'The DSM' Editorial - Issue 101 Visitors

As the summer draws to an end, so does the long list of friends and relations who have come to visit. On holiday one has a tendency to eat, drink and make merry, but when hosting, it can become one long summer of over indulgence and the swimming trunks can start to chafe.

Anna becomes a frenetic red coat, leading the activities: croquet, pétanque, badminton. This may sound grander than it is. In reality the croquet pitch is an undulating paddock with molehills, the pétanque ‘pitch’ is our drive and we use a potato for a jack and there is a high chance of standing on a thistle when shuttlecocking.

We have a shortlist of excursions we repeat throughout summer. I have been to the Oriental gardens in Maulévrier four times this summer and am there so much, often get mistaken for a gardener.

When Anna’s sister and family from Australia came to stay we visited La Rochelle for a day and a night. What a wonderful place, the harbour, the history, the shopping, the street entertainers. With sweltering night-time temperatures and a group of hiphop dancers who set up camp right outside our window it wasn’t the best night’s sleep I have had, but c'est la vie! Our breakfast experience was enhanced watching an eccentric Frenchman attempt to cross the channel on his hover board/bathroom scales live on the TV.

So, as the last of our guests depart, bags packed, Panachés drunk, we put the croquet mallets away, the potato jack back in the vegetable rack and we drive to Poitiers-Biard airport for the last time this summer. We have happy memories and some dodgy photos on the ipad to remind us of the summer of 2019.

Now the guests have gone, why not put your feet up and enjoy our September issue.









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