Visiting our children

Last week we flew to the UK and visited two of our children. First were Christian and partner. They’ve not long moved into a lovely house in a tiny village. Think Agatha Raisin or Midsomer Murders, a really charming place. I’m hoping that they don’t get murdered.

We also visited a super shopping centre in Sheffield and the city of York while we were at that end of the country. After being used to the French country side around here, everything seemed to be so green and the trees so big!

Moving further south into the Midlands we took my mum out to lunch and I presented her with a signed copy of my book! After that we spend a day visiting Hay-on –Wye via Ross-on-Wye, Christian joined us on this trip. Hay-on-Wye is very, very famous for books. We visited back in 2004 when the children were small. Funnily enough, I am the book lover and was the only one who didn’t buy a book on this trip.

We finished the day eating at a restaurant which is special to our family. Rob ate there with his parents when he was a child. The first time I met his mother and step father we had a meal there and the last time Christian took his grandma out was to eat there too. It’s a very special place for us all.

On the last day we spent the afternoon with Dom. It was nice to catch up with her. We went to visit the Beth Chatto Gardens near Colchester. Well worth a visit; you must look at the lovely pictures on the website. Topped off with a cream tea! To walk the tea off Dom wanted to show us Brightlingsea Beach and all of the lovely bathing huts. The tide was out, but it was a very interesting walk.

Next week we’ll be in Prague. I’m looking forward to seeing Olivier of course and there is that beautiful City to see and explore.

January ends...

Last week we were in the UK. I’d forgotten how cold it could be. Our stay started with Dom’s confirmation in her village church. We met the Bishop who knew the village where Rob grew up, so if was very easy to chat with him.

Photobombed by the Bishop!

 It was very sad to have to attend a funeral, but we met up with some of Rob’s family that we haven’t seen in years. I’m sure that Rob’s mother would have been pleased to see us all together.

 We also got to stay with our two children in the UK. It’s always lovely to spend time with them. The week went very quickly.

 We were met at the airport by Olivier who also prepared lunch for us! I think he was preparing me for the shock of all of the  things he’s storing in the loft. He’s finished his banking job and last Sunday set off for Prague where he has a new Job. Yesterday was his first day of work; I sent him a text asking him how it went , the reply came back ‘great’. That’s all I need to know. Perhaps this year we will be off to Prague for a few days – fingers crossed.

2017 seems to be seeping in too

Christmas and New Year sort of slipped by a little too quickly – they get faster every year. Happy New Year to anyone who reads this; I hope that 2017 is a good one for you.

We had a quiet Christmas: Olivier came home for a few days and then went off to spend New Year with friends.

The good news is that Olivier will be starting a new job in February – in Prague! As his mum I am a little sad that he is moving so far away, though I’m really looking forward to going to visit him in his new country! All of this has brought back lots of memories of when Rob and I gave up our banking jobs and moved to France, 32 years ago.

We had sad news at the beginning of the year; Rob’s mother died at the age of 94. She had been more or less asleep since mid December, so it didn’t come as a shock, it’s still upsetting just the same.

I only wrote 21 new posts for this blog last year. Hopefully I’ll do better this year. The best year was 2005 with 336 posts – almost 1 a day!

And now it's September!

I seem to be posting here once a month this year. I’ve been very preoccupied with my business as eBay wants our announcements to be compatible for the app for smart phones. As it happens we had started cleaning up our older announcements before eBay mentioned the changes. We now have over 7000 postcards online!

The weather has been very hot for about a month. I spend most of my time indoors with the shutters closed. Keeping the shutters closed helps to keep the rooms cooler.

Olivier has finished his studies and has a job in the bank where he took his apprenticeship. He really enjoys his work, looking after business customers. He’s expected to visit them and he loves doing that as he gets shown around and can better understand how the businesses are run.

This September is the first year we haven’t had any of our children going into education of some sort since Christian started school back in September 1989. Dom is starting her second year of lecturing at Essex University. She and J-M love living in the UK, they don’t regret moving at all.

All in all we’ve had a good summer up to now.

Very sad news

We had some very sad news towards the end of January. My sister died very suddenly one evening when she was just settling down for the evening with her knitting. She was the fittest of the four of us siblings. Always active, grew her own vegetables and ate healthily. She was the one who could always be relied upon to pass round family information and news. It was a big shock to all of us.

