Power on, Water off

My new guests are from Vienna. I collected them from the train station, in the pouring rain, yesterday evening. They had set out at 4am and flown to Paris before getting the train to Carcassonne - so they were a bit tired and a bit hungry when they got here.

They seem like a very sweet couple. She works for a magazine called Weinerin, which translates as Viennese woman, and is writing an article about Carcassonne for the magazine, which we will hopefully be featured in as the place to stay when in town. He is an architect. The company he works for does a lot of work designing prisons - well somebody has to, I guess - and he was told by his colleagues that the prison here in Carcassonne is very highly regarded by those in the prison design business and that he might take a look out of interest. Let's just hope he doesn't get locked up for acting a bit suspiciously outside a prison - I can just hear him saying "Honestly, officer, these photographs are just for my work" as he is bundled into the back of a car by a couple of burly 'gendarmes'.

We have managed to avoid the electricity going off today - I'm still not sure if we need another increase in the power rating or there is a fault in the system somewhere - there appears to be no logic to when the power trips off. So power OK but when we got back from lunch the water was off! The workmen arrived early this morning and started digging up the road just up the hill from 42rvh - it looked like they were putting in a new water pipe to number 43. Just after midday it was clear that not all was well as litres of water were running down the street and a man was poking a stick into a flooded hole - someone had obviously drilled through the main (perhaps the bloke with the stick) and everyone else had made themselves scarce either because they didn't want to be associated with it or because it was lunch time and even though it was an emergency it could wait until 2pm - that's the price you have to pay for civilisation.

Fortunately, we went out for lunch today so didn't need the water and our guests were also out by then and didn't even realise it had been off. We went for lunch with Denis and his lady friend, Grainne, fresh off the flight from Dublin - I'm not sure she appreciated being whisked off straight from the airport in her travel clothes and without warning!

We had been meaning to try Domaine Gayda for a while and finally got round to doing so today. It is out in the countryside towards Limoux - a big wine estate run by one of the major players in the local wine trade, a modern building housing a restaurant, a wine shop and the vats, which are open to view as you climb the stairs to the restaurant - all very clean and comfortable and a lovely place for a spot of lunch, even when the weather is a bit foul as it was today. The big log fire and friendly ambience made it very welcoming.

Small world that it is, the maitre'd turned out to have worked in Ireland for quite a while and knew a lot of the places that Denis and Grainne knew well. He was also very interested in our apartments here in town - Debrah showed him some of her fabulous photos on the wonder that is her i-phone and he took some cards off me and we took some brochures off him. Hopefully we can push some business in both directions. Lunch and networking equals time well spent.

We would have stayed a bit longer and visited the wine shop, but I had an appointment with Amelie for my next French lesson, so we had to head back to Carcassonne. On the way back, Amelie called to say she was ill and couldn't make it - my French might suffer as a result but my credit card was spared the shop which at the moment is a good thing.

This evening, we helped our Austrian friends find a restaurant and then settled down on the sofa to watch a very soporific football match between England and France. I hope the state visit to Britain of President Sarkozy has a bit more meaning and passion about it than this evening's tame affair - I'm not sure it will - I understand he's been told to get in line and act with more decorum as the office of President demands. Act in a reserved manner and don't show your emotions - hmmm, how very British that sounds!