Dangers of eating in France
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 house in France with lad’. Did you mean ‘with land’ perhaps?
I hope that’s cleared up a couple of problems. Our own problems haven’t gone away yet.
Our problems with the pool (see earlier entry at Euro piscine) are looking like they will involve a few court appearances - should make for some interesting and informative blog entries in due course. Our little tractor just needed 1200 euros of repairs. And the weather is miserable - more like January than May.
Happily we arent the kind of people to let bad weather and poverty get us down. Look on the bright side, as I told Mrs B - no one wants to swim in our wrinkled pool when there’s a force 8 gale blowing and its pouring with rain.
Yesterday the children were off school because the teachers are steadfastly insisting that it should be a bank holiday. The day used to be a bank holiday in France until about three years ago, when the government, rather unpopularly, said the bank holiday was henceforth cancelled and the extra taxes they raised from it would go to help old folk etc.
This idea followed as a consequence of the heatwave year in which many thousands of elderly people died because of the heat. Most people have now grudgingly accepted the fact that it is no longer a bank holiday, but teachers don’t give up so easily. I think new president M. Sarkozy will have his hands full when he starts making some of his proposed changes.
He has had a bit of criticism already, because after the excitement of the Presidential elections he changed his holiday plans. Instead of spending a few days in a quiet monastery retreat in Corsica as planned, he stayed on an enormous yacht owned by one of his very wealthy friends. Tough choice I imagine.
Apparently he could only spare three days away from work before he needed to rush back to Paris - he had an urgent appointment to shake hands with Tony Blair, as I understand it. Now Tony Blair might well be a lovely chap, but I’m not at all sure that I’d cut short a luxury cruise to shake his hand.
I’ve started taking an early look at villas in Corsica because Mrs B says I’m going there on holiday next year. Because of having gites ourselves we need to plan well ahead.
I think the Corsican people must all be very small because the places I’ve looked at so far say, for example ’spacious villa, sleeps 8, 2,000 euros per week (45 square metres)’. Our own little gite sleeps 2 and is 55 square metres so I can only imagine it’s a bit of a squeeze in these ’spacious villas’.
I’m sure if I look hard enough I’ll find something to suit my budget. Probably on an overgrown campsite in the mountains, near the abandoned uranium mine.
I’m off to risk the French food again now, but hopefully I’ll escape unscathed from the experience and write again soon.
