Karaoke

Lest you should think our life here consists only of medical urgencies and profound reflections on life, death, and the state of the nation, I should let you know that we do make sure to regularly let our hair down here.

As I am writing this, my voice is still raw and my head still hurting after a raucous night in a popular restaurant (one of the three worthy of the name). We came back at 2.30 this morning. I thought we had left all this behind us long ago, but fortunately not. The name of the game was karaoke. It was tremendous fun, even though the repertoire was overwhelmingly French, silly songs from the fifties onwards, with Johnny Halliday seemingly the hottest thing on offer. I did some singing myself too: Lou Bega, Frank Sinatra, and Born to be alive with a friend. After initial objections A. did not seem too embarrassed ;)

Over the last few months our social life has been getting ever better. A. and I now have a fun crowd of friends, many with small children, partly anglophone in a shared need to escape our francophone surroundings every now and then. We needed some time to settle down, but are now into giving regular dinner parties etc., which is easier here because we have this marvellous advantage of enough domestic help to make it doable. Life out here is like in a village. It can be a bit suffocating sometimes, but it suits us well for the moment and we are enjoying it.