Etrangers & Nouveaux Arrivants

It means ‘Foreigners and New Arrivals’ and the local association in Tourrettes Sur Loup  held an evening soireé for them last week.

I have to admit to shunning most of these events in the past. The school ‘spectacle’ where the kids are somewhere on stage for a couple of hours, jostling with their chums to get to the front to see maman and papa, does my head in. The violet festival in the village where flowers are thrown about with wild abandon just makes me sneeze. I gave up the annual school fete after I won the first prize in the tombola two years in a row and started, unwillingly to become something of a local celebrity! The first year I was awarded a DVD player – with no instructions and no remote control! The second year I won a ham. Yup – a whole leg of pig which had been hanging somewhere for a couple of years, just curing. I took it home, but trying to cut wafer thin slices was impossible so I gave it to my French pal.

Fortunately now the kids are at secondary school (it's called college here) we don’t have to attend these 'events' anymore but there are always things happening in the village hall,  my last memory of which was the communal nosh-up following the village violet festival (which just happenes to be next week) when, because of the local French organisation, there was an interminable wait for rather average food, wine which I wouldn’t have washed my car with and an unseemly rush by the Frenchies for the few desserts on offer. After the last one of these I decided that I’d rather stay at home and stick red hot needles in my eyeballs!

But there’s no escaping Facebook. Register with an address of Tourrettes and you suddenly have millions of friends all inviting you to something or other. Normally, the delete button is quickly pressed (that’s a split infinitive !!) and I  move on, but the invite a couple of weeks ago caught my attention. Or rather the venue did.

It was being held in the Auberge (garden pictured), our favourite eating place, although after the bill last weekend, I was promising to give it a miss for a couple of months – I mean £130 for dinner for two in France with food which hardly covers a quarter of the plate and a half a bottle of wine between two, is just a bit much. And they don’t even have a Michelin star! But I have to admit, the Scotsman in me came to the fore. I worked it out. You pay €6 in the Auberge for a glass of wine so a ticket with unlimited buffet food and unlimited wine for €15 was the bargain of the century.

On the way there, J kept asking me why I wanted to go to this specific event and volunteered the information (she knows me) that the food would be very limited and we’d be lucky to get a couple of glasses of wine. Negative vibes or what?

When we arrived, the place was buzzing. About 40 people all milling about, generally not moving too far away from the tables with the wine. We were presented with a white sparkling wine with violet flowers in it upon arrival and then we started socialising. I met Danish, Italian, French, English, Scottish, American and Ukranian people. I met people who had lived in the village for 20 years and we’d never seen them before. I met a top-ten chick-lit writer, a guy who sold vineyards, an accountant to Holywood stars and a truck driver. I felt guilty being retired.

Then the food arrived. Plates of Alsatian Onion Tart and Foie Gras. Plates of cheeses, made just above us by a farmer who specialises in goat’s cheese, the star of which is suffused with herbs. Bowls of Olives and fresh French bread. This was followed by honeyed tart and small, strawberry flavoured cakes. And the wine was absolutely unlimited despite my permanent presence beside the table with the bottles of red!

It was a great night. We met quite a few new people and exchanged phone numbers with a couple of them. Not bad for €15! Well done to Jean-Pierre Augias and his team for organising it.