Blazing heat and a clear blue sky! However improbable that may sound after the chill of yesterday and the weather pattern of the year to date, it wasn't at all unexpected for those of us who had been frantically scanning every forecast available for the slightest hint that a week or two of summer may finally and just possibly be on it's way.
Jacques and Maggie weren't entirely unexpected either, and they arrived right here in the middle of nowhere a little after lunch, right on cue so that we could spend the weekend celebrating Maggie's "coming of age".
Yesterday, after Urs, Doris (they being the keeper's of the lock house) and we discovered where it was that we had met before in the tiny world that is the canal cruising community, (for the curious it was when they were on their barge at Parroy on the Canal de la Marne au Rhin ) we also discovered that in this very exclusive establishment they run, serving ice-cream and toasties by day, by night for groups of at least four people who make sensible prior arrangements, dinner may be served.
The menu? "Well we just cook whatever you want", said Urs in his matter of fact way, and we were informed although we found it difficult to conceive, that he and Jacques gained as much joy from concocting the menu as we did in consuming the finished product .
That in short, is how we came to be sitting in a garden in Burgundy, by the running water of a lock, under a clear evening sky, eating stupendous Italian style food made from fresh local produce prepared by a Swiss couple who have an interest in a vineyard somewhere to the south, with some dear friends, the youngest of whom is now old enough to be issued with a senior's rail pass, and a dog.
I have struggled for a few days to do justice to the evening in writing, but the simplest pleasures in life need no complications!
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