It occurs to me, as our beautiful electrician, Fabien Castan, installs the new door-entry system (with a little help from his Dad) , that it takes quite a gang of us to keep Le Couvent looking swell. Apart from Ali being chief housekeeper, laundrywoman and single-handed maintenance team (with star appearances from Alex, our wildly over-educated part-time chamber maid), I have the occasional dead-heading and web-site updating to do.
Then there's the lovely Pascal & Nadine Vie who cook all the luscious breads and pastries for guests' breakfasts, the hens who lay the breakfast eggs and Christian Andral who supplies the breakfast fruit. (I flatly refuse to buy any supermarket fruit - it's picked under-ripe and never reaches full ripeness, flavour or texture.) Big Frank Perez supplies the saucisson for aperitifs too. And they're all in Roujan.
The fantastic Maintenance Thermique in Beziers keep our boilers running so there's lots of hot water for guests' showers. If ever there's been a breakdown MT have sent an engineer within a couple of hours - they are saints. M. Lafitte coaxes his little oil delivery lorry backwards up our drive and complains that our Banksia rose will scratch his pristine truck, but he arrives in an instant should stocks get low.
Our red and rose wines for aperitifs and guests' bedrooms come from the wonderful Domaine Bourdic and is made with Swiss exactitude and love by the handsome Hans and divine Christa. For luscious white wine Jaques and Francoise Boyer from La Croix Belle supply us with their fantastic No7. When we need good quality quaffing wine in quantity we trundle off to the Cave Co-operative in Neffies.
Our guests need places to dine well and we count on our good friends Didier & Karen at Restaurant Les Goutailles in Neffies, the boys at L'Entre Pots in Pezenas and the team at Les Jardins de la Mer in Bouzigues. We have to thank the ever-welcoming staff at Apres Le Deluge for being open on Monday nights too. We'd like to say the bar in Roujan is as good as last year, but truthfully, since the divine Arielle left it in the hands of a manager, it isn't anywhere near as much fun.
And finally for the moment, I have to thank my lovely builder brother, Justin, for coming to the rescue every time the drains get blocked, something falls off a wall or water comes through the ceiling. Then there's ma belle soeur Michelle who's done everything from mixing concrete to wiping up litres of dropped gazpacho moments before an event - what a star. Where would we be without all these good people keeping Le Couvent in fine form?
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