Cheltenham Festival

Excitement reigns chez us, as this week sees the return of the annual Cheltenham Festival.  Although the town has a reputation in some quarters for stuffiness and snobbery, it does, at least for three (and now, I think, for four) days a year, let

Mardi Gras!!

Possibly doing a bit of househunting this week.  Seems utterly masochistic as we’ve only been in the present house a month and a bit, and I hate moving (does anyone actually enjoy it?), but we’ve been thinking…..   We’re not going to need

Life as an Eminent(?) Immigrant

Well - where to start?   Firstly, apologies for the blog absence of late - purely down to being very busy.  We’ve moved, and I’ve been waiting for my Freebox, and I’ve been bashing things in, and stuff….   We’ve been at our new house

Yule (b)Log

An exciting week: our B&B website has finally gone live, we’ve been Christmas shopping, and I’ve added yet more documentation to my burgeoning carte grise dossier.   Having received encouragement from our IT consultant up in Normandy, we decided

A French Conversation

Big storm last night, couldn’t sleep, got me thinking about a chat I had yesterday with a real live Frenchman.   I was out taking my daily constitutional, and he emerged from a waterlogged field, wearing regulation bleus de travail and wellies,

Living France

Hello again, mes amies!   Well we’ve been here for a month or so now (I don’t know exactly how long it’s been because I’ve gone all vague and non-Anglo Saxon with regard to timekeeping since a) settling south of La Manche, and b) not working in

On The Road - Chapter 3

It was at this point that serendipity stepped in.  We arrived at lunchtime, and in idling round the now familiar streets of what we both agreed was a town far prettier than its description in various esteemed publications suggests, we happened upon

On The Road - Chapter 2

Next day, after another surprisingly luxurious night’s sleep in the back of the car (we were blessed all week with balmy weather, night and day), we started work on the househunting, departing the campsite, parking in town and searching out ‘AriegeImmo’

On The Road - Chapter 1

Jack Kerouac eat your heart out.   We’ve been back in the Vendee for a few weeks now after our househunting trip down in the mountains, but I haven’t been able to post this blog entry as soon as intended as we’ve been waiting for the broadband

We're off!

OK, this is it.  We're off to Portsmouth via North Hampshire (tonight) and then somewhere in Surrey on Saturday (don't really know whether Ashtead is north, south, east or west of that county but it's Squidgy's family leaving do so the

Unlucky 13

Well, you asked for it, you've got it - more blog. Having just looked at the calendar, today's date, the 18th September 2006 seems very, very close indeed to the 1st October 2006, the date on which our ferry leaves the white cliffs of, er, Portsmouth,

English Food Box

Goodness me these blog entries are getting to be almost weekly!  Hope the quantity isn't diminishing the undoubted quality too much (haha)!  This week, the aforementioned English Food Box was bought.  This is what it comprises so far (with

Cosmo's guide to the French language

I've been working my way through back issues of French Cosmopolitan magazine this week, in an effort to improve my language skills.  I don't know if you've noticed, but in many of the petrol station shops off the autoroutes they sell packs of three

Phew what a SCORCHER!!!

Well, the heat is stifling, the streams running off the hills around my house have become muddy trickles, siestas are getting more drawn out and my longing for warmth when shivering in the Vendée in March seems like part of a perverse previous existence

Reality Check

This week, I've fallen back down to Earth with a bump.  This week, all thoughts of swooping swallows, rolling hills and Derek the buzzard have been consigned, albeit temporarily, to the dustbin of 'Escape To The Sun' whimsy.  This week, I've