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.

Prague at the end of September

This year my birthday started early as we had trains and planes to catch. We went off to Prague to spend a few days with Oliver.

Petrin Hill

 There was so much to see. We spent a lot of time out of doors – the weather was really good to us. There are a lot of parks to visit that are not only beautiful but give you wonderful views of the town. We are walkers in our family so we spent a lot of time walking. We tried to avoid the very touristy areas – you wouldn’t believe how many people can squash onto the Charles bridge. We went early in the morning when there were fewer people.

Charles Bridge

Olivier also took us to the shopping centres; there are several and well worth a visit, though clothes are often the same price as the rest of Europe. Food is important of course when you visit a foreign country. Restaurants are cheaper, but the quality and quantity of food served it very, very good. We also drank locally brewed beer which was excellent.

John Lennon Wall

The dancing House

The Time Machine!

View from the top of the Czech Monument

I didn’t want to come home. We saw a lot more than if we’d have gone there on our own. Olivier was a good guide and of course knows the kind of places we like to visit and see. There’s still lots left over for next time!

Even drain covers can be interesting!

Staircase

The famous clock

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.

A few days away

We had a few days away last week. We based ourselves in Cognac which is a lovely old town famous for the drink of the same name. The old part of the town is beautiful and very interesting. François 1 was born in Cognac in 1494.

We also visited Angoulême, another old town which is famous for its International Comics Festival. Indeed, there are many surprise illustrations on buildings around the town! As well as this statue.

Yesterday on the way home we visited Jarnac which is famous for being the birthplace of the late President François Mitterrand. If you like walking by the river this is the town. Absolutely beautiful!

 All three towns are on the River Charente.

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.

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

It's a gas...

Today is a holiday here in France.  Traditionally everyone visits the graves of their loved ones with chrysanthemums.  As Rob has a job  in the tourist industry he’s at work today which means I am too.  Anyway I’ve finished for today.

Yesterday was quite active.  We had the yearly check up of the gas heater.  All is fine;  a little part needs replacing but nothing dangerous or vital for the moment.  During the afternoon, there was no gas at all.  Problems with the heating are not what anyone needs with the cold weather approaching. It turned out to be builders working on some new houses to be accidently broke a gas main.  It was fixed within a couple of hours.  The best bit was that the gas men came round checking that everyone was back in action and they even offered to turn my heater on again.  Thank goodness they did, it took a while to ignite.  If I’d have done it I’d have panicked. 

 I only knew electricity growing up so I don’t trust gas (though it makes great scrambled eggs!).  When I was in my early teens I remember the police arriving outside our classroom to fetch one of the girls, her mum had been injured when a heater exploded.  I seem to remember it was gas.

Today has been wet and mild – don’t really need the heating much yet.

My son the postman and other stories

Olivier is now a postman. He’s replacing a real postman for 3 weeks. Guess who has to get him to the sorting office for 6.40 in the morning? I think that by the last day he should be pretty fast at sorting the letters for his round into order and finding his way around the streets. Would you believe that people come up to him in the street and expect him to know who they are and where they live? His round finishes in a street along the beach which he considers as his reward for the day.
 

In September he will be continuing his studies in Bordeaux.  He will also be sharing an apartment with a couple of his friends - if all goes to plan.

Today is a holiday in France to celebrate The Assumption. It marks the beginning of the end of the holiday season here. The weather joined in this morning too; wind and rain to drive the holiday makers away…

 I’ve been busy looking into the names of some cats who were fortunate enough to have their own visiting cards.

Dinard

Dom and J-M have rented a house in Brittany for a fortnight. They very kindly invited us to stay with them in Dinard for a few days. So we joined tham on Wednesday for a couple of days.

The house was really lovely and they were the first ever holidaymakers to use it. It was so nice to sit in the garden in the sunshine and be served delicious meals. As well as eat, we played tourists too and went for some lovely walks. The sea was so blue and it wasn’t raining (rare in Brittany). We also explored other towns nearby.

The town hall at Saint Lunaire 

It was hot! 

Thank you for inviting us Dom and J-M!

Mayday

The first of May already and we still have the heating on!  The tradition in France is to offer Lily of the Valley for good luck today.  Rob went out to buy a baguette this morning and came back with a stem of flowers for me.  It's a holiday here, when we first came to France in 1985, even the television channels were off until 8 in the evening. 

I hope that these Lily of the Valley bring you luck and happiness.

How about a holiday?

The prison on the Ile de Ré has been up for sale and has been bought by Club Med. This is the famous prison where ‘Papillon’ and many other prisoners set off from to serve their sentences of hard labour overseas. The new owners are obliged to offer the present staff new jobs. The thought of an ex-prison warden as holiday camp host conjures up all sorts of pictures up in my imagination. I think that they might have to do something about decorating the rooms too.

