Let It Bee

I forgot about another final piece of excitement during our stay. Mandy and Brendan decided to empty their beehive, but the honey had crystallised in the combs and wouldn't spin out. So their friends (with many decades of bee-keeping experience) came up with the bright idea of leaving the honey in the metal spinner outside the house (like a big tin bin) to try to melt it. Unfortunately no-one told the bees who thought their home had been moved and bee-sieged (sorry) the house. Hundreds of them gathered around the spinner, and when night fell they surrounded the house instead! Eventually Mandy and Brendan managed to move the spinner back to the hive, but the bees wouldn't bee-have themselves so they had to be smoked away. When the eventually worked out where the proper hive was it was too late - they took their honey back with them so the whole operation had been in vain.

We just made it to Marseille! We only had 10 minutes to change trains at Toulouse, so I had a sinking feeling at Limoges station when the board sad that our first train was running 5 minutes late. On top of the early morning start and the tilting train I felt really quite sick on the first leg. We prepared ourselves to jump straight off the train in Toulouse - we had 6 minutes to find out the right platform, get to it and board our train. Fortunately we made it just before the train and the panic was over!

Last night we had a very dodgy meal and then saw out the evening in a bar with a live blues band. We mostly stayed outside to enjoy as background, but as they came to an end we went in to join in with the shouts as they played Mannish Boy, to generally clap along and be rowdy drunken Brits (well we haven't had a night on the town for a few months!) They closed with Hey Joe which is my favourite Hendrix song and was fantastic. Boy did I have a hangover this morning. Tonight is definitely going to be a sober one...