Impromptu

An organised day. I woke unreasonably early after a 2am finish to yesterday, so got up to do chocolate and pastry work in the kitchen while it was cool enough to do so. Opening the windows at 6.30 to let that cool morning air rush in was quite delicious. Gradually the rest of the house joined me and, almost before we knew it, lunchtime was upon us.

After lunch we piled into the cars and headed off to Gaillac for the wine festival. They have dozens (50?) of wooden 'Christmas market' style stalls with the wines of the region. As Mr B and I were both designated drivers we had to try and be careful to not taste too much... I think it's only the second time in my life I've poured wine away at tastings (and yes, before you ask, I was driving the other time too).

The Castres crew, plus lodger boy who seems to be spending the whole summer with them showed up too and much fun was had. Once we were all overwhelmed by heat we made our select purchases and headed home stopping to watch some racing involving rolling barrels around, and a contest to open five bottles of wine (corks not screw-top....) in the shortest time (45 seconds was the best I saw). Anyway, we then found that the gate right next to our cars was closed. With a high wall and higher drop to scale.... Wiser counsel should perhaps have prevailed and had us walk round to the main gate (I mean me) but it was hot, so the bulk of opinion was to jump over. I was last to make the leap and made it badly - losing a fair amount of skin off my right arm and banging my knee so badly that I think walking tomorrow might be tricky.....

But still, we made it home and - to our delight - our neighbour who is a musician had a friend over who was playing some (we discovered) Galician bagpipes. He also spoke excellent English so we had a chat about music and then he and our neighbour (here on drums) entertained us under the trees for a while. Blissful and one of those odd happenings that keeps life interesting.

On the way back to empty the car, though, my bad luck day continued in the arm department when I was stung by a frelon (asiatic hornet - bad news). Quite the most agony I could imagine from an insect that didn't even have the grace to die after stinging me... Ice, antiseptic, hydrocortisone, antihistamine cream and double dose antihistamines have happily restored feeling to my arm.

Later there was a curry dinner and an appropriate amount of wine and cocktails, and rapidly approaching on the horizon is a relatively early night.

Tomorrow I think I will be mostly sitting down and moaning quietly.