1. Had ten steres (cubic metres) of wood delivered this morning, ready chopped and ready split for use in the wood-burning stove this year. We are now ready for a Siberian winter, without being held hostage to oil prices.
Of course my opinion of a Siberian winter might be different to others - someone who stayed in [...]
Let’s try and keep our spirits up. Petrol prices mean that everyone needs to stay at home, petrol shortages mean that we can’t go anywhere anyway…and I’ve hired a car starting this evening so I can go and do research on the Nimes region.
So either I won’t be able to set off, or I’ll set [...]
I wake up early in the morning - usually between 5am and 6am, and long before anybody else. No idea why, I’ve been the same since I was young. But it does leave me with a challenge. What should someone do for two-three quiet hours every morning?
Typically I drink too much coffee, answer lots [...]
It’s only about two weeks until we open our doors to the first of this years visitors (we are ‘closed’ October to April) so we are busy making sure everything is looking good in the house and garden.
This becomes less of a chore each year, but there are always things to do in a house [...]
Our house is on a small hill, overlooking our field below, down to the road about 150 metres away at the bottom of the field. It is a quiet road - a few cars, an occasional tractor, a school bus and so on. Very tranquil.
This morning, in a terrible stroke of bad luck, a car [...]
We went, we saw, we came back glad we don’t live there.
The last couple of days of our UK visit were spent in Glasgow, in the worst possible weather - cold, snow, sleet and wind. Pretty much the reason why we left Edinburgh many years ago. Edinburgh has the redeeming feature of being very beautiful, [...]
In 1978, in London, a Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was murdered by a poison dart containing ricin fired from the tip of an umbrella. I thought that would be the last time we’d hear about dangerous umbrellas.
Harrogate shopping centre, 30 years later, and a big sign UMBRELLAS ARE DANGEROUS! Free plastic bags were provided [...]
Valentine’s day came along yesterday and, what can I say, I didn’t receive any anonymous cards in the post from secret admirers. Same old story for the last 30 years but I still live in hope.
Mrs B and the girls didn’t receive any either, or none that they chose to admit to, so we all [...]
I have failed miserably to keep my New Years resolution to write more regularly, oops. This is partly because one of my winter time duties each year is to return the gites to their former glory in readiness for the next season - replace dripping washers, mend toilet seats and shower heads, repaint where necessary [...]
This blog has somehow managed to stagger through 2007, as I lurched from writer’s block to laziness, and is now ready and eager to welcome in 2008. So prepare yourselves for another year of useful information disguised as trivia. Or perhaps it is trivia disguised as useful information, I forget.
This is about the time that [...]
I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently while I modernised the france this way site - I was feeling guilty that it looked a bit 1990’s, and should be more ‘interactive’ with visitors.
While I’m OK on the technical stuff I’m completely rubbish on design, so it’s taken me two years to come [...]
Well I’ve had my four days all alone and tomorrow I drive to Toulouse and get the rest of the family. They will be looking forward to seeing me, I’m sure.
At least I know they are alive and spending - I had a ten second phonecall this afternoon to check up on me. Not very [...]
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 [...]
Yesterday was a typical day for us here in the (now) sunny south-west of France so I thought I’d share it’s pleasures.
First Mrs B and eldest daughter went off to a backstreet tattooist to get their belly buttons pierced. Can’t say I’d fancy it myself, and apparently it wasn’t much fun, but that’s the price [...]
First, for the person who found this blog yesterday having queried on ‘the disadvantages of eating in France’ let me assure you that the ‘disadvantages of NOT eating in France’ are significantly greater. They include, among others, vitamin deficiencies, malnutrition and slow and painful death.
And for the person who queried in google on ‘cheapest [...]
