posted on 24 March 2008 11:33
by
Christine Phillips
24/03/08 New Experiences
Easter Monday and we have several inches of snow! All the seasons seem to be topsy-turvy at the moment. Last week I was enjoying all the primroses and violets in the garden and watching the birds beginning to look for nesting sites and now the poor birds are so cold and hungry they can hardly wait for me to move away from the feeder before swarming all over it desperate to get at the seeds. We are suffering in the cold too as we trek to and fro between the house and the gite across the snowy garden. However the end kitchen wise is in sight now with just a bit of painting still to be done. The kitchen looks great and I can’t wait to get back in there to start playing with it! All the work went quite smoothly with all the workmen turning up on time and working really quickly. Maurice (the kitchen fitter – or "poseur" as he called it!) was a great character who talked to himself all the time It was really odd working in our bedroom and hearing French naughty words drifting up from downstairs! Geoff chose to lay the laminate flooring himself in the living area of the room and he has also done the tiling on the walls of the kitchen. One small blip there as the shop got the order wrong and instead of supplying two boxes of picture tiles, presented us with two single tiles! So the tiling will not be completely finished for another week when the rest of the tiles are delivered. I am hoping to get all the stuff put back into the room tomorrow and then get the gite back to normal ready for our next guests.
The return of the snowy weather has meant that Geoff was able to go and try out the ski slopes for real. Well when I say “slopes” I mean the beginners enclosure! He was able to use his birthday money to pay for a private lesson with a very bronzed weather beaten looking instructor who taught him how to balance and glide down the gentle slope. He really enjoyed it and after the lesson finished he spent a good hour and a half playing and gradually getting a bit faster. We were quite surprised at how cheap it was – the lesson, ski hire and lift forfait only cost about 60 euros. So all of you who want a cheap skiing holiday take note! There is even enough money left in his birthday kitty for another go this week – but only when he has finished the painting!
The municipal elections have been and gone now and we have a new mayor in St Etienne sur Usson. As I predicted in the last blog post it all got very interesting – and a bit nasty too. We had a corbeau (anonymous letter writer) in the village who sent out nasty letters to some of the candidates and their supporters. We didn’t see (or receive) any of these letters but they upset a lot of people. In the end the election resulted in 5 members of one list and 6 of the other list being elected as the conseil. We found it incredible that in a commune with a population of about 200,there were 22 people willing to stand in the first place,90% of the population voted (including us), and roughly 50-60 people turned up on each of the two Sunday evenings to watch the count! Would that happen for local elections in the UK? I think not!
We have always known that the gite and B&B alone would not provide a living for us both and to that end Geoff always has intended to work here. He still has some clients with his business consultancy work, and he has been steadily building up the English teaching side of his business. We have also now decided to take the English teaching in a new direction as we have met a lot of French people here who seem to want to improve their spoken English but who don’t have the time or the inclination to take a formal course. So we had the idea of offering people the chance to come to a café in Issoire and to practice and improve their spoken English with our help over a cup of coffee. At the beginning of March we launched the Café Anglais Issoire and it is beginning to take off! As with all things here it often takes “word of mouth” to get messages across and each Wednesday we seem to be getting another one or two people turning up. It is actually good fun and I am enjoying the opportunity to do a bit of teaching again! (I never thought I’d say that for a long time!) The idea of holding the sessions in a café means that the atmosphere is relaxed and so far all the people who have come are willing to try and speak so all is going quite well. We are hoping that if it really takes off we might try the idea in other places – but it is early days yet!
April is going to be a busy time for us, what with the Café Anglais plus the real start of visitors in the gite and B&B. We have three weeks of bookings. I’m not complaining mind you – the more the merrier!