Friends

We had friends as paying guests this weekend, which was a first, and at the same time had friends here as non-paying guests staying in our spare bedroom - so it was all a bit confusing and poor Christian was turfed out of the spare room as a result. He spent one night with Chris, on the sofa bed in Susan's apartment overlooking the square, and one night on the sofa here - all of which he accepted without question, for which I am very grateful.

Rosie and Martin, and their two children, Victor and Stanley. arrived in Carcassonne on the overnight sleeper train from Paris on Saturday morning at 5.39am. It had left Paris exactly on time and it arrived exactly on time, just as you'd expect from a French train. I'm very glad it was because I would have been less than happy to have got up at 5.00am to meet them if it wasn't.

We wandered back from the station, under a moody looking sky, past the stallholders setting up the Saturday market. They had arrived a good 10 hours before check-in time, but fortunately I had only had one set of guests in and so was able to put them all into one suite where they promptly all collapsed into the sleep that they didn't get on the overnight sleeper.

It meant a same day room change for me but I am so used to them by now that they hold no fears any more. The rest of Saturday was spent as Saturday's usually are here - market shopping for the weekend's food, lunch and socialising at bar Saillan (my guests thought it was a lovely little bar), pottering about the apartment in the afternoon reading the newspaper, checking emails and keeping an eye on the sports scores, prepping and cooking dinner in the evening and finally eating and drinking and chatting into the late hours. This week was more relaxing because it was a large group of old friends catching up with each other - but there is always the washing up after everyone else has finally retired - my day started at 5.00am and finished at 2.00am the following morning.

As always with a large group, it was impossible to decide what to do on Sunday morning and a dark sky and promised showers made the decision even harder. By the time we were organised the morning had all but gone.

The last thing you expect to find on the outskirts of Carcassonne is an theme park dedicated to all things Australian, but that is exactly what we have. When I say theme park I am being rather generous and Disney and Alton Towers need have no fear of the competition, although we all agreed we would never set foot in places like that and that 'Le Parc Australien' was very charming and quite fun for an hour or so in the drizzle. We tried to play the didgeridoo (Christian very good at it / Debrah very amusing with goat imitations!), we looked at the emus and the wallabies and the kangeroos and the rabbit that was so scared by a chicken that it fell into a coma for three days (I kid you not) and played all the games. Sadly there were no boomerang demonstrations because of the wind and rain.

By the time we left, having played with all the musical instruments in the shop on the way out, we were in severe danger of missing lunchtime. We tried Le Moulin at Trebes but they only had a special Mother's Day menu - it being French Mother's Day - and then the Buffalo Grill for a laugh and for the benefit of the kids - but they were unbelievably queuing out of the door to get in there. So finally, I decided we should go into La Cité where I knew we could definitely still get some lunch. Sadly Martin and Rosie couldn't go on a canal trip because the deteriorating weather meant they were cancelled.

The day finished with a massive pile of sausages and potatoes cooked in the oven, more red wine of course and much singing and dancing to sixties, seventies and eighties classics - it's always a winner. It was lovely to see Rosie and Martin so relaxed and happy together - the benefit of a bit of Languedoc therapy.