As soon as I phoned Dom with the sad news she offered to collect me from the airport and take me to the funeral. I travelled to the UK on my own. It was strange, but as it was a journey we’ve made several times in recent years, nothing I couldn’t manage. Dom and J-M were so kind, looking after me for the two nights that I was there.

This was only the second funeral I had been too and the first time I’d been to a church ceremony. I was surprised at how comforting the service was. As I’ve lived in France for over 30 years now, there were quite a few people I hadn’t seen for a long time. It was lovely to be with my mum, brother and sister, my aunts and uncles and cousins, not to mention my now grown up nephews and niece. Family is really important at a time like this.

Time passes so quickly when...

It’s just over a week since we got home from a visit to the UK. We had a great time, but it was very tiring as we now have Dom and J-M to visit too. They only live around an hour from Stansted but we took about three hours to get to their house. It was a very rainy night and the vital road to take us into Colchester was closed that very evening. Anyway we finally arrived and refreshed and were shown around their new home and it was time for bed. Dom was supposed to be working, but she had a heavy cold and spent the morning in bed so J-M showed us around their new home town; it’s a really lovely place.

Then we popped to see Christian and J. Unfortunately it was my turn to be ill. Stomach upset, but no pain. I spent half a day in bed. Fortunately It was a day when no great travels were scheduled.

Then we were off to visit our mothers. We had a lovely afternoon with Rob’s mother and took her out in the wheelchair and sat in the beautiful grounds of the care home; Christian came too, so she was especially pleased. My mum is fine though we didn't have much time to see her..

Very soon it was time to go back to Dom and J-M for the final evening. Why do holidays always go so quickly?

Going down to London town

The best day was our visit to London. Christian and J only live an hour from London by train so we played tourists.

We visited the Bank of England Museum. I chose that one as we had all worked in banks at some point in our lives. It was fascinating! We did go into the British Museum but didn’t stay long as there was so much to see we decided a visit would have to be planned in order to get the most from it.

We had lunch at Borough Market. Venison burgers to be exact and they are delicious! In the afternoon we visited Liberty of London and spent an agreeable hour or so just taking it all in. We could have spend an agreeable amount of money too, but we aren't that rich. We also stood outside Buckingham Palace and watched the WI filing in for a garden party.

My shadow outside Liberty of London

Before our train home we ate at an Italian restaurant which wasn’t too expensive and the food was great. I've written a revue for TripAdvisor.

I hadn’t been to London for about 30 years and was amazed by the lack of traffic. Where we went wasn’t too crowded and the underground was fine too. I slowed us down when there were lots of steps to go down but they weren’t too deep so I didn’t suffer too much.

Needless to say we all slept well after a day like that.

UK revisited

At the end of May we went off to the UK for a week. The weather was typically British for the whole of the time we were there, with the exception of the last day of which we spent mostly in the bowels of Stansted airport. Other than that we had a good week.

 I met my grandpuppy at last, who is the handsomest, best behaved young dog we have ever met.

Are you my Grandma?

 The main reason for our visit was to see M-I-L in her new home for the elderly. It’s in a beautiful old house with incredible grounds. She has a room which is not too small or too big and looks out onto part of the gardens. She looks better that we’ve seen her for two years at least. The food is good and varied and what we saw looks very tempting.

 We managed to get into Worcester and had lunch at the Cathedral. The special on that day was toasted bacon, brie and cranberry sandwich which was to die for. The exhibition of school’s art and crafts was up already in the cloisters (I thought that I would be too early to see it), so we looked at that too.

 The free bookshop is still near to the cathedral, so I had two of those and Rob chose three so we put in some money as we didn’t have any to exchange.

To be continued...

New grandpuppy

Christian and J have a new puppy. Isn’t he gorgeous? He’s a Jack Chi and very small. So now I have two grandchildren. We won’t be meeting him until the end of May.

Glory

This time last week we were still in the UK. MIL has had a stroke and we visited her in hospital several times. I stayed in the car on the last visit as my throat felt prickly and I was coughing (I now know why).

Winter Warmer, the soup was butter bean and garlic

We stayed with Christian and J a couple of nights and we went to the Cake Hole again for lunch. This time I had the Winter Warmer.

