Sleeping in our own bed again was wonderful. Hearing the local church clock chiming on the hour, people dining in the restaurants in the plaza below our apartment, and buskers entertaining the diners at lunch and dinner time (currently a guitarist and superb clarinetist) are great reminders of what Ceret has to offer. It is nice to be back here after our month-long trip.
In September, most of our expat friends arrive to spend autumn in Ceret. We caught up with some of them last night and more today. They are either English or Australian. We hope to catch up with some Scandinavian friends in the next day or two.
It's been quite a weird experience meeting up with them again. We haven't seen them for three years. They are mostly 10 years or more older than us. Seeing and hearing about the serious illnesses that have afflicted virtually all of them (20+ people) has taken us by surprise. The impact of heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, the onset of dementia and other serious health issues, as well as being unfit, overweight, advancing age and over-drinking, have really taken their toll. Many have faced or have upcoming operations. An English friend, aged in her 50s, had a heart attack last week, perhaps brought on by stress brought on from her recent exhibition and family problems. Our French neighbour died of a heart attack last week. He was in his 50 or early 60s. It's all pretty sobering stuff. Some of our friends are now considering selling up.
Tuesday was my birthday, and I celebrated appropriately by being given breakfast in bed. Neither of us were feeling very vigorous, and to tell the truth, have enjoyed doing very little since we arrived back on Sunday. Perhaps we need a holiday from our holiday - which sounds exceedingly indulgent, but travelling constantly is pretty hard work, and we are now both a year older. We cruised for most of the day, but started off with one of our walks out into the countryside. We wanted to check on the blackberry situation and, as we had thought might be the case, it is definitely the end of the season and any berries still left on the vines have withered away to nothing.
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| Part of my birthday lunch |
A short trip to Perpignan was the plan for Wednesday. When we had the air-con recharged in July, the mechanic put a tracer into the system so we could find the source of a leak. He said to drop in when we came back from the trip so they could have a quick look to see where the tracer had exposed the leak. We duly rolled up at 10.30am, only to be told that, no, we should have made a full appointment. Right. So we made an appointment for next Tuesday, and made the most of our trip into the city by stocking up on cheap groceries at the nearby Lidl supermarket. We were back in Ceret again in time for lunch.
I've been getting back into doing my weights a bit. On Thursday, before breakfast, we did one of our usual walks. We even managed to break into some faster speed (relatively speaking) repetitions. We were both surprised we could do it, though it wasn't all that pretty. Still, it's encouraging. We definitely have a good level of fitness from our walking in the Dolomites and our daily high mileage while away.
The best thing about Thursday however, was the rugby match! The All Blacks vs Aussie, and we beat them, just. It was a see-sawing game, and incredibly entertaining, right down to the last 48 seconds, when the ABs snatched a win from the Aussies. The later were disconsolate, especially when the outcome was influenced by the ref's call in the last gasp of the match. We'll happily take the win anyway, and the Bledisloe Cup.
We had another big win on the day too. We bought a gorgeous painting. We'd wandered into an exhibition by a local artist, and were both immediately drawn to one particular painting. We put a hold on it and went away to think about it. Deciding we had missed a number of opportunities in the past when we had seen something we both really liked but opted to forgo, virtually always regretting that decision afterwards, we decided we'd go for it. After drawing some cash out of the bank we paid the woman who was looking after the exhibition, who turned out to be the wife of the artist. The artist himself (a retired doctor) was also there, and we had a good chat. They are a lovely couple and we chatted a lot about the subject of the picture, which is a Parisien scene in the 1930s. It is painted from a black and white photo taken by a famous Romanian photographer. The artist is really chuffed that his painting will someday reside in NZ.
We are enjoying being home and making our own meals again and tonight we cooked up mussels in a white wine sauce. The mussels here are very small, and there were 200 in the packet we bought. It made for a very tasty and healthy meal.
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| Homemade mussel dish |
All sorted, we headed to our usual restaurant, where we always enjoy a good 3-course meal. It was, as always, a fun and busy place to dine. The main course was a little overcooked this time but the first course and dessert were delicious.
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| Our first course - absolutely huge (grilled legumes/prawn and avocado salad) |
