Happy New Year from Le Couvent

It's 5.30pm. The skies are clear blue and bright pink, but the light is fading fast on 2007. Tonight we're off to see in 2008 in Alignan du Vent and although neither of us particularly needs another seasonal party we'll have a good time, no doubt. We hope you have a good time, celebrating however you do in your corner of the world. We send you our love and hope you have a happy and healthy 2008. Perhaps we'll see you in Roujan sometime soon.

L'Entrepôt Restaurant

Isn't it just a delight when an unexpected present arrives? This luscious basket of foodstuffs and wine arrived from our lovely friends at restaurant L'Entrepôt in Pezenas. We happily make lots of bookings there for our guests during the summer. Darling Lionel and his team look after everyone with huge grins and endless care. There was no need for a present, but it is a measure of their kindness that they bothered.

Christmas au Couvent

A happy time was had by all, great evening at Erzsi's on Christmas Eve, two geese and Bourdic wines on Christmas Day, before setting off camping at the mazet on Boxing Day.

Ali bought me a fab sleeping bag for Christmas, so what was I to do but agree to sleeping in a 9 square metre hut in the middle of the vineyards in December? After all, seven bedrooms all with their own bathrooms can make one forget the essential things like - will we be warm enough?

So off we trundled with the dogs, soup, breakfast and good books. (Actually the car was filled to the gunwales, but mostly dog-stuff - oh yeah?)

It was magical. I was never less than sweltering thanks to a roaring fire and zillion-tog sleeping bag. The books were excellent and it was wonderful to be away from the phones. But the real corker was waking at 2am when Kit the labrador decided on a comfort break outside. The moon was so bright you could have read outside. Looking back towards the lights of Roujan, Caux and Neffies just made me grin. It's hard to feel anything other than enormous gratitude when you look up at a billion stars.

Next day voices drifting up the hill announced the arrival of Erszi, Heather and Alex who'd come for a walk, some lunch and a bit of pruning. The views were beyond divine.

Oh no, not another painting

Yep, Ali & I bought another painting. We can't afford it, but we've never, ever regretted a rash painting purchase. This time it was one from our old chum Dominique Caby. We have a couple already, but this one is exceptional - not least of all because it is a portrait - something of a departure from the pure abstracts we usually go for. Here's a crummy photo of it - but imagine a good deal more colour and an area of a metre and a half by a metre. It's huge and brash and wonderful and will look superb in our apartment.

To see more of Dominque and his partner Line's work, click the picture below.

Dom Caby & Line Mangin - Paintings

Five dogs and eight people

The great thing about dogs is their enthusiasm. Never having met before, Kit, Flynn, Biba, Jasper and Alfie rendezvous'd near the mazet with Ali & I and six friends. The dogs did a few manic turns around each other then scampered off for a fantastic walk together. They didn't stop for one second of our hour's walk. It was just a joy to see.

Cat nap

Anyone with a cat will know all about this. Gouttierre, the convent cat, wakes me at 5am by sliding her scratchy little toenails down the bedroom door. I'm thinking of buying her slippers.

Hot dog anyone?

The freezing weather's departed, but that doesn't fool the dogs and cat who hog the fire.

I'm hugely relieved to have finished a new website in time for Christmas for our chums over the road - in the biggest and most amazing house in Roujan. La Maison Verte is a centre from which people can run courses. So if you fancy running a gardening, walking or wine-tasting holiday for around 20-odd people, why not give Anne a ring at LMV? There are still a couple of weeks available for next season - and these are just suggestions - you may have a fantastic idea for a completely different course/holiday.

Hey, how about this?

This is at the top of my Christmas wish-list.

Pruning lesson

The sun shone, we lit fires, hot soup fortified us and we had an excellent pruning lesson with Hans & Christa. Are we lucky or what? Above are Ali and Christa cogitating the best route with a less than perfect vine.

When our lesson was over and the profs had departed we stuck around a while and fulfilled our role as Hans' chief tasters. Here are pruners extraordinaire, Ali, Alex and Debbi. Just another 10,960 vines and 25 olives (we found more) to go. Shouldn't take beyond 2010.

Snow? In the Languedoc? Shurly shum mishtake.

With 20 huge old olives to prune, I set off for our bit of land shortly before lunchtime today. A nip in the air and a lifetime of pleasure in real fires had me setting up a heap of burning vine stocks in the fireplace of our little mazet.
Armed with a flask of coffee, a saw and some shiny new secateurs (thanks Mum) I was set to do a few hours work. After giving lots of air and light to two of the olives I noticed the odd flake of something kind of wet. Surely not sleet? It was 17 degrees last week. After a few more minutes the olives looked like this:

Oh crikey, we have another vine-pruning lesson tomorrow, after which lots of people are going to be coming to the mazet for lunch and a bit of work in the vines. At the moment it looks like this and Ali tells me tomorrow's supposed to be worse. Ho hum. I'll let you know how we get on.
Meanwhile, we've had my Mum and her husband, John, here for a fortnight. Thankfully, they are happy to sit around and witness our lives rather than have us chauffeur them all over the place. At one point I brought in a chainsaw and strimmer to mend. It was cold out so I put them on newspaper on the kitchen table. "I'm rather glad you left home" observed my mother.