Sunday, June 26, 2005

Living in a twilight world

One obvious joy of living in the south of France is the sunshine and attendant heat. However, in order to keep your house cool, it's necessary to keep all the windows and doors shut and the blinds down, between the hours of sunrise and sunset. So there comes a trade-off, how cool do you want to be, versus how much do you want to see? Human nature wants both, but something has to give. I usually set off with the best of intentions and keep the windows shut and blinds down, but slowly during the day the urge to stop bumping into furniture and 'let the sunshine in' takes over, and so hot it is. Air conditioning has to be considered, but our main room is well over 60 sm and with a double height ceiling it would take the exhaust from a jumbo jet to power the refrigeration unit.

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Today we host a joint birthday party for about 50 French friends. We erect a marquee to keep the sun off, dig out our reserves of knives and forks, spread out a sumptuous buffet prepared by our favourite chef and pour the wine. Based upon our feedback, a very good time was had by all.
Our thanks to Cara, and Ben and Paula, who assisted over and above the call of duty.

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