Friendly fire

I woke (late) feeling terrible. Once I worked out that what I thought was a medical emergency in fact wasn't (phew - I can put off for a bit longer having to talk to doctors in french about bodily functions) I felt much better and we headed off for the daily DIY shopping trip. Pretty much as soon as we got back our electrician arrived to go through a fiendishly complicated invoice with us - which Mr B had managed to counter with a spreadsheet so complex that even he had to sit quietly for a moment to remember what was what.

Once all that was dealt with there wasn't much of the day left for work before school pick-up time. I sanded a chair in the garden (our garden furniture hasn't been looked after very well and this will be its first re-oiling since 1998). When I came back with the kids we saw that our neighbour was lighting the big bonfire that has been building up in front of the houses. Then Conor said "Oh yeah, I was supposed to tell you that we're all having a big meal tonight around the fire". Thanks Conor. A chat with our neighbour confirmed that a plan had been hatched to take advantage of the fire with a communal barbecue. A hasty trip then to the shops to buy something grillable (we didn't think the planned lamb tagine would work on the barbie...) and I made another batch of cookies which went down very well with the grown ups who had eaten all the poorly boy's cookies on Thursday.

And what a fine evening it was. A table was found and we ate, drank and chatted into the wee small hours. My grasp of French was much mocked, knowledge about whisky was shared and, for some reason which remains unclear, I tried to translate an Eric Cantona quote back into French. Here is the fire just before we put the food on, and you can probably see the kids gamboling about behind it. Somehow none of them fell in and, after several hours racing about, they all collapsed in front of a movie in someone's house. Folk drifted away from the party through the darkness, but I'm glad to say we stuck it out until pretty much the end. A very fun night - though I think a few folk may be regretting all that whisky in the morning...