I have been struggling to find the time to get the blog up to date recently. It is our quiet season too – I don’t know where the time goes but it seems to fly by. My kids will say that it is because I have been spending too much time playing with my new toy – Facebook – but I deny that allegation!
Anyway, back to reality. We really enjoyed our holiday – cruising around the Greek Islands. We have spent many years saying that we would never do a cruise but we needed to take a holiday well out of our busy season and this option gave us an easy to arrange break with the chance of some warmish weather without breaking the bank to do it. It is all down to our hairdresser here who waxed lyrical about the joys of cruising in November (much to Geoff’s horror initially!). I have to confess that in spite of all our scepticism we had a great time and really enjoyed the contrast to our lives here in the heart of the French countryside. It was also nice to wear some of the “posh” clothes again. They usually languish at the back of my wardrobe now.
We returned to the shock of some freezing cold weather –there we were, walking around Rhodes town in T shirts and two days later we were at -3C here on the hill. Then to add to our woes we had a storm with winds of 100k/h which took down a power line leaving us with no electricity for over 24 hours. Let me tell you candle light is all very well and romantic but it was not very easy to see to cook by! We managed to keep warm virtue of our wood burning stove but I hated not having much light. Geoff of course went off to a meeting in Claremont on the first evening, leaving me sitting like the little match girl trying to think of something to do! I went to bed and read my book by torchlight!
We have been taking part in some more of the life in our village. The annual Fete de Cidre took place a few weeks ago and Geoff once again completed the shorter of the two walks arranged by the Fete committee. It is a lovely walk (apparently – no chance of me doing it- its 10k long!) and the weather was fantastic on the day, which meant that the views were terrific. We enjoyed the lunch in the Salle de Fetes where we were “entertained” by my friend Angele`s boys doing Star wars impressions! Light Sabres have made it, even to rural France!!
On a slightly sadder note, we have also attended our first funeral here. My “language improver” friend Yvette’s daughter sadly died after a long battle with cancer and we, along with most of the village, crowded into the little church at St Etienne sur Usson for her funeral. Angele kept us right re the protocol as there were some differences between the way funerals are conducted here and we really didn’t want to do anything wrong. Yvette has been very affected by Dominique’s death so I haven’t really seen very much of her since then. However she is going to come to the art class with me next week so I hope she is feeling a bit better.
The other village “happening” also involves Yvette’s family. Her daughter Isabelle and her husband Jean-Pierre have restored an old bread oven which is attached to their house. They have started to light it now and then, and they invite people to take something to cook in it when they do. We are going there on Saturday – but we are not entirely sure what to take! Geoff is determined to try and make some bread – but as he has never done this before I say “watch this space” for how it turns out!!
We have been quite busy since we got back from holiday trying to get all our marketing for the gite and B&B sorted for next year. We have changed some of the website and have spread our wings a little by getting on to more and different advertising sites. I think it is starting to pay off already as we have had quite a few enquiries for Christmas - including one guy who wanted to accommodate 18 people in the gite for a week! We said no – there are only 9 beds maximum and 1 shower and loo! As we intend to go to the UK for Christmas too it has given us a bit of a dilemma as to whether we want to let the gite while we are not here. It is good to know, though, that our advertising seems to be working.
Last week the kids came to stay for a few days. It was really great to be all together again as it gets more and more difficult due to distance and their busy lives. It gave us the chance to take them to some of the places we have discovered since they were here last time. They were particularly keen to see the route which the Tour de France will be taking next year which includes a couple of stages near here. They have already booked their beds for that – but were warned that if we had paying guests they would have to sleep in the attic! We also tried out the bowling alley in Issoire which was good fun and gave us something else to recommend to our guests. It is very quiet here now that they have gone back – but it won’t be long until Christmas will it?