Brother in law Tudor has just phoned to say he is enjoying " the chateau" stories but what about our apero incident. So just for Tudor ( he is the one whose trousers fell down in the airport) I will tell you the story.
We had just arrived here in December and my sister and Tudor came in January on a Christmas present flight that cost me 8 pounds each with Ryanair (those were the days) Sadly my sister was at this time not well having breast cancer, so every minute of that holiday was precious for us all. I had been to the chateau next door and had a conversation which included talking about apero evenings. I came back to tell the family that night I thought, no I was sure we had been invited for aperos at 6pm. I said how difficult it was with "0" level French from years ago to understand. We were all a bit excited and my sister and I discussed what we would wear to go to the chateau. It was our first invitation out into French society life.
At 6 pm we arrived at the impressive doors in our best outfits and went into the courtyard, up the steps and knocked on the door. Madame Guiral had her daughter from Paris staying with her and they both appeared from the garden still in their gardening clothes with gardening gloves on.
They invited us into the large salon and sat and talked to us for awhile, they kept disappearing off into another room and we kept whispering amongst ourselves, when were the aperos coming. After about an hour and after the couples disappearance again I whispered, " when they come back let's get up and leave" which we did, saying effusive goodbyes, and then getting back home as quickly as we could.
We were in fits of laughter realising I had made a mistake and our aperos at the chateau was all an error.
Weeks later when we became friends with the son Bertrand, we told him about the evening and he laughingly said he knew about it from his sister. They had nothing prepared and kept going off saying " what are we going to do with them"
We have all laughed about it ever since and it is a happy memory we all shared with Yvonne my sister, who sadly died later that year.
Comments to taglines82@gmail.com
