24!

24! No, not the TV series, but the number of people we had over the other night. This started as a simple pot luck plus some singing with the people from Linda's conversation group. As is usual with my gregarious wife these thing tend to grow. It started with 12 people who might come & ended up at 24. I've come to expect it.

The conversation group is a mix of British & French. The idea being that the French help the Brits with their French and the Brits help the French with their English. Makes for some extremely lively conversation to say the least. The other night the numbers of each nationality were roughly equal; slightly more French than Brits I think. Anyway, a good time was had by all. The conversation (and the wine) flowed freely in both languages. Once the guitar came out and the singing started there was no stopping everyone. Linda had down loaded the lyrics of a number of songs in both French & English so as to help things along. Singing "Blowin in the Wind" in French is an interesting experience as is trying "Rain drops keep falling on my head". Most people finally left about 1:30 AM. All the Gendarmes had surely gone to bed by then!

As this was a pot luck we had an interesting range of food. Linda had done the main course; one of her dynamite mussaka's which everyone loved. The English mostly brought wine. From the French we had several nice salads and a range of desserts . The champion was Bernadette (she & Pierre were late due to having to get the cows taken care of.) She jokingly said the she'd killed the pig the day before & brought him with her today. She brought; friton de tete, ham, several pates and dry sausage. This along with the charcutière that Christine had brought made a great starter. We ate well. Fortunately we have a large room so with the folding table, both leaves in our regular table and lots of plastic chairs we were able to seat everyone.

We or somebody else will do this again in addition to the regular group meeting that is held every other week in a tea room. It was great fun and did a lot for local relations.