Deck the halls

Today I had an invitation to lunch which was rather splendid, so I skipped breakfast and got on with some writing. Mid-morning I cadged a lift to the laundrette and emptied two bags of assorted items into washing machines. That’s all you have to do – you turn up a few hours later and it’s all dry and neatly folded away. What a fantastic service.

Lunch was at a local restaurant. We had to walk around the block a couple of times before they had a table available for us. I went for the menu de jour, which consisted of a tureen of watercress soup, followed by a visit to a sumptuous salad buffet, then choucroute au garnie (I think I’ve probably misspelled that) which was a huge pile of white cabbage with two types of pork sausage, a pork chop and a hunk of what tasted like gammon. It was huge and I couldn’t do it justice. A vast ice cream and pear dessert with lashings of chocolate sauce finished me off – I could hardly move – to say nothing of the pastis, Bergerac white wine and champagne. I was taken out on a stretcher.

More writing during the afternoon, and then this evening I gave a hand where I could, putting up the decorations at L’Enfance de Lard. The banister on the staircase was festooned with a garland of pine, twinkly lights, apples and clove-studded oranges, dried oranges and grapefruit slices, bundles of cinnamon sticks and dried fennel, and terracotta pots filled with moss. The same treatment was given to the mantelpiece. André had made miniature trees out of chestnuts, walnuts, bay leaves, moss and cloves for the tables and in the window boxes were planted with miniature fir trees. I took some of the leftover decorations back home with me. On the way, I passed a drunken group of English tourists who looked at me curiously as I hurried along nonchalantly swinging a basket full of golden cherubs.