The forecast for this weekend is not great. Rain starting early this afternoon and lots of wind and rain overnight and all day tomorrow. Bob unfortunately got quite a bad headache, could be the change in the weather. We’re going to do laundry tomorrow and stay home for dinner so Caroline and I went out to do the grocery shopping before the rains came. We’re making coq au vin tomorrow night so got the chicken from the local butcher, picked up fresh still warm bread from the little bakery, vegetables from a guy on the street with a vegetable truck and the rest of the groceries from the big supermarket.
Our landlady Amanda came over with Rita the roofer to check out what needs to be done to stop the leak into the third floor TV room. Rita must be all of five foot tall. She said she had a tough time breaking into the male dominated business but she did it. Amanda brought us more of the Gavi she left for our arrival. We really like it and were not able to find anywhere. She also brought us two big bags of oranges from her father’s garden which she said has 200 orange trees. Amanda told us her daughter starts university next fall and wants to go the the US or Canada for that. The US is out because of cost but I think they are looking seriously at Canada, including Queens.
Amanda made reservations for us at Old Smugglers again, it’s very small and we figured we weren’t going to get lucky a second time getting a table without reservations on a Saturday night. The rain started mid afternoon along with thunder and lightning and it was really coming down. Caroline and I bundled up and grabbed house umbrellas. Bob stayed home to nurse his headache which was easing slowly. I had my hiking raincoat with a good hood so I was ok on top. You really had to hang on to the edge of the umbrella so the wind didn’t either nab it or turn it inside out. The most amazing thing about our approx 10 minute walk was that as cars went whizzing by, they would slow down so as not to splash us. The roads had huge rivers of water running down, there weren’t any obvious storm sewers that we could see. When we were walking home even the bus passing near our house slowed down!
We were the only people in the restaurant, I’m sure the weather, which really was nasty, kept lots of people home. We left around 8:45pm as a young couple was just coming in. Dinner was excellent again.