This and that!

After the long hot summer life seems to be settling back into its predictable autumn routines - in my case busy but doable without the searing heat! I think I mentioned previously that around October last year I'd tried to look up my best friend from school days as I always remembered her birthday was October 10th - I never had any luck though as she has a very common name. Anyway, on October 10th this year I gave it another shot on FB and would you believe it, a couple of days later Joy P. B. contacted me through messenger asking if my birthday was September 24th, and if so, bingo, we'd found each other!!! It was such a lovely surprise! I reckoned we hadn't seen each other since age 16 when I went to college and she stayed on at school, but she reminded me that we had once met up for drinks back in England not long after I'd moved to Switzerland (I always thought I'd dreamed that, for some strange reason). Anyhoo, we chatted back and forth for a while but I get the feeling that unless we can get to meet up our chats won't go very far. I mean, after almost 50 years of radio silence I'm guessing it will be difficult to reprise the friendship without a get-together. Who knows, though, I thought the same about my old buddy from infants school and yet after 36 years of not seeing each other, I flew out to meet up with him in Bulgaria and we just took up where we'd left off at the age of 16!

In other news, when I went to fill up my car the other week I realized that I was pretty close to LIDL, so decided to have a look in there as a change from my regular supermarket. I stopped going to LIDL about three years ago because of the aggressive Roma beggars but as they weren't there this time (too cold I guess, or the Mercedes that used to drop them off had broken down) in I went and I have to say I was pretty amazed at the price differences. I don't care for their fruit and veg much and you can't buy name brands (not that I care, for the most part) but by golly their prices for meat and paper goods were pretty amazing! Since I didn't want to buy my fresh produce there I wandered over to the local farmers' market, but I'll probably give them another shot if/when I want to buy more meat. Later in the week I went back to my usual store (more expensive but they offer a greater selection and it's much more pleasant) and when I paid they handed me a scratch card so I scratched it off right there and I'd won €20 to be credited to my store card. That takes the credit on my card up to almost €100 as of now, which will come in really handy around Christmas I'm sure. Then, when I was putting away my groceries I saw that there was a competition to win a "plancha" (a table-top grill) with proof of purchase of pretzel buns, so I took a photo of the packet and uploaded the receipt, and wouldn't you know it, but I won a plancha, which arrived a couple of days later and is now sitting proudly in Jordan and Jen's house as theirs had given up the ghost. So since I was hooked I did the same with a packet of chocolate M&Ms and who knows, maybe I'll win a two-night stay for four at EuroDisney in Paris. If I do, I suspect Jordan and Jen would luck out again but who knows, I might even go with them because it would be nice to see the kids at Disney for the first time. I know some people do really well entering competitions but there's no way I would buy something specifically to enter a competition, it's just that I had these items anyway and decided to give it a shot. As for EuroDisney, I'll let you know if I get lucky!

I think I mentioned briefly in a previous post that I'd gone on a trip to a lunch/cabaret with the old fogies club when I got back from Spain. It was in a place called La Grange à Jules and was just outside Annecy, so about 40 minutes away. The food was truly sublime but the oldies generally moaned about the cabaret as I think they were expecting to be up and dancing for a few hours at least, rather than the 45 minutes or so they got to hop about after lunch. For some stupid reason I was expecting many of the songs to be in English since it was supposed to be a "songs of the 80s" cabaret, but then I guess that would be a bit selfish on my part to hope for that. In the end I didn't care either way, but I know there were a few complaints about the cabaret. I thought I would do my good deed for the year and "volunteered" to sit between miserable Chantal (with the nice Portuguese partner) and Monique. Monique, as is her want, yapped on about how "everyone blamed her for Leone missing the plane to Spain" and Chantal (whose breath could have stopped a camel at 50 metres) was her usual unpleasant self (I swear her face would crack in two if she ever actually smiled). I've said before that for the most part it doesn't bother me, but I could see she was getting on Véronique's nerves (she was sitting opposite her) and unfortunately some people just can't hide their irritation so I was praying I wouldn't end up trying to break up a fight between Véronique and Chantal, all the while having Monique wittering away in my ear about how "she said this, and it wasn't my fault, and if that's the case I'll just resign"!!!! In the end we all made it back in one piece and I, for one, had a pretty good time despite being seated in the main line of fire!

La Grange à Jules!

At club the other week, Monique called a few of us into the kitchen and announced that she had, indeed, decided to step down as president of the club. I guess she'd already spoken to Martine about this because apparently Martine was fine with taking over, assuming no-one else wants to take over the position (no-one does). When I pointed out to Martine that we'd then need to look for a new secretary she said she'd keep both positions if we couldn't find anyone, but I said that was an awful lot of work for one person and while I didn't mind helping out with the computer work, I was not willing to take on extra work as secretary in addition to treasurer as I have other priorities. To be honest, bashing out work on a computer doesn't bother me as I'm used to it, but no way would I want to get involved in the administrative work as there is a helluva lot more than I realised, this being a formal association with a fairly substantial budget. I thought Martine was very kind though in saying that she wanted Monique to stay on as a committee member because there were some things that she enjoyed and that she was good at, but she just needed to have the stress of the presidency taken off her. She also pointed out that in her opinion Monique would fall into a depression if she quit completely (Monique agreed with her)!

Yesterday after club, eight of us stayed behind to set up the room for lunch for 120 people at the AGM to take place on Thursday (tomorrow). We couldn't do it today as it is Armistice Day and a holiday here in France. With eight of us working for a solid hour we managed to get all the tables and placings set up ready for tomorrow so I guess after a year of working together we've finally settled into our groove. Monique will be announcing her resignation tomorrow and elections will take place for the new committee (I'm guessing it won't be "new" because nobody has come forward wanting to join). We have all the accounts ready to hand over and will just need Monique to sign tomorrow as she wasn't in club yesterday as she'd broken her dentures and was desperately hoping her new ones would be ready in time for Thursday. I know she's a walking catastrophe and I have to admit I had to smile at the image of her trying to give her farewell speech with no teeth but ..... here's hoping everything will be all right on the night!

In another news, I was contacted by a member of the parent/teacher association of the local infants' school, asking if sewing club "would help" make pochons (tote bags?) in which to put the books they would be giving all the kids for Christmas. I spoke to our teacher asking if she thought the ladies from club would be willing to help and, thinking we were looking at about 50 kids, we said yes. Well it turns out there are 165 kiddos (!!!!!) but having spoken to all the ladies at club and with most managing to come up with suitable fabric from their home stashes (I had a ton of beautiful fabric which I donated because I have a weakness for it) we set up a production line with a one lady ironing, another cutting, another sewing initial seams and another inserting the straps (this was my job on Monday). In fact, since we'd offered to help financially we ended up only having to fork out €100 for the strapping as we've managed to come up with enough material to make all the bags. I'm so glad all three sections of sewing club were willing to help out as I think we may even get them all finished, if not by this Monday, then certainly by next and given that no-one from the parent/teacher association knows how to sew, we were kinda thrown in at the deep end. While I'm pretty sure none of us would make the grade on a Chinese production line, I have to say I'm pretty proud of everyone's willingness to help get this task completed. I just hope the kiddos like the end results, although being around three years old I don't suppose they'll really care!