This weekend was pretty manic, so apologies for the extra long post – please try to stay awake…

On Saturday it was cutting-the-grass-on-the-field day.

My mission, should i choose to accept it, was to mow the grass on our 1000m2 field with just our little mower (sadly no sit-on loveliness for me…). I attacked the task with some vigour, taking the ever-decreasing-circles approach. I got into a good rhythm with it, emptying the grass box after each circuit. It is a pretty depressing task at first, as there always seems to be SO MUCH left to do. but I stuck with it. It was a lovely day and I was enjoying being out in the sun for once, after all the rain we have had. Having passed the psychological barrier of getting to the other side of the fruit trees things really accelerated. Finally, 3 hours later, my mission was complete and I have to say, although it may be “undulating” to say the least, it does look good when it is all freshly cut.

So, after my mornings toiling in the field, I just had time to scrub the chlorophyll from my fingers before taking Joe to his first French birthday party. We bought a present and a card, but needn’t have bothered with the latter – cards are just not done in France. It has taken quite some getting used to, as we have always sent cards on special occasions. But here we have really struggled to find any. In the UK you can call into any corner shop and you’ll generally find a selection of averagely-decent greetings cards. But here in sleepy Vendée it seems the locals have no need for such frivolity. Now, I am personally not a great fan of cards anyway, especially Christmas cards. I’m no Scrooge, but I think generally Christmas cards contribute so much misery and bring very little joy. People tend to spend weeks finding the cards, buying them, writing them, finding people’s addresses, buying stamps, sticking them on, posting them, waiting to receive them, wondering why they haven’t received one from so-and-so…..I really can’t be done with the hassle.

Although now, being in a different country, I think maybe they have a better purpose. As we won’t see the majority of the people who normally send us cards, it will make a lot more sense to send a greeting. Compare this with the normal situation when we send (or even worse, TAKE) cards to people who we see several times a week, it just seems ridiculous to me.

Anyway, I seem to have veered off the subject somewhat. Christmas can wait!

Back to Joe’s party – he had a great time. We went to pick him up and the very friendly (French) parents invited us in for “quelque chose a boire…”. Very nice it was too. We chatted over a coffee (tell me why, somebody, do French people not own electric kettles?) and we got to practice our French, as they spoke no English at all. This was great – just what we need – a friendly young French family to have a conversation with. All the people that we generally have cause to converse with are, shall we say, at the higher end of the age spectrum compared to us. It was a refreshing change to speak to someone of a similar vintage.

All hopes of a long-term friendship were quickly shattered though when they told us that they were moving away from Foussais in August due to work. Drat and double-drat! Ah well, the quest continues!

Our busy weekend didn’t stop there, oh no. On Saturday night we sat down to enjoy episode 2 of Doctor Who (Catherine Tate is growing on me…) and then it was the annual “Bal Folk” in the village – a folk dancing evening organised by the local school. We were determined that we should go as it was an ideal opportunity for us to introduce ourselves to some more of the local community and a rare chance for us to have a night out. So we arranged to meet some friends there at 9pm (quite why we said 9 I do not know…it only “started” at 9, which generally means 10). 9pm came and we arrived in the car park of the Salle Polyvalente. No sign of our friends as yet – no doubt they had added the obligatory hour to the starting time. So we sat and waited…

One by one, the cars arrived and out climbed a collection of people who I would have identified as folk dancers, even if I didn’t know that’s where they were going. A varied mix of ages (mainly from 50-80 needless to say) and various different dress codes. Some were clearly professionals in their full skirts and sensible dancing shoes. Some looked like they had just got out of bed and had not had time to change from their pyjamas.

We sat for about 20 minutes….no sign of our soon-to-be-former friends…if they didn’t come soon we would have a big decision to make. Do we go in, risk being the only non-French, non-folk-music-groupies, non-geriatric people there? Or do we go home and watch the next round of “I’d Do Anything” with several glasses of wine?

We progressed to the path outside the hall, from where we could see the professional dancers doing their stuff – it all looked quite complicated. Our procrastination was put to an end however when the school headmaster arrived. “Are you coming in?” he asked (in his rapid-fire French, so we assumed that was what he said…). Under such unbearable interrogation, we finally caved in and joined in the fun.

And what fun it was! We had the idea of just sitting and watching for a while to get the feel for it, but our fellow dancers had other ideas. We were dragged up to join in the dances, passed from person to person in a state of merry confusion. It took us a while to get the gist of each dance, but we made the best of a bad job and let ourselves get carried along by the rest. We had a whale of a time… even Rosie, for whom the whole parents-folk-dancing thing was just too much of an embarrassment to comprehend, managed to have a fairly good time. The people were great, we met lots more folks, spoke plenty of French (although “Zut! C’est difficile!” was quite a mainstay of the night) and had ourselves a really good night out. Although we left at just gone midnight, the dancing was due to go on for another couple of hours – us young’uns just couldn’t stand the pace!

Sunday came far too early and we spent the morning preparing for the arrival of some friends from England. They have a holiday home near Cognac and were over for Easter so they said they’d pop in to see us. We had a great time with them and it was nice to share experiences of the house-buying process.

So eventually our busy weekend drew to a close. We watched Tara hang up her Nancy necklace – a wise decision i think – and had a decent night’s sleep. All in all it had been a great weekend and we all felt rather proud of ourselves for our achievements.