There’s tons going on here but I haven’t been inspired to blot recently.
Jon has been busy making banisters to stop the rug rats falling out of the loft when they arrive. What a fantastic job he has done (pictures to follow)
We’re still battling against the drought and trying not to lose our new plants.
We have new desks each in the loft/study/bedroom, and very nice they are too.
I’ve been organising the paperwork and trying to tidy, de-clutter and generally reduce the paper mountain
We have a bit of a social life too.
But my muse has been missing.
Maybe I’ll find her under the paper mountain when I get to the bottom of it.
I am most chuffed today to have been awarded a Golden Blog award by Susie over at No Damn Blog
Thank you, Susie, although as my blogging has been to say the least, intermittent recently, I do not feel a really worthy recipient. I am humbled into writing more often.
Welcome to my new-look blog in it’s new home. I have moved over from Blogger to see how WordPress works and whether the addition of extra pages works for me.
There are a few ‘tweaks’ to make before I am totally happy with this new home (the same applies with the house!), but I would appreciate your comments and votes as to whether I stay here permanently, or continue with the original blog. For the time being I will try to update both blogs to see how things go.
It is one year today that I made my first post on this blog. Such a lot has happened and it was really interesting to read back over it and see what was going on this time last year. No new windows, no pool, no kitchen, no chalet.
We heard yesterday that the wood burning fire will be fitted on Tuesday and the stairs and new front door should be along the following week.
We re-established contact with our English friend who has worked out here as an electician and plumber for nearly 20 years and went ‘missing’ from our contacts for nearly 12 months. He has agreed to come over and fit the shower unit (which has been languishing in the garage since last August) and also do the electrics for us in the loft. He rewired the house completely 3 years ago, so we know he will do a really good job. Unfortunately he is about to go on holiday for 3 weeks so the shower will have to wait a while longer.
The sun is finally shining, the temperature has soared to over 30 degrees and farmers all around us are making hay. The hum of tractors and hay wagons has been continual now for three days and, as I write, Monsieur D is whisking our hay once again before he comes back later today, or tomorrow morning to gather it into huge rolls.
The potager is coming along nicely. I feared I would lose all my tomato plants to blight again but I treated them a few weeks ago and they seem to have recovered nicely. There are courgettes sprouting all over the place, bean plants are flowering and the three cucumber plants I put in very late seem to be establishing themselves nicely, as do the melon plants I bought on a whim and thought I’d try this year. Unfortunately I have lost one ‘Charentais -type’ melon but the other two are looking good and the watermelon equally so. The blueberry bush I feared would be washed away the other week in the latest stream/floooding incident is standing firm and has plenty of fruit waiting to ripen.
Both apple trees look as though they are very sparse this year, one is fairly new and in the wrong place so I suspect it will either be transplanted or removed this autumn, the other is very old but does give some lovely shade in the garden so it will be staying.
On a beautiful Sunday like today, there is only one thing to do. Find a good book, go and sit in the shade near the pool with a refreshing long drink and enjoy the weather.
Susie tagged me to reveal seven facts about myself.
Not an easy thing to think about. Unlike Susie, I was never expelled from school, never stole pages (or anything else) from other pupils, never taught anyone interesting (although….),and I don’t even know what a ‘wanger’ is! I must have led a very boring life.
So, I’ll have a try. Some people will already know some of these and most of you will, no doubt, find them all fairly uninteresting.
I don’t know what a wanger is but I was a bit of a skinhead for about 4 months in the 1970s.
I saw the Rolling Stones at Streatham Odeon before they were famous.
I used to teach ballet (Jon was far more interesting and taught music to Tracey Ullmann, Lena Zavaroni and Lesley Ash)
I hate chardonnay
I have always dreamed of living by the sea (note, the Lot is landlocked and at least 4 hours from the sea in any direction)
I once spent an hour on a Sunday afternoon having a telephone conversation with Mike Read (the DJ) who had recently moved into our village. His neighbours (who lived in a caravan) had stolen his toboggan.
I smoked (choked on, actually) my first cigarette when I was peer pressured by our neighbour’s daughter. I was 13 (sorry Mum, Margaret made me)
Dull stuff eh?
I tag Bee at Telford Crew and Sam de Bretagne! (But Bee, only tell me things I want to hear, sweetheart, eh?).
It has come to my attention that when I don’t blog some people get very upset.
So, please accept my apologies for not writing every day. The trouble is, I have to do other things too.
Today it has been shopping. Now I’m writing a long Christmas e-mail to all the people who don’t read the blog – and those I forgot to send cards to this year for whatever reason (?). In an hour or so’s time, some friends are coming to collect us and we are going to a Carols by Candlelight service followed by mulled wine and stollen (I think this is because the church we are going to isn’t heated so they are trying to bribe us to go).
