Paella 2

Last night was 'Paella 2', the sequel. This one was hosted by the Societe de Chasse, and they were offering aperos from 18.00. "No way," said Jan, who remembered that I was flying by 20.30 when we arrived at the last one. "Let's get there for 8, because there will be no food until 9 at the earliest. It's way too much drinking time." Sensible lady, our Jan. Anyway, we got there at 8 and everyone was still at the bar. It was a different group to last time. This time it was a 'hunters' group, with many of the faces that I recognised coming from the 'huntin, shootin and fishin' fraternity. It made me wonder whether the village was splitting into 2 camps. The slightly more artistic group, who organised the last event, and this group. I'm not sure what this says about us other than we like a good time and like to support everyone.

I'm not a huge paella fan but I have to say that this one was much better than the last and I enjoyed it more, mainly because it was a much warmer evening (and I didn't end up doing the washing up!). Typically for this group, food was delivered to the table on paper plates and perversely I enjoyed this more. I'd hate it if these events stopped because for me they are an excellent way of socializing and having fun. Unfortunately the fun was directed at the English group last night because France beat England in a friendly in Marseilles and so we had to put up with a lot of banter. Excellent.

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I suspect you think that I am a foul mouthed, uneducated, boorish yob from Yorkshire (yes! - Ed.), not so mes braves, I'm proud to say that I have some very bright old school friends (what's that got to do with you being a yob? - Ed). One of them, TH, who was in my class at primary school, my class at a Jesuit college in Leeds, and who is professor of microbiology at at big university teaching hospital in the UK, popped over with his wife and mother for a barbecue today. Because of his credentials, and conscious of a desire not to be sued, I cooked all the meat to perfection and they managed it back to their hotel with n'er a hint of food poisoning. It was such good fun! We chatted for hours about things surgical and microbiological, that is, until he ran out of things to say and I bored him senseless with all my medical knowledge. Sensing his discomfort, I changed the subject to football, when he appeared to relax.

As the day wore on, so did the wine. By 17.00 there were about 14 people sitting round the table (neighbours kept popping in) and my puny attempt at bringing one bottle of wine to the table at a time was proving useless. One bottle only went halfway round and I became very 'tired and confused' at this dilemma.

Lunch finished at about 18.30.