Red, Rosé or Champagne

We have had our first red wine incident in one of the suites - one of the guests knocked over a glass onto the carpet. It might have been worse if it had gone onto the white flocati rug but I would happily have taken a broken glass and a spillage on the tiled floor instead.

They were very pro-active in trying to soak the wine out but a red wine stain is the devil to remove. After I had dropped Debrah at the airport at lunchtime, I went off to the DIY superstore and the supermarket and scoured the shelves for a 'wonder' product that might solve the problem. I now own a whole array of products and as I type, I still have a red wine stain on the carpet in the Studio. No wonder.

I don't think it is any coincidence that we held an impromptu rosé wine tasting earlier in the evening. Myself and Debrah and Chris and Alan, the guest in question, sat around our kitchen table and tested four different rosés with the aim of finding something suitable as our house rosé for the summer. It was conducted in all seriousness and most of each bottle remains in my fridge - but rosé has a dangerous way of creeping up on you, even in small quantites - be warned!

As you will have gathered, Debrah has gone back to London - which left both of us feeling a bit miserable. It is only for a couple of days and she will be back on Friday but the place always feels a bit empty just after she has gone.

Maybe that contributed to my awful performance in my French lesson this evening. For the first time, I felt as if I couldn't understand a word that Amelié was saying to me - she did admit that she was pushing me to go on up to a new level - but I felt as if, suddenly, I couldn't speak the language - oh for one of those Matrix style brain implants - 'downloading modern French with southern accent and swear word addendums' - instant fluency but none of the 'fun' of getting it wrong all the time.

This afternoon, because my French is better than his, I helped Chris get a couple of extra keys sorted out for his new apartment in town that he is sharing with Susan (they only had one key between them so had to keep calling each other to be let in). Then we went off to visit Niall in the money pit 'Domaine' to see if we could find a way of doing some work for him. Whilst nothing is agreed, we are making some progress towards working out a schedule and a specification and a price. We shall see.

And then finally, this evening, our first honeymooners booked to stay here, which is very exciting - and another first for 42rvh. All together now - aaahhhhh!!