New Shoes Blues

A couple of weeks ago, Debrah looked at our bookings schedule and noticed two free days during the her two week stay - "shall we go away for a couple of nights?", she asked - "what a good idea", I replied.

The next day I had a booking enquiry for the days in question and that put paid to that idea - the new guests arrived yesterday from Ireland. It's our first season and I didn't feel that I could refuse the booking - it was very disappointing that I couldn't head off with Debrah and Sandra down to Argeles and Ceret and Collioure to see Nick and Chris but I think the girls wanted a bit of girl time together so that worked out OK in the end.

Naturally, when they got back this evening they were both a bit weary from the sun and the wind and the travelling - and after a good supper, they both retired to an early bed ( Debrah still suffering a bit from her cold and Sandra keen to call her boyfriend in Australia).

I decided to wander down to the square and see what the musical offering was for this evening. They weren't bad actually, but their sound system was terrible - I think the Place Carnot doesn't have the best acoustics - it seems to work well right in front of the stage but sat anywhere else in the square the sound is poor - which is a shame and probably why a lot of the music is in the square Andre Chenier, which isn't surrounded by buildings, and has much better sound quality.

Whatever! I had stood and listened for half an hour and was just about to leave when I heard Chris' dulcet tones behind me. I had obviously walked straight past him as I wandered around looking to see if there was someone there that I knew (really must go and get some glasses soon!)

He was with Marine (his French girlfriend - yes, Chris has a girlfriend) and Cathy (the nice one of the two Cathys) and Gary and Des (who had both obviously been out for some time since mid-afternoon and were both struggling with the language - or just speech in general)

Anyway it was good to spend a while with them rather than stand on my own listening to the band - and as always they were good fun and entertaining.

It also gave me a chance to take my shoes off - my new shoes, even though only worn for 30 minutes each of the last two days, have given me blisters on both heels. What a pain.