Wednesday 14th May
A busy day in the life of Chemin de la Puade with Richard, Andrzej and Fanny plus two potential buyers all turning up at the house, fortunately not at the same time.
I received a text very early on from Fanny saying she had a couple who wanted to see the property at 6 pm. I confirmed this would be OK. One of Andrzej’s workers turned up at 8:30 and started work on the garden.
An hour or so later Andrzej popped in personally and helped out on the garden. I said what I thought needed doing and he agreed. After we had paid Andrzej, Richard and his partner arrived. We were glad to see them because the pool need work including emptying slightly.
After these two had departed we were short of €1,000 which we owed for back services. Maggi and I walked down to U express to buy a few provisions and then returned.
We decided to leave the house before Fanny had arrived with her prospective clients and so we walked down the road to Pia’zzti for a quick drink, in actual fact I had two. When we arrived back at the house we found Fanny still there with the potential buyers. This seemed like a good sign and the couple smiled and said some nice things about the property. We’ll have to see if this turns into an offer.
We closed up the house ad Maggi drove us to Bar-sur-Loup and the Jasmin Restaurant where we had arranged to see Madeleine and Tom. We chatted very easily as we always do and found out that Gissy has closed down the business and will soon be studying law. Another major topic of conversation was Tom’s web site, “An Englishman in Grasse”.
The food at Jasmin disappointed me and so did the co-owner and head waiter Julian. When we all talked about the menu with him he said everything in French. He speaks perfect English and when I asked him to translate he was very perfunctory.
I choose the red mullet with artichoke paste as a starter but found it over acerbic. Vinegar dominated the whole dish. I tried the only vegetarian dish on the menu as my main course. The dish entitled Les Rigates du Printemps consisted of penne pasta with a creamy and sauce with various green spring herbs. The first few mouthfuls tasted interesting but there was no change of texture and I was soon bored with eating exactly the same mouthful with every forkful. Some toasted nuts or pop of unmeshed fresh herbs or something to relieve the endless green mush. I didn’t finish the dish.
Everyone else had a dessert and Tom asked the waiter for a glass of red wine. I don’t even think he noticed how anyone else might interpret this behaviour, because he didn’t ask Maggi, Madeleine or myself if we might like another drink.
