Friday, December 30, 2011

Again with the sun

This is still a view of Monday's sunset. We didn't see the sun again until Wednesday morning. But soon after we were in the fog again. That's because we drove down to Le Grand Pressigny (about an hour south of us) at the invitation of Jean and Nick who have a house there. We spent a wonderful afternoon and evening eating, drinking, and laughing. We even played Monopoly.

The sun setting in the southwest seen from one of the loft windows.

Ken won the game pretty handily. I went bankrupt, and I even owned Park Place for a while. Oh well. We spent the night so that we didn't have to drive home full and tipsy in the dark. On Thursday morning Nick made up a batch of oat cakes served with British bacon and black pudding. We also had cream cheese, bagels, and smoked salmon. A very nice time all around.

We stopped briefly to say hello to Susan and Simon in Preuilly-sur-Claise and got home in the early afternoon. Since we had turned our heat off before we left, the house was quite cold and it took a couple of hours to warm it back up.

11 comments:

  1. Great to see you yesterday and many many thanks for the gift. I plan to use it today, so a blog post will follow.

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  2. Sounds like you had a good time. Paul says we shouldn't turn the heat off, just turn keep it at its "night" setting for short absences and the "hors gel" setting for longer ones. The cost of getting the heat back up to normal from lower temperatures is greater than maintaining it at higher ones. Unfortunately, we have a leak in one of our radiators and had to empty the system and turn it off completely before going to England for Christmas so the leak would not cause water damage. It was 11° in the house when we got back and it did take a long time to get back up to normal. Can't wait for the new radiator to be installed. Until then, we keep a bowl under it to collect the leaking water, but we have to empty it at least once a day in spite of having put a plastery plug on the leak.

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  3. wonderful photograph!
    If her madeleine biscuits are anything to go by I bet Jean bakes a mean Christmas cake!
    Had we'd known you were in our area we would have said drop by for coffee and meet us properly :-)

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  4. As always a pic of artistic merit young man.
    Jean/Nick - Simon/Susan - we almost feel that they are old friends thru blogging as you both are - Have a great NYE and a very healthy 2012.
    Leon and Sue

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  5. As always a pic of artistic merit young man.
    Jean/Nick - Simon/Susan - we almost feel that they are old friends thru blogging as you both are - Have a great NYE and a very healthy 2012.
    Leon and Sue

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  6. Now THAT'S a breakfast! We're tied up this weekend (in the good way) so I'll send wishes for a Happy New Year to you and Ken now. Have a wonderful 2012!

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  7. Looks like the Earth is on fire.

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  8. I am finding it really hard to read your posts with the new colors you are using. It is especially difficult to read the Newsiness section. Hope you will consider something easier for tired, old eyes.

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  9. Interesting photo which strangely reminds me of the summer bushfire season in Australia.

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  10. susan, happy you could use it! Looking forward to the post.

    ellen, I would do the same but the program function of our old boiler is not reliable. We operate it manually now.

    n&a, Jean's cooking is always a delight! One of these days we'll meet up again and get to meet Niall.

    leon, thanks, and the same to you and Sue!

    writer, aw, shucks!

    will, thanks, and back to you and Fritz!

    starman, it really did!

    anon, sorry. I'll see if I can tweak it.

    victor, interesting. Hopefully you won't be seeing anything like this this season.

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