Posts Tagged ‘cats’
A Swiss Christmas
Our first Christmas in Basel was a success. We spent the day at home with Aude’s parents (not that there was much choice – pretty much everything shuts on Christmas Eve and stays shut for the next three days). I’d stocked up on firewood, and we had a fire in the fireplace most of the day.
Aude and her parents went out for an early-afternoon walk in the countryside, leaving me at home to get started with the Christmas dinner. I opted for a traditional German / Swiss Christmas dinner of roast goose, stuffing, spaetzle, and red cabbage. In the end, I had to make a small concession to our Swiss kitchen: my oven is too small to take an entire goose, so I roasted two goose crowns and two goose legs. In the end, it was a better compromise as there was plenty of meat to go around. The last time I cooked a whole goose, I ended up with about three slivers of goose meat per person and an enormous pile of bones. I was certain that wasn’t going to happen again this year.
It’s a dog’s life…
Actually, it’s a cat’s life. Sometimes I wish my life was as simple as curling up on the bed and snoozing in the sunshine. Which is exactly what I did yesterday afternoon.
I used my last day at work as an excuse for leaving at lunchtime. I came home to find the cats curled up on the freshly-made bed, totally relaxed in the afternoon sunshine, and I couldn’t resist crawling into the bed myself and having a little afternoon snooze.
I won’t lie. It was bliss!
The cat-sitter
Day five of the vacation, and time for me to head back home. Owing to the unexplained disappearance of our gardien, we found ourselves with no one to look after the cats while we were away. Rather than the more orthodox approach of asking a neighbour to look after them (all the neighbours seemed to be away on vacation as well), I flew my father in for the week from Paris.
For him, it was a chance to explore a city he hadn’t visited in nearly twenty years. I cut my trip to the south of France a few days short and came back to spend some time with him.
The only downside? My cats seem to hate him.













Day 3 of our vacation in the south of France. We put Jerome in charge of cocktails, and I was put in charge of the barbeque. Aude’s father was put in charge of killing the bees, and Aude’s mother was in charge of the couscous. Aude volunteered to be in charge of sitting by the pool.













Jerome’s visit to Paris
Jerome came to spend a weekend with us in Paris recently. We managed to grab a few snaps. I particularly like how Daisy and Calypso managed to work their way into one of the shots.








