posted on 20 April 2008 16:01
by
Christine Phillips
20/04/08 A very good month
As predicted we have been busy and have had a very good month all told. We have had a visit from friends who really enjoyed their long weekend with us and went away, happy to spread the word about how beautiful the Auvergne is. They were followed by a group of tri-athletes from Clermont Ferrand who rented the gite for a weekend to do some cycling and running training. They wisely declined Geoff’s suggestion to do some swimming practice in the lake at Vernet la Verenne mainly due to the fact that it was freezing! It was quite a shock to my system to look out of our bedroom window and see several hunky lycra clad young men flexing various muscles in the garden! Not the usual garden view here! We have also had a nice young French couple in the gite who enjoyed the week they spent here and managed to catch up on a lot of much needed sleep! Chabanol seems to have that effect on many people – it must be the mountain air! Last week some friends of our daughter and their friends were here and again went off relaxed and promising to return. All these visitors have given us a very good start to our main letting season. Also we have had quite a few bookings these last couple of weeks for the B&B which is good news. We even have three days in August where the gite and both B&B rooms are booked. I will be able to put the “complet” sign up for the first time!
The weather remains cold and rainy unfortunately. We have had a bit more snow too and the mountains have still got snow on them. Geoff managed another skiing session before the ski resorts closed which he enjoyed very much again. I have a horrible feeling that he is becoming hooked! Personally I am looking forward to some warmer weather now as I am longing to get out into the garden a bit more.
My new kitchen is finished at last. It is fantastic! I am really enjoying using all the new work surfaces and the new cooker is a dream! The tiling was finally completed this week and it is just so nice to have a bright light space to work in at long last! I love it!
Geoff has had a good month work wise too. He had a very promising meeting with a guy from the Chamber of Commerce last week and hopefully this will help him to find some new clients for his consulting work here in France. He also has a new student for his English lessons. But our big news is the success of the Café Anglais. We are actually “famous” now in Issoire as the local paper ran a full page article about the venture, complete with photos. It is absolutely amazing how many people have read it too. We went shopping as usual in Issoire on Saturday and loads of people in the shops and around the market said they had seen the article! We had quite a few new people at the session on Wednesday too which is what it is all about really and it looks like we have a good chance to make the whole thing a success. We are really enjoying doing it too which helps a lot!
I have been trying to broaden my interests too in the last few weeks. I have always been quite interested in the work of Amnesty International mainly due to our daughter, Hazel’s involvement with them in England. I have helped her by writing letters and cards etc in the past. I had talked to a lady in Issoire once who was manning a stall on the market , which was encouraging people to get involved and although she had been very good in sending me information about the work of the local group I had not really had the courage to go to a meeting. However, I now feel that my French has improved to the point where I can just about cope with something like that so I went to a meeting at the beginning of April. I really was made to feel very welcome and was pleased to find another English lady there who helped me when I got stuck with the translations. It will be a bit difficult to go to all the meetings as they clash with my art classes but I am determined to try and attend whenever I can. I also did my bit this month by writing to the Chinese ambassador and a minister in China – much to the amazement of our post lady when she saw the addresses!
We got very excited last week when some France Telecom vans arrived in Chabanol and they started to put the cables in for ADSL (Broadband). There have been several articles in the news lately saying that all of the “outlying” communities (of which Chabanol is one) in the Puy de Dome should have Broadband by the Autumn but as this has been promised before we were taking it all with a large pinch of salt. However Geoff and Bernard (our neighbour) got talking to the France Telecom guys and it looks like we should definitely have Broadband by the summer. Oh bliss, oh joy! It has been very difficult having to use the dial up system again and even with a booster device we still can’t download big files or photographs. It will be fantastic to be fully back into fast internet connections mode again. Here’s hoping!