MIL planted this tree nearly 50 years ago.  It's a Red Maple and really beautiful

An Oak tree across the road

For the rest of the time we stayed at MIL’s house which was very strange as she was not there. It’s the first time we’ve been in the UK in winter in 30 years; I couldn’t get over how beautiful the trees are without leaves.

We saw an incredible sunset while driving back on evening, but by the time I’d got out of the car and run upstairs to take a picture it had almost gone.

When we were taking off on our way out to the UK I saw a Glory – a lovely name for a circular rainbow in the clouds. It was beautiful. I couldn’t get at my phone to take a pic.

We have snow!

Very rare here.

These were taken as the sun was rising.  

MIL is very ill so we are off to the UK tomorrow.  Don't know how long for.  Now I have to pack.

January wraps up

I was hoping to write more posts this year. This January has one post less than last year.

MIL is in hospital again. She fell and broke her arm just over a week ago. We’ll just have to wait and see how she heals.

Dom and J-M have both had flu. Dom couldn’t speak to me when I phoned her yesterday – no voice. Rob and I had our flu vaccinations in November. Apparently this year it’s only 25% effective against this year’s flu.

I’m really starting to enjoy Facebook. There is always something going on.  

The buds on the trees are starting to become noticeable, a sure sign that spring is on its way. Time to start thinking about getting into the garden to tidy up.

A few days in England

The middle of September found us in England for a few days. We visited Christian and J and explored their new house which is lovely. Christian looks as if he’s heading for a career in interior design. He took us to an old school which is now a huge antiques shop where he finds old furniture which he turns into other things. He has the gift of seeing what could be, rather than what is. I wish I could do it.

We had lunch at a lovely place called “The Cake Hole”*, everything is fresh and local. I chose the cheese platter. We resisted finishing off with cake as we were going out for a meal in the evening.

Spot the deer

We walked off our lunch in the grounds of a local stately home. As always plenty of pictures of trees. I love trees. Trees don't grow as big as this where we live.

Christian and J took us to Ikea. Our first visit; a bit over whelming, but it was fascinating. Fortunately, we had to think of getting things home on the plane, so we didn’t buy anything.

We then went and stayed with Rob’s mother for a couple of days. She was happy to be driven around or taken out in her wheelchair. Christian joined us for a day too. We also saw my mum but didn’t really have time for much else.

 We popped in to the Colwall Coffee Lounge and had an English breakfast on the last day. I chose the vegetarian version.

I only put on 300g after all of the food we ate!

 *Christian took a lovely picture of Rob and I at The Cake Hole which I’ve used part of for my new profile picture.

A little bit of family history.

For my last birthday my mum gave me a copy of a local history book of the village where I grew up. It was in the main fascinating and also sad when I learnt that some people I grew up with are no longer alive.

We were talking about the book when I phoned to wish mum a happy Easter and she told me the following story:

The maternal side of my family comes from Great Barr in Birmingham (UK), or thereabouts. The village I grew up in is about 40 miles away which was a long journey in the past. My parents arrived there in the mid-fifties and as far as I know settled in well considering they were outsiders. At first we lived in the village and then moved to farm cottages outside the village.

We have a tradition of finding graveyards fascinating in our family and of course mum did a tour of the church-yard to see if there were any interesting grave stones to read. She came across one that bore the name of her Grandmother’s family – Foden. Yes, this man turned out to have been a distant cousin who had also worked in the village on a farm. When my great-granny (née Foden) visited the cottage after we moved there, she remembered it. Not only had the distant cousin worked on the same farm, he had lived in the same cottage!

What are the chances of that happening?

A bit older than 6, but still a birthday

Happy Birthday to Christian who is 21 years older than this picture of him on a birthday long, long ago...

It’s the little pleasures…

…that make life enjoyable.  We met these two on a walk, they were a part of the Christmas decorations in the next village.  Pity we couldn’t wait around to see them lit up.  Is that the Robot from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in the background?

This weekend has been all about communication.  I’ve had contact with all of my children.  Dom is still enjoying clement weather in Glasgow.  She’s created a program from scratch to deal with statistics and it works.  She’s never done anything like that before so she’s very proud of herself.  She’s enjoying exploring the shops, art galleries and whatever else Glasgow has to offer.

