring round water as we were waiting, but I'm not sure why they gathered our details. David said we might get a refund of some sort [I voted for unlikely; we've waited for over four hours without even an apology, so an hour doesn't seem to merit anything] - which we didn't. I guess that Eurostar has different standards they apply.
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