Important visitor

Monday night we went to a quiz dinner again, and came in a close second this time. The first two teams were well ahead of the competition, but in spite of our efforts, we were two points behind the leaders.

This week's big event was Sarkozy's visit to the area on Thursday to commiserate with farmers who have been severely hit by this year's drought. Apparently the Charente (our department) is the worst-hit. He visited a farm less than a mile away from us. We tried to walk up to see the action, but security made it impossible to get near. A Condadeuil neighbor who was coming home late the night before was stopped on her way home. If we'd wanted to go anywhere in the car during The Visit, our choice of routes was very limited; there was only one way out of the area. Of course, if you were in the cordoned off area, you couldn't go in or out at all for hours. After the farm visit, Sarkozy hosted a meeting in La Rochefoucauld with about 1500 attendees. Here's the news from the IHT and from our local paper.

The old gate from our yard to the South Forty was a bit rickety and wasn't big enough for the riding lawn mower to go through, so Ed's been busy replacing the narrow single gate with a double one that's wide enough for the mower.

Buying some bread at the boulangerie last week, Ed noticed a poster for a pétanque (jeu de boules) competition in a nearby commune, hosted by the hunt society of Montemboeuf. On Saturday he and a friend, Mike, played their first pétanque competition. There were 16 teams of 2 or 3 players, young and old, playing 4 rounds each.

Some of the players were "licensed" and others were just there for the fun. There were some quite young players (see second from the left above) who were very skilled. Dad would direct and the kid would knock opponent's balls out of the way.

It was an all-afternoon event and included a barbecue for sandwiches (ventrèche, saucisse, and merguez) and a stand with drinks (wine, beer, and soft drinks). The the clumsy foreigners who didn't know all the rules were accepted by all and the competition was very friendly. We suspect that the rotation was arranged so that the better teams played each other, since most of Ed and Mike's opponents were in the bottom half of the results. The top winners got bottles of pastis (what else?), plants, and chunks of meat from the hunt society's freezer. Ed and Mike came in fourth from the bottom and each took took home a bottle of wine and a plant (cotoneaster).