International Celebrations

International Celebrations with musical friends from overseas.

One of the great things about running our self-catering Gites is that we get to meet people from all over the world. It’s even better when those visitors are also friends and musicians.We were delighted when Charlie Pilzer chose to celebrate his “significant” birthday at Gites de La Richardière, with 9 other friends, and we knew we were guaranteed to have a great time. There was a lot of interaction between us all during the week, but the best and most notable part was our musical soirée to which we invited our local musical friends.

People were asked to contribute to a potluck supper and Patience (my wife) barbecued all the meat and fish based contributions, with some help from our guests. It was a fine feast much enjoyed by everyone.

  

The evening continued with music and song provided by the guests. What a variety of genre. Most was from the Folk Tradition – English, Scottish, Irish and American, but there were other genres too with some Beatles songs and a fine rendition of “Non, Je ne regret rien”. A famous Edith Piaff number sung by Cally Cheetham from the Celtiqua/I Don’t Know Bands.Our good friends Jim Craig and Dominique Bourgeois, who perform as the “Old Hat” Band sung some Scottish songs and visitors Annie, Sarah and Dana played the Banjo and sung traditional songs. Dave Henderson also sung a fine rendition of the Gaelic song – ​Siúil a Rúin.

I re-posted some of the visitors’ Facebook postings on my Facebook page, so please take a look.