Seeing Out January

January can often be quite a hard month. Christmas has been and gone. The decorations are down but the days remain short, cold and dark, and we're often carrying the physical manifestations of the overindulging through the holidays. It is, therefore, so important to fill your days with lots of activity to keep the days trucking on quickly towards spring. I spent lots of time training at the pool (delighted they've changed the opening hours so that I can go straight after drop offs), doing french lessons or doing homework for french lessons, meeting up with some of the rugby girls for post swim coffees, getting my hair done and cooking up a storm at home. 

We did have a couple of strange days when President Macron was in town along with leaders of various West African countries for a counter terrorism summit. For days leading up to the event, the city was crawling with secret service and on the actual day itself, access to our house was pretty tricky. From what we could see, however, they pretty much spent three days sitting in vans, eating croissants and drinking coffee.   

Hair: Note the lack of grey compared to the shot above! ^^^

Me, making Sylvie laugh with my hilarious French homework:

Cooking:

Last Saturday, Section played Leicester Tigers in the Challenge Cup. As I was driving out of the stadium, I noticed a small group of people waiting for a bus at the stop just across from Kiabi. I knew there was little chance of actually getting a bus there so pulled over and recommended that they walk down to Auchan, where there were far more buses serving that route. With some space in the car, I also said I could take some of them into town. I ended up dropping a couple off who were absolutely delighted at getting a free lift! Later that day, Iain and I decided to head out for some early evening pints at the Irish bar, and who did we bump into? Yes! The very same couple! We ended up blethering to them for ages and it was just lovely. The power of rugby. And alcohol. 

Iain decided to finally cook the boar leg on Sunday. It was all a bit of an experiment but with a sear on the BBQ followed by hours in the oven on low, it was an experiment that worked well. I made apple sauce to go with it and we had the Titos round to share it with. 

William had to get some bloods done for his allergy. He was very brave and was rewarded with a pan aux chocolate when he came out. 

And finally, we've been doing some preparation for our imminent ski trip. We got ourselves some snow chains and nipped into Decathlon to get William, and me, some extra gear. Bring on the mountains!

Lorna ;-)