New Hat & Other News

Got a new hat.


We are no longer in danger of being homeless come May. While nothing is happening on the house or land front, friends are moving into their new house this week and have offered us their old one to use. Sniff; people are so good.

Saturday we spent all day in Avignon at the exhibition. Well, some of it at the exhibition. At lunch time, we went 'round to see our friends, Gilles and Jean-Marc, who were in the midst of lunch and invited us to sit and share, so we did. Later we met them and some of their friends for coffee. Much more interesting than hanging around an exhibition.

Sunday I rested all day.

Yesterday, well, yesterday:

I dragged myself out of bed to have coffee with a Belgian friend at the local café and Nick joined us around 12. About that time, a couple at the bar decided to go outside and sit in the sunshine. Since, by our reckoning, it's freezing here, we knew they were tourists.

When the three of us left the bar, we made a comment to the tourists -- Parisians, as it turns out -- about the sun and the cold and I was staring at their wine bottle to see what they'd decided to drink after Tony, the owner, gave the rundown on the local vinyards. The best: a Gigondas.

"Try some!" they said. We demurred. "We have too much!, they said." "We haven't eaten, yet." "Have you tried this dish"? the man asked. "No, we said." "Delicious," he reported. Somewhere in the course of this back and forth, it transpired that the woman is a designer, so I accepted on behalf of all of us since she might be interested in Nick's work.

Serge, our host, went inside to get more glasses, returned and poured. Soon, Tony appeared with another bottle and another platter of the lunch that Serge and Françoise had had.

So we ate. We drank. We talked. Françoise had noticed that I was wearing a hat to cover my baldness -- and keep warm. It turns out that she was told she was going to die of cancer 10 years ago, almost did die twice, but is a survivor. Laurence, our Belgian friend, used to be an aide sociale in the cancer ward of one of the big hospitals in Brussels. So, between cancer and design, we had a lot to talk about, eating and drinking and sitting in the sun. Even if it was cold.