November Days

At this time of year I've usually had the heating on since at least the beginning of November. I remember one year when I had not been in France long, when my ex-h and I tried to put off the moment by visiting all our friends one after the other.

This year the heating is still off and it's not because I'm on an economy drive. The weather has been a balmy 18°C during the day, dropping to 17°C in the evening. It's so mild, people are going about in shirtsleeves and my youngest, who doesn't feel the cold, is in his football shorts and shirt today.

This morning, we helped NG set up her stand at a rather early Christmas market in the village. Although the sky looked distinctly threatening, we never got more than a few drops of rain, to the relief of one and all. I went and browsed about and noted that many of the sellers were revendeurs which means they were not the ones who had made the goods they were selling, but were third party merchants. The result was that there was quite a lot of tacky rubbish.

There was also some good, original stuff too, including a lady who was selling her artwork and to whom NG spoke about her association as a possible member- artist. On the other hand, there was a stall of decorated tiles which looked for all the world like someone had decided a good money-making little venture would be to write 'cute' words and draw 'cuter' pictures on cheap white tiles without the slightest artistic skill and put them up for sale in time for Christmas.

NG was selling her line of art for children's bedrooms. They started off as an idea for presents for new mothers. She would ask what colour the child's bedroom was and then paint a canvas atmospherically in an appropriate colour and stick little luminescent sheep and stars to glow merrily once the light was turned off. Her paintings were attracting a lot of attention from girls of about 12 so they obviously have an appeal beyond babyhood.

I did not stay to sit it out. My back is killing me since I carried my youngest up the stairs on Friday, and after my very jolly night out with the girls last night, I was in dire need of a rest this afternoon. The girls and I had started off the evening with a blind wine tasting curtesy of Apero Bordeaux. We had to taste two wines (and chat and eat nibbles, and chat) and describe them and give our verdicts. Neither was a wine I would go out and buy again as they were both pretty green and didn't seem to have enough going for them that I would want to buy to put away. Still, it was good fun and enabled us to dress up our girls' night out under the guise of a serious piece of market research...

Not that we need an excuse to get together for a piss-up night out...