On Friday I finished work early in order to get home and get organised for another weekend trip to Paris. To make life easier in the morning I stayed overnight at Colin’s house in Bath. We had a nice evening out in Bath but went home quite early because of the early start next day.
Next morning I was out of bed in a flash when the alarm went off at 4 am in order to get ready at leisure and we left the house at 5.30, allowing time for another cup of coffee at the station before I caught the 6.22 train. This fortunately was on time and it was a pleasant journey to London. As per usual I had my portable music and a good book to while away the journey. One slight niggle during the journey was after realising that the new address of Leo and Christele wasn’t in my handbag when I looked and try as I might I simply could not remember their number at the street where they lived! I was hoping that Pierrette could find out for me via the French equivalent of Directory Enquiries.
I arrived in London at ten to eight and within half an hour reached Waterloo, too early to check in for the train leaving at 10.23. So time for another cup of coffee and then check-in at 9 am and an hour’s wait in the boarding lounge before getting on the train itself.
The journey itself on Eurostar was very smooth and comfortable. I had a window seat although spent most of the journey reading a good book. The train was running slightly slower due to maintenance works on the tracks in France, so arrived 20 minutes later than scheduled. As soon as I walked off the platform, Pierrette was there to meet me and in no time at all we were outside the Gare du Nord and crossing the road to a restaurant called ‘Buffalo Bill’ which is a chain of restaurants throughout France as popular as MacDonalds but serving steaks instead. We spent a pleasant couple of hours there, me opting for a Bison steak as I am not a lover of beef and very nice it was too. I finished off with an enormous American style icecream sundae - three flavours of icecream and chocolate brownie, all decorated with creme chantilly and pecan nuts.
I found I was really struggling with my French throughout the time spent with her at the restaurant. After being 100% fluent at French this all seems to have flown out of the window after a year of intense Spanish learning. I am now pretty fluent in Spanish but unfortunately at the cost of losing my French. It was only with immense concentration that I could manage a whole sentence in French and even then the odd Spanish word crept in. This didn’t matter later when I was with Leo and Christele because they are all fluent in both Spanish and French, even the children, but poor Pierrette who doesn’t speak Spanish had some difficulty in understanding me and at times I had to revert to speaking in English slowly. I could still understand her spoken French perfectly though so at least I still have that!
Afterwards Pierrette tried to get Leo’s telephone number from Directory Enquiries only to find that they weren’t listed yet, or were possibly ex-directory. She didn’t know the whereabouts of any nearby internet cafe (so that I could send a ‘help’ message to Leo) so we decided to find the street anyway and hoped that it wasn’t a long one! I had an idea the number might be 40 or 42 so we decided to start there.
It was quite a long way on the Peripherique to get to Bagneux, or at least it seemed long because of the busy traffic. We got off the Peripherique at Montrouge and with the help of an A-Z type book of maps found out way quite easily, only to find when we reached No’s 40 and 42 that these were individual houses and not the apartment block I was looking for! We asked a passerby if there was an internet cafe in the area only to find there was not! This left no choice but for me to look through my baggage and hope I could find the address there and sure enough there it was at the bottom of my hand luggage, revealing that the number we wanted was 68!
We drove to 68 and parked outside and had just got inside and found no names were written against each of the bells or postboxes and were just wondering what to do next when Leo appeared down the stairs. They had been looking out for me and saw me arrive and soon enough we were all inside and relaxing with a drink before Pierrette made her way back home. It had been lovely to see her again and catch up on our news.
After she went home Leo and Christele showed me around the apartment which they had purchased around the time I visited them in March and were spending every spare minute back then decorating it and doing it up ready to move into just before they went to Costa Rica to Leo’s family at the end of June. I could see that Leo had worked very hard - he had installed beautiful ceramic tile floors or parquet flooring throughout, done lots of decorating and installed extra electric points etc and the results were excellent. The apartment was much bigger than the last one, with four bedrooms and an excellent balcony the length of the lounge big enough to eat outside on in summer.
Leo and I exchanged the music we had copied for each other, both of us really happy with big smiling faces to be receiving a huge pile of new CDs! With the extra ones that Leo copied for me throughout the weekend I went home with around 70 new ones, all complete with the covers that Leo had scanned and printed for me - which is more than I did for him! I took the covers of the ones copied with me and he scanned and printed them there. It was lovely to see their Siamese cat Chicootoo again and I had fun playing with him and cuddling him throughout the evening.
I had brought spices with me as I wanted to cook for them, so we decided on making the Chicken and Chilli soup (to a Thai recipe) that evening to accompany what they had prepared, with me making the Peruvian Carapulcra the next day. Leo helped me with the preparations so it didn’t take too long to make, and when we served it up later they all enjoyed it immensely. It really was great being with them again. They are such a close-knit and loving family which I immediately felt part of, just like last time, the children even giving me a kiss goodnight at bedtime. We all ended up going to bed at well past midnight and after the early start I slept well, not waking up until gone 8 am, which is pretty late for me.
