French Life-expat France

Mrs B and the girls have gone for a shopping trip to Barcelona for a few days, so I am here on my own. Shopping is not my thing. So what do I do to amuse myself?

To say the least it is quiet here, three houses in 16 acres of countryside and just me and the cat to disturb the buzzards. So first thing I did yesterday was put some loud music on. The family won’t let me listen to jazz or classical music when they are here so a quick dose of John Coltrane followed by a long morning of Richard Wagner was very welcome while I worked.

Being Sunday it was cycling day. Recently one of my knees has started hurting and making a noisy clicking sound but I’m not sure if it’s from too much cycling or too little, or just the first sign of old-age, so we went anyway.

When my French cycling companion came by he expressed surprised that I didn’t have a mistress stopping over, as he peered into the barn in the hope of seeing an unexpected shadow or movement. Sadly for both of us he was disappointed. He told me knowingly that I should avoid having a mistress from Agen (a larger town an hour to the south of us) because they are much more expensive to amuse than the locals.

I can’t imagine how he knows, or how many mistresses you need to have before you can compare relative expense. I don’t think I’ll try and find out for the moment.

Cycling was good, we passed through a part of the countryside I don’t know very well, and a small village called Monsac that would surely be a most beautiful village in France if they were brought to the attention of the powers that be. I was also shown the only restaurant in the region where you can apparently help yourself to as much foie gras and confit de canard as you can eat, at very reasonable prices.

After all that excitement and a good number of hours on the computer, and after I had confronted the challenge of how to prepare a delicious evening meal for one in less than three minutes, I thought I would watch one of the films on the TV. The choice was Spiderman 2 or one of the later Harry Potter films. Harry Potter interests me even less than Spiderman, so I opted for the latter.

Unfortunately I fell asleep five minutes before it started and woke up in time to see the final credits - cycling does tire me out, as any potential mistress should be aware - so ended up watching the late film instead. This was a charming film called Resident Evil.

Never seen it? Lots of living dead and very little story line, except for the difficulties in killing someone who is already dead. Apparently it is not straightforward. The film was rated as ‘-12′. That is to say, unsuitable for anyone under 12 years old. Now perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but to me it seemed as gory as films that you used to need to be 16 to watch, if not 18. There was no way it was suitable for my younger daughter (aged 12) or Mrs B, although older daughter (aged 14) might have enjoyed it.

I wonder if I’ll pack as much excitement into my second day of solitude?