The start of the week saw us rising late, with me nursing a slightly sore head from yesterday’s party (never put too many Australians near so much red wine). In the morning, storm clouds moved in over Moissac, and while we heard rumbling and cannon shots from the nearby fruit orchard farms, very little rain fell on Moissac.

Rita was playing a gig with Veronique at St Nicolas de la Grave this morning (the same as we did last year), so I took the opportunity to catch up on some websiting. On the way home, Rita went for a swim at the St Nicolas pool.

That evening, the traditional first-Monday Fish’n’Chips evening was held, but this time it was at the Sunbeam Cafe, rather than in the port (because of an isolated complaint from one barge owner about noisy conversation outside his barge in recent months). If he thought the conversation was noisy, he would have just loved the Karaoke that went with the Fish’n’Chips this month, with some of Moissac’s favourite “singers” belting it out till late at night. Strangely, the complainer did not come to the event, but stayed on his barge watching UK TV as per usual.

One of the things I learned during my days teaching Edward de Bono’s Six Hats Thinking was that “every cloud (Black Hat) has a silver lining (Yellow Hat)”. And so it was with Fish’n’Chips at the Sunbeam. The turnout was much larger than normal (over 60 compared to a usual crowd of 20-30), everyone got a chair at a table (which they didn’t have to bring with them), there was an ample supply of drinks from the Sunbeam bar (or you could bring your own), and there was “entertainment” provided by Tony Kelly and his Karaoke machine. All round, a win-win-win-win situation. Will be interesting to see how this works out in future months, if they keep the same format (even if the complainer moves his barge out of the port).

One of the advantages of the new arrangement is that it seems less “cliquish” to outsiders. When it was held in-port, it sometimes seemed like it was a private party, and new arrivals (or local residents) were less likely to join in. But at the Sunbeam, there were quite a few local French residents attending, and later in the evening the crew from catamaran Kouba (that had arrived in port that day) came up and sat at a table. Since Rita was collecting names of those interested in attending the Barge Festival in 2018 (she ended up getting the names of about 60 people and 25 boats), she went over and talked to them and when it started to rain lightly, we all moved inside the Sunbeam and continued the conversation. They had some interesting stories to tell of sailing a catamaran from the Atlantic to the Med, especially their stories of manoeuvring a 5m wide catamaran through a lock that is just a fraction over 5m wide. As they may be coming back this way next year, they showed an interest in the 2018 Barge Festival, and so next morning we swapped business/boat cards before they continued their journey.