Brocante

I wrote last year about the importance to the village associations of the annual brocante. This is the village boot fair, meal and fireworks that happens in Champniers on the second Sunday in August. The expectation is that the weather will be favourable.
This year was a disaster. Despite warm and dry weather last week and hot and dry weather forecast for this week, the Sunday in the middle was forecast as rain all day.
We had hoped that this was a forecast in the Michael Fish tradition but it wasn't and rain it did.
The brocante, about 80 stalls last year had about 10 this year. The stalls themselves, manned by people sitting in steamed up cars and vans were covered over to protect the stock so nobody could see what was for sale anyway ( about as much use as a stripper with their clothes on)
As there were few stalls, although plenty of visitors came, they didn't stay around to drink and eat at the association funding buvette.
At the bar we had a busy day. After being overrun on brocante day last year, we elected to pass the catering over to our caterer partner and she roasted a whole pig in the courtyard and then sold Hog Roast with salads and dessert whilst we sold the drinks to go with it. This had been fairly widely advertised and despite the weather all of the pig was sold between 1pm and 4pm.

After the downpours and thunder of the afternoon, thankfully the weather cleared late in the afternoon and the evening events of moules frites followed by fireworks were able to go ahead. About 200 people ate the moules in the school yard and this at least gave the associations some income so their day wasn't a complete washout.

Again a village of only 350 people put on a superb firework display

We hope next year the weather supports the hard work done by the team and they get their financial rewards.

We had help over the last week from two sons, James and Greg and a friend Craig. Thank you guys for your help, we hope you enjoyed yourselves as well