Well it is Monday 18th July and having ordered 4 tyres from Ebay (new ones) last Monday I quite thought they would be here by now but I didn't reckon on the Bank Holiday last Thursday and of course because it was a Thursday the French will have taken Friday also to give them a nice long weekend. ... the tracker says they are out for delivery so I guess they will arrive today or tomorrow. . . . I love France, actually it is these funny and extremely useful ways they have that we love, we very often say why do we love France so much, what is so different here than in England, well for us it is approximately 50 years behind England at least where we are so it is like the life we had when we were young, we live in the very heart of our village but we have no need to lock the doors or the car in fact when we visit friends and we lock and alarm the car (through habit) they say you are in France now no need to do that, don't misunderstand us we are well aware that there is crime in and around the cities . . . . it is nice to have Sunday as a rest day as very few shops open on a Sunday, we have the Vide Grenier (car boot sales) some of them are small affairs with a few stalls to grand affairs with 500 stalls the latter usually too big to walk around completely so we do a bit and then head for the stall selling a drink or food and just take in the atmosphere.
We have a healthier diet here as we grow a lot of our own veg and you can't get fresher than a few yards from the garden to kitchen but even the produce in the shops is locally grown, and there is very little in the way of fast food or takeaways so each meal is cooked from scratch.
The weather is much better here and we live outdoors a lot more eating barbie cooked food whenever possible, our social life is very busy as we visit and get visits from friends more than we ever did in England, then there are the visits by friends from England we always look forward to them.
There is always a fete happening somewhere as the French seem to have a fete for everything and sometimes I am sure they make it up if they haven't, there is the local loto (bingo) which in a small village you would have a card with numbers on and small stones to cover them up when shouted out, you have to see it to believe it. there are country fairs etc, for instance this last weekend there was a medieval re-enactment at a local castle costing just 2 euros to get in so it's not even expensive to have a day out.
Is our life better here than it was in the UK – you bet it is!
OUR FRENCH LIFE. The everyday ramblings of a francophile
