Company and BB King

Last Tuesday friends from The Netherlands, Mat and Angela and their two girls, Mali and Dominque, arrived late in the evening, stopping by on their way home from Italy. We fed them some soup and tucked them into bed. On Wednesday we did a little bit of touristing and went to visit the chateau in La Rochefoucauld.

In spite of the heat, Ed and the girls had fun with the dress-up.

We had a nice dinner that evening at a restaurant run by a Dutch woman. The kids found lots of friends to play with there. They all left Thursday morning, leaving the house very silent and empty.

That evening we took ourselves to Cognac to see BB King at the Blues Passion Festival. We expected to see only the single concert (as with a paid concert at the North Sea Jazz Festival), but it turned out there was a opening group (ho-hum). The concerts were held in an outdoor amphitheater and luckily there had been no rain all day so the grass was relatively dry. We sat for the first act then joined the rush to the stage, where we ended up about 10 people back from the fence. We could frequently glimpse The Man between heads and there were large screens either side of the stage. (It's bizarre to be standing less than 10m from the action and be watching the screens.) BB was made an honorary citizen of Cognac when he arrived on stage (following a couple of numbers by his band, as usual).

BB was great. He's getting noticeably older, but aren't we all? Ed shot a little video with our flakey camera and we discovered it had sound! Not great, but a tiny taste.

It was 1.15 when we got back to the car. There was a lot of traffic getting out of town, but we were still home in 1 hour. On the last bit, from La Rochefoucauld to home, we saw no other car. The festival as a whole looked like fun. There was lots of free music in cafes and other small venues. Another year we might go and wander around. We'll definitely go back to Cognac to make the mandatory round of tastings and see what else there is to see.

This week's fun task is moving the computers from our bedroom into the office. That will be a pleasant change!