Chers Amis
Welcome all to our
first edition of La Mouette for 2109. I hope that you have all survived the
droughts, bush fires, heat waves, hail storms and all of the other events we
have been subject to over the last few months. I for one look forward to the
passing of the peak of the summer season and the coming of that most beautiful and
calm time of year, autumn. Last year we celebrated our 30th anniversary and
enjoyed a full calendar of events.
In 2019 we won’t be celebrating
any particular anniversaries but we will be nonetheless looking forward to an
action-packed program of Alliance activities including our regular petanque
games which have already begun, our Annual Welcome Party which will be held on
Saturday, 9 February (details later in this edition), a cabaret featuring
Eliane Morel at Oaklands at the end of March, dinners, wine tastings, cooking
classes, film nights and lots more.
This year we have
overnight billeting arrangements in place for those who live out of town and
want to attend any of our evening functions but are reluctant to drive home at
night. Please let me know if you want to attend an evening function and need
this assistance.
It was with great
anticipation of a brilliant success that I attended pétanque last Friday as I
was accompanied by my secret weapon, Foucault Delesalle, a Rotary exchange
student who will be staying with me during the next two months. Foucault is
from Lille and is enrolled in year 12 at Eden Marine High School but will
return home to France at the end of June this year. He is apparently a gifted
football (soccer) player and all-round sportsman but Clive dashed my ambition
of achieving immortality in pétanque by allocating Foucault to someone else’s
team! The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, as they say in Lille!
I look forward to
seeing you all again and celebrating our love of things French in 2019.
Amicalement
Rob McCombie