Getting back to work

I arrived back in France today to grey skies and, now, torrential rain - not seen in these parts for a goodly number of weeks. In fact I am told that the weather has been good here until today - sorry everyone.

It has been a quite intense couple of weeks of celebrations and nearly two weeks since I had paying guests here. I have to admit that it feels like even longer and it took me a little while this afternoon to get my head back into gear. I have new guests arriving tomorrow and their room is now sorted and ready.

There were guests in the suites whilst I was in the UK, staying on a self-catering basis. Claire did a great job of looking after them and has even done all the washing from the midweek changeovers - not the ironing though - that jolly job awaits me tomorrow.

My mother's 80th birthday weekend went as well as a family get-together can go and was a lot better than some we have had in the past. Everyone was very relaxed, apart from my Mum, and there were relatives present that I haven't seen for at least 10 years. Naturally everyone was looking a lot older or had in fact just grown up from being a child and turned into a young adult.

Before all that kicked off on Saturday, we managed to celebrate Debrah's birthday. We stayed at West Stoke House near Chichester and had a great dinner with lots of good wines. It is a restaurant with rooms so the food and wine is excellent - but the rooms are lovely too. I would describe the atmosphere as calm Englishness and highly recommend it.

The proprietor used to work at BBH, the very same advertising agency that I once worked for. Our paths never crossed then but they have now. Bizarrely, the owners weren't there last weekend - they were staying with another ex-BBHer in Provence. Roslyn runs a similar business to this at Le Paradis near Orange. She is one of our best friends. Small world indeed.