Friday, February 23, 2024

A special September

 




I even got to have my hair done on the day

At the beginning of September Olivier, our youngest, was married.  As his new wife is Czech they were married in Czechia.  The took over a hotel in the middle of the Forest.  It was a magical place for a magical occasion.  Everything about the hotel was lovely; we could have stayed there a lot longer than the two nights for the wedding.  The weather on the day was good too; sunny but not too hot.

When we returned to France we arrived at Bordeaux  airport to temperatures in the mid-30s.  What a contrast!



Thursday, August 10, 2023

Life goes on

 Rob is now retired.  It's taking a bit of getting used to as I like to do things at my own pace and he is always on the go.  It's nice not to have to have weekends free to do things.  Shopping is done on Thursday lunch times.  He even has his share of the list to do.  He always finishes his part first.

We've got a new printer with wifi, it makes me jump when it starts printing on its own.

At the beginning of September Olivier will be getting married in the Czech republic.  Eva comes from the Eastern part of the country.  We'll be staying two nights.  I wonder what a Czech wedding will be like.

Monday, September 12, 2022

 Although the Queen was 96, we were still all very shocked to hear the news on Friday.  I've been listening to the English radio, watching BBC news on TV, as well as following the French news channels and CNN.  There have been so many stories of people meeting the Queen and her (sometimes wicked) sense of humour.

Here's what I wrote about the Queen and school uniforms.  The event in the blog post happened around 1967/68.

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

2022 continued

 In my last post I wrote about Olivier's birthday being on 22nd February.  I thought that it would be a special year for him.  This week he moved to Zurich. He starts a new job on Friday ist July.

I will miss visiting him in Prague.  I love Prague, hopefully we'll get back there one day.  For the present we have a new country to explore!  I love visiting my children.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Time for twenty twenty-two

 For Christmas 2019 Olivier gave me a ‘few lines a day’ 5 year diary.  The first entry I made on 1st January was that 2020 had a good feel to it.  I was very wrong.  This year, 2022, has a good feel to it too.  I hope that I’m right this time.  Olivier’s birthday is on the 22 February, so I’m hoping that this year will be extra special for him.

In October I became officially retired in France and the UK.  I’ve been agreeably surprised by my pensions.  I worked in the UK for 12 years before coming to France.  We celebrated with a long weekend in Bordeaux.

It’s very strange learning how to use my time not governed by a work schedule.  I’ve had to learn not to feel guilty if I pick up a book in the middle of the morning and just read! I seem to be so busy doing this and that, inside and outside of the house.  I’ve also developed a taste for jigsaw puzzles. At the moment I’m doing the official jigsaw puzzle of the Queen on her 25th anniversary.  Rob brought it with him when we came to France 37 years ago.  It had never been opened.  The queen is standing in front of a red curtain background which is really difficult – makes a change from sky and sea I suppose.

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Taking care of the bees

 This post also appears on my Facebook page:

Last year our Japanese pagoda tree flowered for the first time and was alive with bees, bumble bees, different types of wasps and other insects.  I did put out a bowl of water which mainly attracted the local wasps.  This morning, on Facebook, I saw a photo of a bowl of water and marbles put out for bees (sorry, I don’t remember where).  The idea is that the bees can drink standing on the marbles and are less likely to fall in and drown.  I seem to remember being told long ago that bees like shiny things, so in theory they will be drawn to the bowl of shiny marbles.

After doing a little research online I’ve learnt that the water should be changed regularly to prevent mosquitoes from breeding there.  Don’t add sugar or honey to the water, not good for the bees.



Tuesday, February 09, 2021

... and that was 2020

 

Well what a year we have had.  It started in January when my mum was taken ill at my sister’s house.  She’d been staying there for Christmas. She spent a few days in hospital and went back to my sister’s as they thought she was recovering well.  She died on 8th January.  My sister and I both agreed that we were glad she hadn’t died at home all alone, although she has good neighbours who would have acted if she didn’t show signs of being up and about. We had to wait until February for the funeral as the coroner had a backlog – nothing to do with covid yet. 

