Happy days

My Scottish guests left yesterday on the same flight that brought Debrah out to Carcassonne. From March onwards they would have been able to fly direct from Edinburgh, rather than have to travel via Stansted, but I am grateful to them for coming here in January. The new Edinburgh flight opens up a whole new market for us, so very welcome it is too.

My guests managed to find their way to 'The Celt' Irish bar every night for a wee nightcap and were treated as regulars by the time they departed.

It's good to have a 'pub' back in town. In Winter most of the bars here are closed by 9.00pm so at last there is an all week option, which is good for my guests and for me. As I still haven't invested in any form of satellite TV it is also the place to go to watch any decent sport and good sport is always best watched in a crowd.

There are downsides though. The old Irish bar always kept terrible beer and so I always drank wine, which we all know is the cheapest drink available in France. The new bar keeps good beer and serves as good a pint of Guinness as I have drunk anywhere except Dublin. There are two problems with that. Firstly, as Debrah pointed out on arrival, I am re-establishing my Guinness belly, which I lost when I left London for France and secondly a pint here costs €6 which these days, with the exchange rate nonsense of the last three months, is the equivalent of £6 - about double the price it is in London. Clearly I need to ration the Guinness and get out on my bike more often for the sake of my bodily and financial health.

Actually having Debrah here will help no end because she's not that keen on pubs at the best of times.

There are no guests this weekend but the upside is that we have the place to ourselves with no client interference and breakfasts to do.

This morning we ventured down to the market seeking some inspiration for supper this evening. We eventually decided on some veal for a 'blanquette de veau', a dish I had never cooked before. Just before ordering I realised that I had left my wallet at home - doh - and so dashed back whilst Debrah put in the order. As with all good butchers anywhere we just had to mention what we wanted to cook and for how many and he immediately knew what and how much we needed and how to cut it up ready for us to use.

Not only that but he virtually castigated me for running home because as a regular customer he would happily have given me credit - I could have paid him tomorrow 'sans souci' (literally 'without worry' but best translated as 'no problem') which is a fantastic level of trust that you don't see very often these days and will of course mean that I am much more likely to go to him again. Actually I need no more incentive to visit M Campaci because his beef and veal is some of the best I have ever tasted and, as I have written before, it can be traced back to the very moment of it's birth - probably to it's conception! That is food scourcing at it's very best.

After a mad session of kitchen cleaning by me we decided to make the most of the fabulous afternoon sunshine by taking the Audi, roof down naturally, for a little pootle around the Malepere hills. I can still feel the tingling of the sun and wind on my face and Debrah has succumbed to the effects of the fresh air and a hot bath and is now having a little doze whilst I type this and the blanquette bubbles away in the casserole dish.

Happy times and time for me to go and finish things off and get the supper on the table.