Surprise

My four American clients turned up mid-afternoon. There were three elderlys and one daughter-in-law, a replacement for the party leader's husband who slipped on ice in New York a month ago and is still convalescing his damaged ankle ligaments. There is still no escape from the consequences of the weather it seems - still, good news for the daughter-in-law who gets an unexpected trip to Europe.

As is the norm with our cousins from the New World, they immediately asked lots of questions, before they had even got themselves in the door. "How old is this place?, Where can I park the car?, How does the ticket machine work?, How did you manage to arrange to live here and keep your wife in London?" (that from the one male in the party - in a slow sardonic New York drawl) - followed by "Yous muss be some sorta genius, we gotta tork".

They are in fact all very charming - just very blunt in the way Americans are about everything. Indeed they have been extremely complimentary about the apartments and also about dinner this evening.

The original plan had been to send them out to a restaurant tonight and cook for them tomorrow, but at this time of year a lot of the restaurants are closed for a break and our standard fallback, L'Ecurie, is closed on a Wednesday - so I switched nights and cooked for them this evening.

It was another successful 42rvh dinner and all six of them went off happy and replete. Yes, six of them. At 7pm I was asked if dinner could be extended to two more people as two friends had turned up unexpectedly! It seems that two Italian friends, who knew that they were passing through Carcassonne, decided to drive over from Italy to surprise them.

How sweet, we all like a nice surprise - well, everyone except the chef, me, who had an hour to turn five into seven, when that hour was already planned out to the last second. It wasn't quite 'loaves and fishes' but there was a certain amount of scrabbling around behind the scenes and all was a lot more frantic that intended. The problem was that five 'confit de canard' and five 'fondant de chocolat' are not seven of either or anything. I'd never have coped with five thousand.

It didn't help that at the same time as I learned of the extra dinner guests, Brigitte, the bringer of bad news, rang the doorbell to ask if I had a boat because the basement was flooded. Ah, French humour translated into English - just not funny.

There has been an ongoing problem with a leak in the basement for a couple of months, which I first spotted before Christmas and had pointed out that it needed urgent attention because a water leak is not good news - it gets everywhere eventually and whilst it didn't seem serious to begin with it would only get worse if not dealt with.

It wasn't my water pipe and it wasn't hers, so there was a certain lack of urgency I guess - the owner of the pipe in question lives in Paris - so did they care? - well not really it seems.

Plumbers eventually arrived to dig up the floor and trace the leak and somehow they have made it ten times worse than it was before, so that now there is a pool of water throughout half the basement, including one of my cellars, fortunately just the one with all the old building material.

Nothing I could do about it this evening - I had a dinner crisis to sort out - but tomorrow's plans now include a bit of a salvage operation and clean up.

It all keeps me busy and definitely on my toes - otherwise my feet would get wet.