Do you ever get one of those days that just makes you feel all glowy?

My dear friend C who I'(ve known since the seventies when we were working together in Scotland phoned to tell me she was coming out to France for a week with some friends and could they all come for the day? She's such a good friend that that was fine although it's a long time since I've catered for eight people and the place isn't really straight (few more years before that really hapoens).

Anyway in honour of the occasion I felt I really ought to do a French meal and my French friend who is an excellent cook was coming too. He is convinced that I can't cook and has a pathological dislike of what he calls le pudding. Keeping him out of the kitchen was impossible while I was trying to prepare so the pumpkin flan never got made. Fortunately I'd already made a chocolate chestnut pavé. I finally managed to get him out of the kitchen by asking him to go and buy some bread.

The sun shone, my friends arrived and we sat down to -

consommé

paté de foie gras

saucisse de porc

rouget et coquilles St Jacques

salade

pommes de terre garnis de fromage de chevre

dinde

fromage ( the best of which was like a fine wine being three years old)

chocolate chestnut pudding

café

Don't ask me to cook that lot every day, however everyone enjoyed it and my French friend even had seconds of  'le pudding' and admitted that he didn't realise I could do something like that.After azll the insults I've had that felt good. My Scottish guests were saying they wouldn't want to eat again today but of course the French don't eat until  nineish in the evening an they don't snack or drink cuppas at all between meals.

Having got through a monstrous amount of washing up I went to an evening meeting called by the mayor in the village to discuss plans for Christmas. One good thing about this new mayor is that he really is trying hard to get everybody in the village participating.

There were many familiar smiley faces, the pharmacist's wife, the mini supermarket owner, the baker's assistant, the café and auberge owners, not to mention one or two very tired children who screamed for a lot of the time. It was very French. We agreed the colours for the Christmas decorations in record time, then we got down to the nitty gritty. How big should the Christmas trees be and how would we make the bows? Would the local electro-menagère provide polystyrene packaging which people could use to make decorations. Everyone spoke at once. Everything was repeated whenever anyone came in late. And the lady who was wanting us all to do decorations in polystyrene and had the loudest voice held the floor for most of the time, so those of us who came with ideas of having torchlight processions, carol singing or similar didn't get to first base. The passion was reserved for the polystyrene and the bows and, do you know, there was something very special and glowy about seeing villagers of all ages coming together and being passionately involved and I loved the warmth and feeling included in that. I'm used to having organised business meetings with a capital B but I couldn't help thinking we'd lost something precious when compare with this simple village meeting. God bless them all.