 (Caroline: have you got any of your work exhibited in Glasgow?)

I was very surprised to have a phone call from Olivier.  All is going well for him.  He did come home last weekend so I knew that he hadn’t starved to death. He didn’t bring any dirty washing with him – yes you did read that right. 

I phoned MIL and we spoke for almost an hour.  We don’t always have so much to say, but for some reason today we talked about lots of things

Sort of waterlogged

The weeks have flown by again as I’ve been really busy and a few family issues have been thrown in.

 After visiting the Swedish Chef at the beginning of the month, I decided to experiment with drinking three liters of water a day. I’m still in a little pain from the bout of cystitis. All the antibiotics in the world won’t help if you don’t keep your pee as diluted as possible. The last check up I had came back with no bacteria at all. I don’t find it easy to drink large amount of water. Little and often is the secret. I also refill a half liter bottle so that it seems a little less like Mission Impossible. I'm truthfully managing between 2 and 3 liters a day.

Olivier now knows where he will be working and roughly when, but not for a few weeks yet. He’ll be replacing someone on maternity leave so it’s a short contract. At least he will have his foot in the door and will be able to put experience on his CV. By coincidence it is in the same town as the lycée that J-M is teaching in!

Dom phoned during the week, she has now driven in the snow for the first time. No snow here – just cold.

M-I-L is in hospital. She’s very weak. This month she celebrated her 91st birthday! I hope that they let her go home soon, she hates hospitals.

Back from the UK

We had another week in the UK. It was a little strange at first as we didn’t get to stay with Christian and J because they were in Florida for a couple of weeks.

Mainly the visit was to see M-I-L again. She told us that she’d gone downhill since our last visit, but you wouldn’t have noticed. Despite a couple of days of wind and rain we managed to take her for a couple of walks (or wheels?) in her wheelchair in the sunshine and a cup of coffee in the Colwall Coffee Lounge. We managed several cups of coffee there and scones and lemon drizzle cake. If you’re in and around Colwall, near Malvern, it is well worth a visit. We also took her for a couple of drives around. The country side is beautiful on the verge of autumn.

We saw my sister and my mum too and met up with some friends – more coffee and cakes wherever we went!

We decided that we do not like motorway service stations. They don’t seem to have any real food outside of burgers, chips and fry ups. The escalator down was broken in one we visited and I hurt my knee as the steps are very deep (not noticeable when it’s working). There didn’t appear to be another way down. I would have used the disabled toilets on the ground floor if I had known.

There is nothing like Boots in France

I'm still alive!

I seem to have been too busy to visit blogs, let alone write a blog post. Olivier is home for the summer and Rob has had some time off, so I haven’t had much time to myself at all. In three weeks we will be back in the UK again to see M-I-L.

I’m suffering from conjunctivitis at the moment. It’s not at all painful, but my eye waters a lot. The vision in my left eye is blurred most of the time which is quite tiring. I’m keeping my eye clean with diluted cider vinegar, it stops the stickiness at least. If you know of any good home remedies please leave a comment!

There and back - again

I was hoping to include some pictures in this post, but I still can’t get the pictures from my phone onto my computer. Dom shows me what to do every time she comes, I forget very quickly.

We’re just home after spending another week in the UK. We originally planned to return in September but Rob was looking for cheap flights and we ended up going 8 weeks after our first visit in April. The plan was the same as before; stay with C & J and then with MIL for a few days. We took her shopping which she didn’t really enjoy from the height of a wheelchair. On other afternoons we walked around the village and also visited a garden centre and had a cup of coffee. We also went to see my mum and sister as well a shopping in Worcester. Top of my list was Honey trap lip balm from Lush. I discovered a shop, Healthy Planet Books for Free, where I could choose 3 free books – which I did. How could anyone throw away a book? We made a donation in exchange.

The best part of the visit was the weekend we arrived. C & J took us on a trip on a steam train on The Great Central Railway. The stations on the route were holding a WW2 event. Each station represented a different country, Germany, France and a US base. There was plenty to see, even George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and others, plenty of singers and music from the 40s. Many people were dressed in clothes from the time and uniforms, some were carrying gas masks. We even had ID cards which were checked while we were on the train – once by a very severe looking German soldier. It was a lovely day.