The results are in...

The results are in; Olivier was expecting to scrape a pass and managed to get a “quite good” pass (the levels are; pass – quite good – good - very good). He was pleased and had made a lot of progress in maths by doing some work – surprise, surprise. Dom got “very good” and will continue on the “master’s” course next year. We are very proud of both of them.

Olivier and I went to Poitiers by train to enrol him at the university. It was a long day as the early afternoon trains were full and we had to wait until four to come home. We looked around the shops and explored and found where Dom’s new flat is. We stood and wondered which was her window.

The nicest part was that Olivier treated me to lunch. The train cost an arm and a leg and I offered to make a picnic, but Olivier had already planned to take me out to lunch. We found a restaurant by the “Notre Dame la Grande” church and sat outside to eat. It was lovely, as well as helping to pass the time. In fact the service was very slow, even for a French restaurant and I swear that the waiter didn’t have a beard at the beginning of the meal.

Other than that it’s work, work, work, I’m just about on top of sorting out the cards we bought two weeks ago. Tuesday is a holiday and Dom has gone off to Paris for a long romantic weekend. Rob and Olivier will be working. I would like to catch up with my blogging friends. Perhaps I’ll see you then.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to those passing by who celebrate. Happy Thanksgiving to those who don’t too. I’m sure we all have at least one little thing to be thankful for – have a think about it.

I’m busy preparing for a visit from MIL. She’s coming tomorrow for nearly a week. As Dom isn’t here she’ll be sleeping in her room, normally she sleeps in the living room, so this time she’ll have some privacy. I have to go and collect her from the airport tomorrow evening.

I’m the 50 something lady who always stops just too far away to get the ticket into the machine at the car park barrier. I’m sure you’ve seen me all over the world.

Happy Bastille day!

Some fireworks for you.

School holidays are here.
Dom is now home for the two weeks leading up to her exams. She’s been telling us about the things she’s learnt and it is fascinating. She passed me a paper to read about a group of ‘sane’ people who infiltrated psychiatric hospitals in the States in the early 70s. They were undetected for the duration of their stays except for by the other inmates who spotted them very quickly. They also made notes quite openly as no one checked to see what they were writing about and often the note making was marked down as compulsive behaviour. Hopefully a lot of things have changed since the release of that report.

She’s been doing a lot on the way we perceive things which includes visiting this site with lots of pretty optical illusions to look at.

I’ve been working hard at my postcards and dealing with letters from the various administration organisations. A lot of letters are crossing at the moment, but hopefully all will be sorted out very quickly. The funniest was a paper about me employing other people. I shan’t be seeing a salary for myself for a while, let alone paying someone else!
Rob and I have an auction to attend at the beginning of May.

Part II of the calendar story

Yesterday a new calendar arrived from Tahiti! A few years ago, Rob gave English lessons to a high flying banker who was packed off to Tahiti. We hadn’t heard from him for ages and yesterday the calendar arrived. It’s in English, French and Tahitian, so January is Tenuare and today is Mahana Maha. Besides the beautiful pictures of blue seas and white sandy beaches, we have the French holidays and US holidays as well as the Saints days.

Because of the bad weather this morning I had the local news on. While I was listening they had a phone in quiz game where the contestant had to guess whether 10 US calendar days were real or not. I was expecting Martin Luther King Day or Lincoln’s Birthday and things like that, but in fact they must have visited Cassie-B for her calendar. The contestant won… just, more by luck than judgement.

Does anyone know how to get the pictures straight?

Armistice

Today is a holiday in France. At 11 o’clock a little procession will go to the war memorial and the mayor will read out the names of the soldiers from our village who died in the First, Second and Algerian wars. There are more images at Time And Oft.

November
‘If there’s ice in November that will bear a duck,
There’ll be nothing after, but sludge and muck’

Hope everyone remembered to put their clocks back an hour. It’s strange to have the evenings so dark so early. This week the schools are on holiday so they won’t really feel the full benefit of that extra hour in bed. they’ll be used to it by the time they go back to school next week. The weather here is still very mild, much too mild for the end of October, the news reports are full of people on the beach, some are even braving the sea!

Dom is home for her ‘pause pedagogique’ (not holiday); She’s got loads of work to do so I haven’t seen too much of her. She looks well so she isn’t starving to death or something dreadful in Poitiers. She’s dropping psychology next term and just doing philosophy. I don’t know what to make of that decision. As the new washer/dryer has been delayed a week I’m struggling to do her washing and get it dry.

Today is a holiday. The idea is that you visit the graves of your loved ones. Rob is working as quite a few people will be out visiting monuments instead.