Surprise Party.

One of the reasons for Janneke and Barclay's visit to Ariege was to organise a surprise party to celebrate Martins' 60th birthday which was in June. Janneke had e mailed me a few months ago to tell me all about it. The plan was that they would be at Landry for 10 days and that many friends and relatives from Holland would arrive for the weekend of the 8th August, the date the party was to be held. When we saw Martin and Mieke, at Corry's party, we said that we would be back on the 8th to see Janneke and Barclay making, of course, no mention of the party. When Janneke and Barclay visited us,during the precious week, they said that there were between 40 and 50 guests arriving from Holland on the 7th, many would be in caravans or bringing tents and some would be in B and B accomodation.
We went over to Ariege on the Thursday and once again we were able to base ourselves at Caoutelle. Jez and family were there along with a friend of Cissies and we had a pleasant evening with them, dinner on the patio which terminated with an amazing display of thunder and lightening. Jez and the children left next morning, Caroline wasn't leaving until the next day.
We went over to Landry in the afternoon and met, on the road to there, Martin and some of the guests who werre going into Pamiers. When we got to Landry Mieke still hadn't realised what was happening. Janneke had gone shopping and there were a couple of caravans there and about 10 people including one of Miekes sisters. At this point all Mieke knew was that they had all decided to call in after a holiday in Spain. I asked if she was expecting anyone else and she said "no thirteen is enough, already". Little did she know. After sitting and chatting for a while Janneke returned and we had a brief chat with her before saying our farewells.
The plan was to have the party at Landry and they had made arrangements, with the mayor of St Michel, to borrow the chairs and tables from the village hall. The mayor said that if the weather was wet they could use the village hall. The weather looked unsettled but when we arrived, at about 4pm on Saturday, they had taken the bull my the horns and decided to have it at Landry. There were a lot of people there!!! Apparently, when Martin got back from Pamiers on Friday afternoon, after we had left, Anna their other daughter was there. He immediatly thought that there had been a disaster as she wasn't supposed to be there! Janneke said that it was soon after we had left and other people started to arrive that they had told her parents what was afoot!
It seemed that they had all celebrated well into the early hours of Saturday morning before starting again after lunch. The beer and wine were flowing and Janneke and Anna, along with quite a few of the ladies, were busy in the kitchen. The Dutch are like the French with everyone shaking hands and introducing themselves to us. A pleasant custom but no way were we going to remember all those strange sounding Dutch names. The only one whose name I remembered was the husband of one of the Dutch ladies introduced himself to me as Rafael from Barcelona! So the afternoon slipped pleasantly away and soon the barbecue was alight and Barclay and some helpers were cooking the meat. The ladies emerged from the house with dishes of salad, couscous, pasta, tomatoes, rice and tortillas. A few local people arrived to swell the numbers and the evening drifted on. We finally said our goodbyes. Martin was very emotional, so overcome by the fact that so many people had made such a trip to come to his party.