Next morning we all enjoyed a nice breakfast together, which among other things included my favourite - croissants - and that lovely crusty French bread that Camille had gone out to buy fresh just before breakfast, juice, comfitures and excellent Costa Rican coffee. Afterwards we decided to cook the meal for that evening in advance, knowing that we wouldn’t get back until about 8 pm. Again Leo helped me with the preparations and soon the Carapulcra was made - a delicious Peruvian stew with pork loin and chicken pieces, very gently spiced with finely ground nuts to thicken the sauce. We also prepared that day’s lunch as well and had it quite early as we had to be at Pierre’s house by 3 o clock. Christele had to take things easy as her baby is due at the end of January and is in danger of being born too early. To avoid this she has to rest much of the time and apart from the Sunday excursions for the Los Quirquinchos rehearsals spends all her time at home at the moment.
After lunch we were soon on our way and on the motorway leaving Paris behind us. It took about half an hour to get to the Forest of Chardon where Pierre and his family live right on the edge of the forest. I was very warmly welcomed by Pierre, his wife and the other members of Los Quirquinchos and we all had expresso coffees before the band started to play. I really enjoyed the next couple of hours of listening to andean music live in such comfortable surroundings. Although quite mild a lovely log fire was burning in the grate and it was really cosy. I enjoyed cuddling their tabby cat as well, a male who adores being cuddled. Near the start of the rehearsal we saw him appear on the patio outside carrying a mouse he had caught in the forest and were all highly amused to see him put it in his food bowl! Halfway through the rehearsal we all sat around the fire and enjoyed an excellent beer flavoured with Tequila, slices of Stollen cake, other little cakes made with choux pastry, fruit etc. When the band got up to play again I remained by the fire with the cat stretched out on my lap and it was lovely to enjoy the cat and the music at the same time, as I had already taken a few photographs earlier.
Afterwards we drove back home and while the children got themselves prepared for school the next day, Leo and I got the Carapulcra heated up for tea and again they really enjoyed the meal, to my delight. Afterwards Leo continued copying more of his CDs for me - ones he had invited me to pick out from his collection - and I really enjoyed looking through his collection, and listening while he copied, and chatting to Christele. Camille said his goodbyes to me before he went to bed as he was leaving early next day - his classes starting at 8 am. We didn’t finally go to bed until about 1.30 in the morning. I was able to say goodbye to Charlotte next morning as her classes started later.
Next day after breakfast I wrote out both recipes in Spanish for them so that they could make them again and I also looked at their photos taken during the month spent with Leo’s family in Costa Rica before packing my bags ready for the trip home. Leo had given me the empty CD cases as well for the CDs so I was well laden. With these and the three bottles of wine they had given me I had quite a lot to carry, but luckily my little trolley case had wheels and it was possible to balance the other big bag on top and secure it with a big luggage strap in order to wheel all the luggage along. Then after a last lunch with them Leo drove to the nearest metro station, parked the car and he carried my luggage all the way to the Gare du Nord and the passport control point for Eurostar passengers where we said our goodbyes as he wasn’t allowed to go through. I had really enjoyed the lovely weekend spent with them - the next time I see them will be in March or April when they will all come to Bath.
By the time I walked into the boarding lounge from passport control, passengers were already boarding the train and I reached my seat only five minutes before the train departed. Before leaving Leo’s house I had sorted out a selection of the ones I wanted to listen to on the journey home and thus the ride back to London was spent really pleasantly listening to Fernando Jiminez, Illapu, Grandes Charanguistas de Bolivia, Markawasy etc. The train pulled into Waterloo at just after 5 pm where Aquiles was waiting to meet me and it was great to see him again. He took charge of my luggage and we set off by train to Greenwich to go to one of several restaurants he liked there. Once there we decided on the Noodle bar and enjoyed huge bowls of soup and Singapore Noodles and shared a nice bottle of wine and it was great to catch up on all news.
After leaving the restaurant Aquiles accompanied me all the way back to Paddington, arriving there about 35 minutes before my 9.30 pm train. We had just got drinks at the pub upstairs and sat down to enjoy them when we noticed the screen in front of us and I looked to see if the platform number was listed yet - only to find the word ‘cancelled’ in the platform number column! I phoned Colin which is when I learned the embankment had partially collapsed between Didcot and Swindon and only half the trains were running. Although the next scheduled train was 11 pm, fortunately the Swansea train leaving at 10.10 was also stopping at Bath and Aquiles helped me onto that one before he went on his way, promising to come down to Bath before Christmas, most probably two weeks hence. Although passengers for Swindon and Chippenham had to get off at Reading and continue their journey by road, fortunately Bath passengers could stay on the train all the way. I finally reached Bath at 11.40 where Colin awaited me and drove me home. Once home I found that another six CDs had arrived from Tierra de Fuego in Argentina that day, making a total of 80 new ones to enjoy in the coming weeks. All in all another fantastic weekend spent with such lovely friends. Although late home, I was up bright and early on Tuesday to return to work, with only a few days to wait until Friday and the Kausary concert at the Michael Tippett Centre in Bath, plus the delightful company of the Kausary band at my home throughout the coming weekend.