Jon has decided to redecorate the bathroom again – this before the major decoration, ripping out the bath etc which will happen next year.
There’s the washing, the ironing, meals to cook, cats to feed.
Yes, I am a woman, I can multi-task. I apologise for not learning to type with my toes. ;-D
I’m sure our French neighbours think that we are mad. After all, we are surely exposing ourselves to risk, I mean, fancy not closing all our shutters as tight as possible at night! Heaven knows what sort of light might escape from the house at night, or into the house in the morning.
We can see less than a handful of other properties from our house and they are all closed tight to the outside world as soon as it gets dark. The only exception is if the household is out for the evening, which is rare. Then they will close all the shutters and leave an outside light on until they return.
We, on the other hand, have windows and shutters open wide all night on the upper floor. Downstairs we do close up the shutters in an attempt to persuade the kitten that until we are up and about, it is still regarded as night. This doesn’t work. Just as soon as the sun stretches its arms and gives a yawn thinking that it might consider rousing itself in a while, the kitten gets some sort of uncontrollable urge to scratch on all the doors and yowl until one of us gets up and lets him out. The other two cats, grown up, sophisticated ladies that they are, don’t really understand this behaviour at all and would be quite happy for a bit of a lie-in (like us) but as soon as the door is opened, they feel that it would be just rude not to take advantage and pop outside as well.
I love to wake up with the sun, when it is just getting the energy to pop its head over the hillside straight in through the bedroom window, that is when I am ready to wake up and head for the kitchen for my morning cuppa. (By the way, Jim @ Farnham, the UK postal service is obviously worse than we thought because I never did receive that old tea bag you sent me a couple of months ago)’
There is, of course a security aspect of closing the shutters, and we do ensure we are burglar proof when we leave the house for any length of time. Even though crime is a rarity here and a burglary would make the local newspaper it is a requirement of our household insurance that we secure the house when we leave it, so shutters are closed. Somehow though, I feel that this is an invitation to burglers. If someone suddenly decided to take to a life of crime one day, all he would need to do is look for a house where all the shutters are closed all day. Or maybe not, since that is just about every other house around here outside the summer months and all the year-round residents know which houses are closed up for the winter.
Our neighbours are true creatures of habit. We could set our watches (if we wore them, which is one of the great things about being retired) by the sound of their cars leaving and returning every day. We know when to put lunch on by the sound of our neighbour returning every day for his own lunch at 11.45. We know when it is 11.15 on a Thursday and Sunday because the bread van visits the group of houses opposite. We know when it is 7.10 am or pm because the church bells chime for 5 minutes. And lately, I know when it is getting on for 5pm because my young friends come for a walk past the house for young Swanne to play with the kitten. Sadly, they will have to go home soon and probably won’t return until next summer, but I’m sure they are now itching to get back home to Swanne’s Daddy who is a chef and couldn’t take a summer holiday at all.
——
I was reading a blog yesterday that I knew I hadn’t read in a while. At first I thought I was going mad because one posting looked familiar and then I realised that it was almost a direct lift from another blog that I do read regularly. I can’t believe that anyone would want to do that from my daft ramblings, but if you are considering it, please don’t or at least ask me first and give me some credit for writing it in the first place. It is just as bad as theft to plagarise someone else’s writing, and if that person has been kind enough to link your blog to theirs (I noticed the link had now been deleted) it is also extremely bad manners.
We’ve gone shopping this morning. Please come back later
OK we’re back now. Got enough food in for the weekend and a new toy for Jon – a big angle grinder – we know how to live, don’t we? It’s scary, the roads are suddenly so busy (we saw at least 50 cars on the 20 minute drive to the supermarket) and we know that it will just get worse this weekend when the French holidays really take off, and will last until the end of August. We are hoping that the visitors will bring the sunshine with them at last, but the forecast for the next week is still very disappointing…..
So, where are you?
I’ve been looking at the statistics for my blog and apparently the majority of people reading it are in the Gloucester (UK) region. Funny thing is, we don’t know anyone in Gloucester but apparently they know us, so, bear with me (as the telephonist says) and, when you read this, please send an anonymous comment just to say where you are reading from.
We’ve had a few visits from Australia (G’day Aussie rellies), some from the US (Howdy you independents), one from Spain (Buenos dias, que tal?), 33 visits from Paris (since I think I’m the only person in France who logs in I don’t really have a lot of faith in this report) and none at all from Germany, which is disappointing since Bernd won’t read his birthday message on Sunday! We’ve even had a visit from Indonesia (who on earth….?).
Happy Friday all you workers! We’re going to have lunch in the garden (and if it’s sunny I bet you’ll all be going down the pub for yours).. Have a good weekend.
Posted by rosievie 
Posted by rosievie 
Posted by rosievie 
