French Life-expat France

Wey hey woo hoo! Things are looking good! It’s been a week or two of successes here in sunny France, and I am sure you will want to share them with me.

First you have to appreciate that I live a quiet, usually uneventful life and what I might thing is an IMPORTANT EVENT might well seem completely trivial to you. We’re not talking about winning the Euro Loto Millions here. No matter.

First gripping event. This week we had a day with more than 1,000 page views on our sites. Humm, perhaps that doesn’t mean a lot to you. It means that in a 24 hour period, more than 1,000 pages of website were looked at. Since most of our visitors are from Europe, the USA and the occasional drifter from Australia, that 1,000 views was squeezed into about 16 hours, so each and every minute of the day someone thought ‘that looks interesting, I’ll take a look at that site…’

Now we are not talking CNN or Google here, there are lots of sites that get millions of visitors a day, but for me it is a personal achievement. And will, in due course, bring me riches beyond my wildest imagination - also known as shoppers, holiday bookers and advertisers.

If I can sustain our rapid growth, it should only be about 27 years until this is the most successful and popular site on the internet, if my calculations are correct. Want to buy some shares?

(By the way did you visit our France This Way shop yet? Not trying to get you to buy anything, but it’s a new feature from Amazon, where you can add a shopping section to a website - it looks pretty nifty I think, and I make a few pence for each book sold, so if every holidaymaker in the UK buys their travel books there next year I’ll be able to afford a new bike. Failing that, I can maybe take Mrs B out for an expresso in the local village.)

Second gripping event happened this morning. During the last few months I have cycled the same route two or three times a week, a nice 50 km route that I’ve probably already mentioned. Well, I started the year with an average speed on the route of about 24.0 kmh, and with practice and over-exertion managed to get up to 26 kmh. But no further.

For weeks now I’ve been stuck between 26 and 26.5 kmh (if you are not impressed I promise you it is quite a hilly route) but this morning, full of muesli and bananas, I set a new personal record of 27.06 kmh. This to me is more exciting than winning the lottery. I really had thought it was impossible, that I’d reached some kind of ‘personal limit’. But no, so onwards and upwards it is. There’s no stopping me now - Tour de France 2007 here we come.

Speaking of which, my elder daughter was a bit concerned last week, and asked if i was doing anything illegal that I’d like to own up to. Turned out she had seen the ’sport powder’ that Mrs B had got for me from the supermarket. For the record, this is a product you add to water to be drunk during a long ride, so that blood sugar levels don’t fall away, which can cause a so called ‘bonk’, where you suddenly have no energy at all and fall off the bike, causing general humiliation all round.

Anyway, she had heard on the television about all the drug taking in cycling, and put the two things together to conclude I could only ride a bike under the influence of steroids and other banned substances. Well I am pleased to confirm that Intermarche have not started selling Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone tablets, and all is well.

So, a bright and chirpy week here. Hope yours is the same, especially if you are reading this in your office while trying to eat a Pret a Manger sandwich in the six minutes that remain until your next business meeting. Have fun.