The day before we drove up to St. Malo to catch a ferry. This is a very old and wealthy city in Bretagne (or Brittany...I'm not sure whether to use the French or English for place names anymore).  We met up with an old pal of Eric's from the Stiff days known as "Frenchy" and he took us to a traditional restaurant which I loved - lots of oysters, lamb chops, frites, the simplest green salad and creme caramel.  We ordered a muscadet which I hadn't realized can be a dry white wine, perfect with oysters.  It was fun hearing Frenchy and Eric reminisce, talking about all the various characters and misadventures way back when.

I was fighting off a cold so we called it a night pretty early after driving down to the beach, looking around the walled part of the city and checking out the luxury St. Malo spa -

I can now fantasize about spending a weekend there.  Someday.  If we do enough corporates maybe?

Coming back south with a car full of mince pies courtesy of the corporate party we stopped in a tiny town just outside of Nantes to get some lunch from a boulangerie.  Why oh why can't we have a bakery like this in our village?  Every day featured different breads - Saturday happened to be fig.  We got slices of pizza, absolutely delicious eaten by the side of the road.  Sometimes being in France really does remind me of all these French movies that are embedded in my consciousness, with people (usually some kind of worldly couple) doing a lot of driving, passing trees planted very evenly along the highway.  Eric's Belmondo and I'm, of course, Anna Karina.  Or maybe he's Patrick Dewaere and I'm Miou-Miou, but they've gotten older, settled down a little bit and dumped Gerard Depardieu.lick here to add text.

Doing A Corporate                              Sunday, December 2

Aside from an appearance at a Bloomington quarry's employee picnic (which an eager booking agent had led me to believe was a "rock" festival), my experience with playing corporate events is pretty limited.  So I didn't know what to expect when Eric and I headed up to Jersey (not as in Bruce and Fountains of Wayne but rather one of the UK's Channel Islands, off the coast of France).  I know lots of musicians who do these kind of parties and conferences regularly as they pay and tend to treat musicians well (ie you don't have to pay for your bottle of water). I imagined it would be something to be endured but in fact it was a lot of fun.  These were winesellers, so as David Brent would say, "El vino did flow" and there were a lot of music fans hiding in those business suits.  There were even a few suited stage divers late in the evening.  And we got to enjoy some high street shopping in tax-free Jersey.