Our first French house guests.

A hasty post today. We have our first real live French guests coming to the house for lunch which entails much preparation and requires a trip into the local market town to track down some chervil for 'the fonts' recipe.

Yesterday saw a trip to Toulouse to see the Christmas decorations. The two boyz were left alone to guard the house and catch up with their desperately needed sleep.

In the sonorous romanesque cathedral in the heart of the city a charming scene in one of the side chapels by the high altar. A young priest in red and gold conducting a baptism, the family clustered all around, four generations looking on somewhat self-conciously. Just as the priest moved to the font with the child in his arms the sun burst through the clouds, illuminating the twelfth century stained glass and flooding the scene with the sort of living , full-spectrum light you usually associate with those Merchant-Ivory films set in Edwardian England. At that moment the formality disolved. The stern medal bedecked great-grandfather beamed,the grandfather laughed, the father sighed, and the young one gurgled. A very European scene that could have been enacted in the same spot for fifty or sixty generations and a reminder to us all that whatever the challenges ahead life goes on.