Our flight to the UK, for the funeral, was delayed by 5 hours because of high winds but we managed to take off eventually. It was windy in the UK too and there were lots of people milling around the airport as flights were on hold or cancelled.  My nephew and his girlfriend were on the record breaking flight from the US – blown over the Atlantic by the strong winds!

Rob was told not to go into work mid-March.  We decided to treat him being home as a rehearsal for retirement.  The rehearsal went very well. We got plenty of jobs done around the house and garden and as the weather was good we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine.

In May there was a bad storm and the drain couldn’t cope so eventually the steps down to the back door flooded and came into the house.  At 1.30 am I was madly mopping up water while Rob tried to bail the water away in the garden in the pouring rain.  After I’d finished that, I tidied up and slipped on a step inside the house and cracked a rib.  That was quite painful for several weeks.

Rob eventually went back into work for the summer, but for shorter hours and then a four day week as we went into another lock down.  Lockdowns involved filling out a form every time we left the house in case we were stopped by the gendarmes. At the moment he goes into work once a week.  We’re free to go where we want, but being older now we like to know that there is a cafĂ© open so that we can have a coffee and use the toilets. All cafes and restaurants are closed at the moment, except for take away.  The curfew is from 6 pm to 6 am, which is okay at the moment as the sun sets just after 6, as the days draw out we’re going to miss our evening walks by the river.

We managed to visit Dom and J-M and the girls in September for my birthday.  It was very strange, everywhere in Lille seemed so quiet.  We didn’t go shopping in the town centre like we usually do.  We visited Ikea and it was so quiet – very unusual.

At the end of 2019 there was no way that anyone would have imagined how life would change for everyone.  We’re fortunate as all of our relatives and friends have been safe and sound. I hope  that yours have been too.

Monday, July 15, 2019

To and from Russia with love

Dominique has been invited to speak at a conference in Moscow in the autumn. She’s had a bit of paperwork to fill in as you can imagine. She needed to know the exact dates of her last visit to Russia. It was a school trip back in 2004. I received a message asking if I knew the dates (I don’t even know what day it is most of the time). Fortunately, I remembered blogging about the trip, so I told her to look it up. As it happens, I had blogged about taking her to the bus at the start of the trip and I blogged about collecting her at the end. I was really pleased that I could be of help.

If she’d have asked for dates from the last couple of years I’d have been no help at all.

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

The best laid plans...

Don’t always come off as they should. Rob came home from work with a nasty cough one day just before Christmas. By Christmas Eve we both had dreadful colds and felt quite ill. We managed to have a traditional Christmas dinner but didn’t feel much like eating and we forgot to finish opening the presents! Fortunately, Santa brought us some interesting DVDs, which we sort of watched/slept through.

Three weeks later we still have bouts of coughing. We were looking forward to Christmas in our new home so much. I took down the tree today, always a little sad, but the sun is shining and the evenings are slowly drawing out again. There are some little sprouts showing on the lawn, could they be the crocus bulbs I planted or a surprise left by the previous owners?

Monday, December 03, 2018

Moving on

We moved house on my birthday in September. We were sad to leave the village where we had been living for the last 7 years, but it was time to move on. The stairs were more and more difficult for me.
We have changed village, department and region as we now live in the Vendée department.

A new garden

Christian helped us with the decorating, he is a slave driver, but has such a good eye and lots of ideas. After cleaning up and decorating the new house, packing up to move and cleaning up the old house I was exhausted. I lost a bit of weight too The new house is not your typical house, I call it quirky. There are some steps and stairs but they are in small groups and not as deep, so I manage them quite easily.





The bathroom needed a change of colour! 


That's better.












Kitchen now comes with matching husband




I'm really pleased with what Christian helped us to do with the mezzanine, which doubles as a spare bedroom




Cosy living room

The corridor is wide enough to take a sofa bed.  This is now the grand-children's area with games and books (for when they are old enough).  It's really cosy and I like to snuggle up there with a book myself.

 We have a slightly bigger garden and a terrace facing south which is closed in on 3 sides so we have plenty of privacy. I have a cherry tree and a fig tree. Our new village is lovely, although very different. We are close to two rivers and canals and on a slope which used to be a vineyard. There is a vine in the garden so I’ve been reading up on how to prune it properly. We’ve been told that the grapes aren’t very good to eat, so who knows, we might make some wine!