La Maison D'Amour ooh la la.

Now don't get all excited, it's the name of a medieval house in the village of St Antonin, so called because as you can see there is a very sweet kissy kissy couple carved over the door. I think they are adorable. Now what else has been happening, well Spike nearly ate a hornet and had to be rescued and then we spent all day yesterday working and had to go out for pizza to recover. By about 9pm it had cooled down to a polar 26 centigrade, I don't even want to think about the temp at lunch time, let's just say that working in your undies is not all the fun you might think especially when there is a hornet on the loose. Anyway by 9pm it was beautiful and we sat outside, we had great pizza cooked in the wood fired oven. It was wonderful.

On Tuesday we worked in the morning. I am delighted to say that my French planning for next year IS FINISHED. Hooray hooray thankyou fans it means I'll be much more sorted about teaching lovely French and so will be much calmer and less panic stricken next term (honestly). In order to celebrate we went to Albi to the Brasserie Vigan for lunch. We had terrine de poissons maison avec basilic et salad de poivrons ( no I'm not going to translate it; practice with your dictionaries) puis saute de canard aux olives, vin et cafe for the magnificent sum of 35 Euros. Then we pottered around the shops and the cathedral because we love Albi and I have been having lunch at the Vigan and pottering around the shops in Albi since I was about 5. We went into our favourite kitchen shop and lusted after all the beautiful things and funky gadgets then normality reasserted itself and we went to the Supermarket which was less exciting but very necessary as we were out of cat litter...lovely.

The cathedral in Albi is, like most of the important buildings and major towns in this area, made of pink brick. It is huge and sits there in the valley of the river Tarn looking like a rather lost ocean liner. Inside is a riot of coloured painting including a rather nasty Medieval depiction of heaven and hell, all rather interesting but a bit scary. Makes you wonder what some of those Medieval guys were on.

Anyway having walked about 300 miles today because we got lost on our ramble, I'm going to give this up now and have a nice hot bath in our fancy schmancy bathtub, especially installed for days when you have walked 300 miles through impenetrable woods and been pursued by mad animals of various varieties... of which more anon!