Jim & Happy : Day 4 at Larocal, Sainte Sabine Born

Arriving right on dinnertime Tuesday night Melinda made a yummy scallop stir-fry.

Wednesday morning she showed us the closest village for food shopping and the bank, Beaumont 8km. On the way home she shouted us lunch at a local restaurant in Sainte Sabine Born, just down the road, literally. I had grilled goats’ cheese salad, yummy and Jim had veal with pasta – he said it was tasty. Most of the restaurants in France offer three or five course lunches, aimed at the tradesmen. Here in Sainte Sabine the five course is 11 Euros ($16.50) what a bargain & especially when it includes a half carafe of wine. Now you know what they do with their two hour break in the middle of the day.

Thursday midday we drove Melinda to Bergerac airport, a 20-minute drive. She is off to London. Then we went onto the Bergerac train station to buy our tickets for Eze. We will return to Bergerac next Saturday to go to the market. Melinda says the Saturday market is very French, a bit difficult for us to buy things but good for new sights. It looks like a beautiful town.

Melinda is an interesting person just like all the house sit owners have been. The below link is an interview with her.

http://www.gil-sa.org/castile-soap/melinda-coss/

We didn’t know anything about her till we arrived. Her name on the house sitters website is soap queen. I assumed she might have a soap making business because she did tell me she was returning to London for this period for work. Soap making – what an understatement. You must read the interview.

She is currently working on an online handmade clothing website – made from African fabrics. The clothing is aimed at women like her, middle age that find buying clothes to fit difficult especially here in France where the typical women’s shape is shapelier shall we say (Melinda’s words). Also on the go is an online handmade jewellery website – made from Bakelite & antique trinkets. She is very enthusiastic and says she gets lost for hours in a day on the Internet working on her projects.

Lola & Fizz are lovely if you ignore the upset tummy in the house we had to deal with on our second day and being woken up at 2am this morning with them barking at a mouse they were trying to catch. Yes, you read correctly mouse. Melinda did warn us mice get into the house. It is an old farmhouse that she rebuilt 9 years ago and fields of crops surround it. I know it is still takes a bit of getting used to. Jim was great he went down to them four times (our room is upstairs) they sleep on the lounge, say no more. The scene was the equivalent of girls squealing and standing on a chair when they see a mouse – big babies!

This morning we drove the Polo (our car) to Rob’s neighbour, an hour away. Rob of Karen & Rob of the Surrey housesit. Rob bought the car from us. It was good timing as our insurance was due to expire tomorrow and Jim was over driving long distances and Melinda offered us the use of her car. It was a sad moment. The car did us proud. We purchased it on July 4^th and did 10,000kms. Amazing!