Our French life is good

Hello dear readers,

The temperature reached just over epic yesterday so we found beautiful coolness in the tub (sorry no pics of that) 😊 then had a Barbie, luckily our bbq is in shade, we made kebabs and I have to say they were delicious, we sat outside with a bottle of obligatory wine until 10h30 and only came in then because the little flying biters were out.
The hot weather is set to continue so we are indoors at the moment keeping cool and taking the time to have a little read, I am only skimming through (I don't read whole books) The country diary of an Edwardian lady and this is the first page of August (aout) . Thought I would show you.

So let's pray for really good weather on 24th August I think.

Also, at last, the rabbit hutch has gone, to a very good home with children which I am so glad about, our French neighbour told us that it had been stood there for 40 years or more, let's hope it is happy now as it will have rabbit's.

Now we must decide what to put there, should we gravel and put plant pots on it or extend the border? What would you do?




My quote for the day:

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.  ~Author Unknown

until next tibab xXx

August is here

Happy Monday morning to you all,

It is the 1st of August, or as the French call it Aout, pronounced oot, I cannot believe it is already this late in the summer, it seems like only yesterday we were looking forward to the summer, I guess it wasn't a good start to the year.
It's  all or nothing here, either too cold or too hot or too wet, we had a wonderful visit from our dear friend Joy, but as the saying goes, "time flies when you are enjoying yourself" and indeed it did fly, no sooner she was here and she was gone again but we had a fantastic time and can't wait for her next visit.
We are missing our friend Fernando who is in America and not sure when he will visit but we live in hope.

Always time for ice cream

The snakes are about too

But I am digressing, August is the month when everything stops here in France, it is of course school holidays and everyone goes on holiday, the crazy thing is whole business's will close for the month and if you need anything sorted at maybe the prefecture you have no chance, i needed to make a medical appointment but found a message to say they would not be back until 17th August, crazy.
Our friends Neil & Carol are over for their holidays in their home in the village and we are spending lots of good time on the decking with them.

Please excuse the wrong dates on the pics, I am re-using them.

Are you on holiday this month?, let me know in the comments below.

Disappointed

Hello dear reader's

I am writing today about something of which I am very disappointed (in myself)
There is one thing I said when we first came to France and continue to say I would definitely do and still haven't  managed - have you guessed what it is yet ?
Yes, LEARN FRENCH.
Before we came we both had lessons and I certainly thought as you do that I was doing ok but once we got here permanently it became very apparent that I was not doing well at all, I have loads of French words in my head but they are all jumbled up and I need to unjumble them, of course I can make myself understood but I struggle to understand when they reply, sadly there are no French speakers here who speak text book french, they all have their own dialect.
The other mistake we have made is we have kept ourselves to ourselves and haven't joined any clubs etc; we have been happy in our own little world, most of our friends speak English (another mistake)
I am happy to tell you that we intend to change that this year, we are taking up french lessons in September and in the meantime we are going to revise at home and get out and about where we have to speak la francaise.

You see I am happy with this man's company and a stay at home gal.

What is your worst disappointment in life? Let me know

Good Service

Hello dear readers,

I have probably posted about the fantastic service we get here in France before but I find it so lovely that I must give them credit again.

John and I have blood tests every 3 months due to diabetes, yesterday I walked into our local laboratoire without an appointment and got a blood test done within 5 minutes, now that is good service and I will have the results in the post by Wednesday,

 John is slightly different because he has a phobia with needles so he needs to have his done at home so that he can pass out in peace, so yesterday I popped into the nurses office (which is 100mtrs from our house) and booked his for this morning, over the months he is getting much better thanks to the doc giving him a relaxer tablet to take an hour before, appointment booked for Friday to get our repeat prescriptions and we are good to go for another 3 month.

Poor man, it isn't nice but I hope eventually he will overcome it ☺ 

the wine with his tea will help 😉

Please let me know what you think in the comments below.

Here is a blog I am following - so entertaining.

https://moisfrenchadventure.com/2016/07/26/what-is-it-about-you-and-owls/

Rabbit Rabbit

Hello my dear readers, another hot day here in our little part of France.

This time of year it is all about the garden and What we should do with it and over the 7 1/2 years we have been here it has changed quite a bit, the bottom half started off as a veg patch and as we have got older and not so able to do it we changed it to raised beds but by the time you have fertilized and watered it only for the snails to ruin it we found it was cheaper to buy it.
Then we put a patio over it and built a wooden spa to house the hot tub, got to have my bubbles at the end of a hot day.
There is just one area left that is a bit of an eyesore that we want to sort out and it is this.

A rabbit hutch, we inherited it with the house and the reason we haven't  tackled it is because it is made of concrete, luckily it is in separate segments so as soon as we get a cooler day we will start the process.

What job are you putting off?

In the meantime take a look at a blog I am following, A Taste of France
https://francetaste.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/byop/


Until next time...  

Summer

Hello dear readers,

Yes Summer has arrived at last after weeks of thinking will it happen this year, I remember thinking it is July and we are struggling to get up to 20 degrees and jyst when you think it isnt going to happen Bang there it is ....

