Last week a couple of my French cycling buddies stopped by to entice me out on an ‘arduous’ ride through the countryside. Their rides are always entertaining even if the main focus isn’t always on hard exercise, so off I went.
The ride had its usual little diversions to take attention away from our aching legs, including a scenic tour of a medieval village called Eymet and a little detour through the Sunday market in a village called Issigeac.
Preview: iplayer app
No I haven’t forgotten that we only talked about iPlayer in France a couple of months ago – even my aging memory can remember that far back.
But dreams can become reality and you can now watch everything from Doctor Who to Absolutely Fabulous in your own little corner of France – and many other countries in western Europe*.
I just received a press release about the ‘iplayer coming to France’ and since lots of people are interested I’m pleased to pass on the details (quotes from the press release are in italics).
I’m much too busy watching the Tour de France to know much else that’s happening in the world so instead I’ll issue a plea for help while everyone is in a holiday mood.
Although me and Mrs B spend as much time travelling around France enjoying ourselves and calling it work as possible it is taking a while to visit all 36000 communes in France ourselves, so we are always looking for input from other travellers and tourists, visitors and vagrants, expats and layabouts with nothing better to do.
Because I’m a bit concerned that M Sarkozy might lose next year’s presidential elections I consider it my personal challenge to help France select a replacement with more ‘street appeal’.
Bacs and brevets are over and it’s fun time for the children so daughter two is heading to England for a week of fun with a couple of Dutch friends.
I’m not sure what Mrs B said to her brother and family to convince them to put up with a group of teenage girls but they obviously don’t know what they are letting themselves in for…but meanwhile a litle bureaucratic problem has cropped up which is complicating things.
July is upon us and it’s nearly time to start packing for the car for your annual fortnight in the sun (I’m assuming you are coming to France!) so our friends at Buggs Car Hire suggested we think about what people should bring with them to be sure their trip isn’t a complete disaster.
If you are flying to France with Ryanair you don’t have much choice what to bring, since even a can opener and a jar of marmite will take you far over the allowed weight limit, but if you are travelling by car you have some tough decisions to make about what you should try and squeeze in.
When I was a young lad I saved up long and hard to be one of the first in my class to have an LED watch.It cost about £15 which was a huge amount for a school boy in the 1970′s, and I had to deliver newspapers in the rain for weeks on end to save up for it.
But I always knew it would be worth every penny because it would make me cool, something that my tank-tops and flared trousers somehow failed to achieve.
They tell me that more people than ever will be coming to France this summer so I thought a quick reminder of driving habits in France would be useful. Happily lots of drivers fall into one sterotype or another so it’s quite easy to know what to look out for…
The weather has been very odd here for the last few days, with spring rain unexpectedly turning up after three months of early summer, in the form of storms and torrential showers.
Last Saturday we had 8cm of rain in less than an hour (the most I’ve ever seen) which started about an hour before the guests were due to arrive in the gites…
Once upon a time life was simple, or so they tell me. We were all allowed to be as sociable as we liked: if someone else wanted to spend every night partying until dawn, well why not as long as they have the stamina, and if someone else wanted to be a hermit, no problem either.
But that was then and this is now.
In France looking for some entertainment this weekend? We might have just the thing for you, regardless of where you are in France…
I understand that a rather senior position has just become available in France as Presidential Candidate for the Socialist party in next years elections.
Apparently Mr Strauss-Khan, the potential candidate, is likely to be otherwise occupied scratching his initials on a cell wall at Rikers Island after allegedly misbehaving in a New York hotel room.
It’s a well known fact (among those who have never done it) that people who move to France have two choices:
1) sit around in the sun drinking too much until the money runs out, or
2) start a business, work hard for a few years, watch as the business fails under the terrible weight of bureaucracy, then sit around in the sun drinking too much until the money runs out
There are a couple of things we expats get used to that people in Blighty might not be aware of – and I don’t just mean sunshine and alcohol poisoning.
There is a great invention called the BBC iplayer that lets viewers watch programmes on their computer when they want and where they want, or to listen to radio programmes they missed. Pretty cool?
I’ve touched on customer service in France more than once in the past, so to avoid looking like Mr Grumpy I tend not to talk about it much any more. But sometimes I just can’t stop myself…
One of the DIY shops near us have never been famed for their friendly welcome, and it seems probable that they pay their staff according to how unwelcoming they can be to their customers. Or perhaps it’s just me they don’t like, who can tell.