Is this work? Really?

Quick one. As I'm playing hockey at 9am tomorrow (I don't understand in a country so laid back and many unions fighting for many people's rights why hockey is played so early on a sunday morning in France! Maybe it's because the only thing there isn't a trade union for is indeed hockey!) so they'll be a blog about that. Sorry, that was a lot of bracketed speech so you'll have to go back and read it again so it makes sense!

What I really wanted to explain was yesterday. It was Friday, so the normal hardly anyone being at work principal applied, the morning was spent discussing your weekend plans and the afternoon was spent on google maps handy traffic function working out whether the roads out of Paris were busy so you could put the plans you talked about in the morning into action!

But lunch. No normal mooching off to the canteen (actually it's called a restaurant; only in France!) but everyone who was in work appearing in a meeting room for lunch.

It was the day after the third thursday in November. Meaning that 24hrs earlier the Beaujolais wine for 2009 had been released. All 7 varieties of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaujolais_nouveau

Only in France could an entire 90mins of work time be devoted to wine. And apparently, damn good wine as it '...was judged to be one of the finest vintages on record,' by many people around the world. http://www.kyw1060.com/Philadelphia-Area-Toasts-Beaujolais-Nouveau-Day/5718604

So whilst 18 of us polished off all 7 bottles (I had a couple of glasses, Phillippe polished off a bottle to himself) we also gorged ourselves on a mix of salads, patés, rustic French bread and a lovely tarte tatin!

We got back into the office and I was asked whether an English person enjoyed that. 'Bah oui!' I replied 'Only in France,' all the while feeling really genuinely sorry for Olly in Chippenham having a plastic sandwich at his desk! But oh well, he's coming to visit next week so we'll French it up!

OK, that was quite long, sorry! More tomorrow!! :)