recipe for disaster

Ingredients
4 couples

1 bottle pastis
3 bottles white wine

16 snowshoes

snow to season

1. Mix the first 3 ingredients in a log cabin at the top of a mountain late at night. When the wine and pastis have reduced by half, add more wine and pastis. Bring the mixture to the boil by talking about politics. When the mixture has foamed and subsided, remove the couples from the chalet and reserve the right wing and the left wing supporters separately.

2. Add snowshoes and cover with waterproof wrap. Plunge into a snow storm.

3. After 2 hours return the couples to the cabin and pat dry.

re belote

We didn't do too well at our local concours de belote on Saturday but we did get chatting to Fester, Madame la Mairesse's co-pilot, who told us that the modifications to our planning application are going through.

We faired better on Sunday when we were two games out of two up and only needed 15 points in the third game to qualify for the finals. We'd come from 600 points down and a crowd had gathered to watch la rosbife and her completely unfathomable random playing. Then we were 'capot'ed (when the winning team wins every trick) and it was game over.

We've been invited to go snowshoe-ing on Saturday night and then for dinner in a cabane de chasse (a log cabin used by hunters) up in the mountains - which could be interesting.