Jazz, Moules and Frites

We had a really lovely night out on Saturday going to what I think is a quite typical French "Do" It was held at a small village about 4-5 miles from where we live called Locmaria-Berrien in the local village hall.

For a very reasonable €12 a head we had a glass of Kir ( white wine and cassis ) to start with then followed by a huge amount of Moules (mussels) and frites. There was also a basket of French bread.

We bought a couple of bottles of Rose, again good value at €5 a bottle.

After the main course we had a cheese course of Brie and more French bread and butter. When that was over we had an ice cream for dessert.

However what really made the evening was the Jazz group that played all night from around 7pm to nearly midnight.
They were called the "Ragamuffins" who we have seen before. Here is a short "Youtube" clip that I took to give you an idea.

There was also a solo guitarist who's name I didn't catch who played during the interval that the group had a break. All in all a truly lovely evening, one of which I am sure we will have many more of!

Autumn

I've just had a very rewarding couple of afternoons down in the bit of woodland leading to our stream. There were a couple of large trees, probably Oaks, that had probably fallen down several years ago. You could see where the whole roots had pulled up from the ground but over the years the tree had been covered with a layer of thick moss and Ivy.

So I have been down with my chainsaw and have made a start cutting them into logs, not the easiest of jobs as it is on a fairly steep slope and several times the log that I sawed off rolled into the stream!

I have a very good quality splitting axe thanks to Avril, who insisted I get a good one rather than the cheaper one I was looking at! It has a carbon fibre handle and is very well balanced so made surprisingly quick work in splitting them up.

I now have quite a decent stack put aside for the coming winter for our wood burner which now goes on every night. We are just starting to collect chestnuts of decent size from our trees which cook nicely on top of it in a purpose built "Wok like" pan with holes in it that Steve bought as a present for us with exactly this in mind.