Compared to last year we seem to be heavily into the ex-pat thing this time round. It's not been our intention, but it's just happened. First off, on Wednesday we re-met our friends Peter and Julie from last year (Aussies). Next was Julie from Birmingham who has been coming here 11 years. Along with Julie were her friends and also long-timers here Maggi and Sam, and with Peter and Julie were Graham and Yvonne from Queensland.
This entire group and we met on Friday and drove up to Hermitage San Ferreol for an ex-pat picnic. It's a lovely spot with great views back down to Céret and out towards Perpignan and the sea. Lunch was excellent but shortened by the arrival of heavy rain.
We bumped into various of this group over the next few days, culminating in 5pm drinks last night before Julie, Sam and Maggi all head back to the UK until the end of August. Sam and Maggi in particular seem to be on our wavelength as they enjoy getting out into the hills walking. The whole group is very pleasant and we look forward to seeing more of them.
It's odd us being semi-permanent residents, while everyone else comes and goes. The advantages of living in Europe!
Our tenants Derek and Mary dropped in to see us yesterday. We had some trouble recognising them,since we had only met them once for a few minutes in Nelson, but with that worked out we spent a bit of time comparing notes. They had found winter pretty chilly, and had some trouble with our satellite reception recently, but other than that had enjoyed their time in Céret. I think the satellite issue is because the trees around the square to our north are getting taller and are blocking the signal. I will be trying to move the dish this week some 15m east where the trees shouldn't be such a problem.
One very encouraging thing they said was that they had made a number of good French friends. That's certainly one of our plans. Ex-pats are great but we did come here to enjoy France and be as French as possible.
