All Change

It's been a busy day here in Carcassonne. It was a lovely day to be out and about. It was a lovely day to be my guests - breakfast brought to the room, clear blue skies, warm but not too hot so perfect for exploring the Cité and then a wine tasting with me in the evening.

My charming American couple are on their honeymoon trip around France and appear to be loving every minute - which is as it should be in every sense.

This evening I put together a wine tasting of local Languedoc wines plus a few 'tapas' to compliment, which went very well - so well in fact we were still sat round the table three hours after we started which is a long time to taste five wines. You are probably thinking that we polished off the five bottles between the three of us but nothing could be further from the truth - one glass each from four and we finished the fifth.

We started with a Blanquette Methode Ancestrale from Limoux and then sampled a white from Picpoul de Pinet (heavenly with the local oysters - sadly we didn't have any this evening) and a local chardonnay before comparing a red from the Minervois with a red from the Corbieres - which was everyone's favourite and the one we finished off.

We had started thirty minutes later than planned because I was running behind schedule. I had wasted a good hour driving from shop to shop looking for a clothes rail - it's never straightforward finding what you want is it? I went to four different stores convinced that each would have what I wanted, but to no avail. I wasted twenty minutes in Tridome because they had moved everything around - why do stores do that? - I knew where it all was beforehand and it's no clearer or better now than it was before - and then they didn't have what I wanted.

The reason for the rail is that I am moving out of my bedroom into the spare room and need to move all our belongings out too. To maximise income the main bedroom has now become the Master Suite and this weekend will see the first clients arrive.

You think that you don't have much stuff - my God, we have so much more than meets the eye - but I think I have found a home for it all - I am very good at packing and stacking!!