The name's Catwoman. Dormouse Catwoman.*

Tags: Friends, Village Life, happy things

Date: 30 August 2013 09:02:17

Last Saturday our friends Jean and Clare had a fancy dress party to celebrate the "opening" of their Games Room/Living room extension. They have been renovating a large house since we've known them, and had the main body of the building beautifully completed and ready to live in a few years back. Since then, besides running the Livery Stable business, Jean has been building/ renovting the extension, which now provides a lovely sitting room with beautiful views and a games room with a full-size snooker table.

Here's the house, all decked out with lights. The window of the sitting room is to the right.

So to celebrate, they held a James Bond evening. Their children (14 and 16) were trained as croupiers, by our friend who actually IS a croupier, and there were games of Poker, roulette, black jack and "Battail" to play with pretend money. They had made an astonishing array of cocktails

and lots of delicious food too.

Here are Jean and Clare (Is that a genuine Vernin tartan? I suspect not!) and their children, posing in a very James Bond fashion next to the fridge!

Some people had really gone to town on their costumes,Cathy made her own dress - simply stunning!

Others had made slightly less effort and had just popped on a cocktail frock or DJ (but that's fine...) Here are some of our friends in their outfits

This last photo shows me and Mr D - Mr D is suave in his suit (plus a plate of pizza). me, I look faintly ridiculous, with diamanté cat ears, a bow round my neck, a cat tail and cat make-up. I was wearing several cats slung around my neck. (and my walking stick, which didn't really help with the slinky cat-like-ness I was hoping to convey, but never mind!) So, who was I?

Most of the French people there looked at me in confusion, thinking "Poor woman. She has confused James Bond with another superhero. She has come as Cat Woman". all the English looked at me and said "Oh, of course - Pussy Galore!" The difficulties of translating jokes and double entendres...

Joe is the croupier at the Roulette wheel:

while Alison (who does this for her day job - or rather, her night job, as she works nights!)is dealing for Bataille:

Part way through the evening - about 10.30 - we all trooped out to the end of Jean & Clare's land to watch the Village Fete fireworks. Now that sounds an easy thing to do, but when you've had one or two too many cocktails, and are hampered by a bad back and a stick (or very high heels, depending on who you are) getting to the end of the land, avoiding the deposits made by the horses and the rogue broom bushes, isn't quite that easy!

Because L'Allée is higher than the village we were actually viewing the fireworks from above - which was a bit wierd, TBH. We couldn't hear the stirring music, and I think we lost some of the "thrill". But the natural fireworks of a thunderstorm going on over towards Lyon was very impressive!!

Mr D and I left at about 1.30 just as the dancing started - he, because he doesn't dance, and me because, with my bad back, I was in no state to dance. We had a really great evening!

*(In case you missed the reference, it's from the famous James Bond line "The name's Bond. James Bond")