42 degrees in the garden tonight at 6pm I can't believe it and now it is too hot to go into the garden let alone eat out... How long will it last?

How to dress when in France

Saturday 9th July 

Bonjour Dear readers,

I could be talking about the Paris chic, well you have to admit French ladies know how to dress in more ways than one, but this time I am talking about the dressing that I love to slather on my lettuce (sauce vinaigrette) as the French call it, I have tried over the years many ways of making it but it never seems to taste as good as it does at a restaurant, so today I decided to ask my French neighbour Jossette how she made hers, (they eat a lot of lettuce - salade here) I sometimes wonder if they have it with breakfast 😊
Here is her recipe and method, I include the method because it is very important.

Sauce vinaigrette french style

Ingredients
3 tblsns of good olive oil or oil of your choice
1 good teaspoon of Dijon mustard
Salt and black pepper
1 tblspn balsamic vinegar, or red wine vinegar
Method
In a bowl put the oil then mustard and mix well until the mustard breaks up, this is essential to get the right consistency,  add salt and black pepper, then balsamic vinegar and mix, voila, the best dressing you will ever taste. Sorry no pic but couldn't  wait to scoff it.

Give it a try and let me know below what you think. 

Le Tour

Once a year here in France we have le Tour de France, I believe it is the world's biggest cycle race and is always well attended by people not only from France but they come from all corners of the globe as do the rider's, when we heard it was passing through several villages that were very close to us we seized the chance to go and get a glimpse of our favourites, (Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish)

There were signs up for weeks before telling us that the roads would close at 12.30 until 4 so we knew we would have to be in place for 12.00 we decided to go earlier as we knew places to park would soon be snapped up, there is always a caravan which comes ahead of the race throwing freebies out, this one was 20 kms long with loud music.

They threw some card boards and markers from the Vittel truck and so we wrote on them in readiness for the cyclists coming through

It says go Froome

Sadly we were so excited when the cyclists came we forgot to take a photo, first there were two riders (tete Dr la course) then a good 5 minutes behind was the main body (le peleton), we held our banners high and yelled "come on Froomie" we were lucky enough to be on the side that team Sky were on and they didn't go by too quickly so gave us chance to actually see the individuals.

We were there 5 hours in which time we had a picnic and a nice chat with a French family whose children we gave our sweet gifts from the caravan, some friends were watching in a nearby village and when it was all over we all came back to our house for a BBQ. A long tiring but enjoyable day...what did you do on Monday?

Oh yes, we recorded it on the telly and saw ourselves, fantastic..

Ah Sunday

Hello dear readers. 

It is Sunday, I don't know about you but I love Sunday's even now we are retired it is still a special day, the smell of lunch cooking takes me back to when I was a child and I guess to a time that was so much simpler. 

John waiting for his dinner

We were so care free then, living in a small village in Gloucestershire, I would get on my bike and ride for miles with friends, I had one friend who had a pony and so grew my love for riding and anything horsey, if my Mother had known that I was horse riding she would have grounded me for a month, she thought it was far too dangerous. We would play out all day (Mum would say "she will be home when she is hungry") and I was always hungry, I am a grazer so need to eat often, i didnt get to this size by not eating 😊 

Back to Sunday, I think it is a time when family and friends get together to enjoy a roast, I know our house was always full of family and friends and the only time we don't have a roast on a Sunday is when it is too hot, there is no other meal that smells like it, so as I cook our Sunday roast my mind floats away to dare I say, better times. But then i think, we are so lucky to be here in the French countryside and enjoying the same dinner so much, our French neighbour always says it smells so nice.

What takes you back, I would love to hear your stories...x

Dreams can be shattered

Dear readers
We have lived in France for 7 1/2 years now and built a good life here for ourselves, we are not rich (money wise) but we believe we are millionaires when it comes to our life together, our needs are simple, food on the table, good friends to share with and a roof over our heads, all of which we have.

We have a far better life here than we would have in England, we live in the countryside among the farming community in a house that is over 200 years old, we certainly couldn't  afford anything like it in England with the hyped up property prices in fact we would be lucky to afford a garden shed. Needless to say we want to stay here, we have wonderful neighbours and I believe we will live longer by being here.
So let's get to the reason for this particular blog and the worrying situation that we find ourselves in due to the incompetence of the English government, we are about to leave the EU which means for us that we may not be able to stay here, at the moment we get health care via our S1 from DWP, that would probably finish, we both need medication daily, plus they would probably freeze our pensions this along with the pound devaluing means we would not be able to afford to live, yes we could become French citizens but that means we would have to have better French, not so easy when you are in your late 60s as well as all the other hoops the French would have us jump through. I use the word probably because we don't know, no one has given us a second thought or answered any of our questions instead they are going to leave us in limbo for at least 2 years, and so we wait and try to enjoy what we have while we have it, I am hoping sense will prevail and they will listen and act on the petition with over 4 million signatures, so if you haven't yet signed please do unless you are in the leave camp of course and I respect that..if it all comes to fruition then we will all be coming back to Britain and we will all want somewhere to live and we will need benefits so brace yourselves...Until next time.