let's get it started: verchocq

we start this adventure in a gentle way, stopping off to take a few days' sojourn with friends in normandy before striking out on our own. the clan had rented a farmhouse in a town by the name of verchocq, which stood squarely in the middle of nowhere and qualified for the moniker 'town' only because it had a church, a middle school and two pubs, all of which stood within two hundred yards of one another on the same street, the only proper street in the village. the house was huge by anyone's standards, large enough to hold four families (consisting of eight parents and and something along the lines of seven children--i confess i lost count) and a handful of friends (dom, stu and i) happily. most impressively, however, was the fact that it had enough bathrooms to deal with all these people: two on each floor, which essentially meant that the tenant to bathroom ratio was something along the lines of 2.2:1. brilliant.

i will be the first to admit that i went into this leg of the journey with a slight niggling sensation in the back of my head--not only am i generally uncomfortable around children, but as we arrived i was slightly anxious about spending several days with this cast of dom's life. it would seem that, despite the fact that we are now married and therefore stuck with each other come hell or high water, i have a bit of a complex about whether or not his friends like me. never mind the fact that these friends live in norwich, that we rarely see them, that it makes no difference at this point if they actually hate me; it is of the utmost importance to me that we all get along famously.

fortunately for me, my worries were a total waste of time, as the group in verchocq is some of the easiest company i've come across. despite the fact that we were gatecrashing their family holiday, they made us feel right at home. which, quite frankly, we really needed after the whirlwind of activity that surrounded the wedding. we were knackered, and just wanted to relax, drink wine, hang out, mess around with guitars and play ping pong. recharge with some great people while we figured out our next move.

...which you will be hearing plenty about in due course.