Hello Dear Reader, Today is Sunday, our day of rest, I so look forward to my Sunday roast whatever meat it is, today we are having beef roast with Yorkshire puddings, this is not something we have very often as the beef here is very expensive if you want a nice tender joint but this time of year you will find some fairly cheap pieces as they are using the milk cows (they do this in UK too but don't always tell you and let me tell you there is nothing wrong with it in fact I find it a bit more tender than the usual Charolais beef. Also the smell of Sunday dinner transports me back in time to ..read more

Hello Dear Reader, It is some time since I blogged and there have been many reasons why which I won't bore you with, the most important thing is I am back. The kitchen beckoned this morning as a hearty home made soup was the order of the day, I must always make the soup as I am diabetic and can't have the over processed bought ones, for one reason or another my blood glucose has spiralled out of control, I don't normally talk about this but I have to lose a great amount of weight and it is only going to help me to do so if I own it and put it out there so,.. here it is, I chopped and boile ..read more

How time flies Hello Dear Readers, This is a re post of a blog I did in January 2013 and is a follow on from my last post requested by Paulita from http://paulita-ponderings.blogspot.fr It was like a comedy of errors believe me Yes time really does fly when you are enjoying yourself. This week marks the 4th year of us leaving our life in the UK and getting on that ferry to France with everything but the kitchen sink, we gave so much to charity when we were trying to decide what to bring and what to leave behind and to this day I will search high and low to find something I know I have ..read more

Hello dear Readers, Today I am writing a requested post for Paulita from  http://paulita-ponderings.blogspot.fr  she is planning to move to France this year and wanted to know how we chose our house and why we came here. After being here for a bit over 8 years it is not easy to recall why, the when is easy, we came in January 2009 after having made a visit at Christmas and making a very quick decision to do so, we went back and from then we had about 19 days to pack our house and belongings up and get over here. The why is not so easy as it is a very long story, we came here 25 ye ..read more

Hello Dear Readers, It isn't very often dear John buys anything, he is one of those chaps who doesn't need an awful lot, this is good as it means there is more for me because I need lots ?, So Monday when the publicity came through the door and I heard him say, "I could use one of those" I thought I must take a look at what had taken his fancy, but before I reveal it let me take you back to last year in the Spring when John decided he was going to give the decking a good clean and he used the spray jet on his Karcher, now this cleaned the decking beautifully but our cream coloured wall now l ..read more

Hello dear Readers, Pancake day is the day before lent in France it is called Mardi Gras  ( Fat Tuesday) I believe it was celebrated on 2nd February I guess it was the last chance to eat fatty/sweet things before the fast, historically a fattened ox was paraded through the streets of Paris to give a reminder not to eat meat for 5/6 weeks or until Easter. In England we call it Shrove Tuesday,  Shrove comes from the word Shrive, meaning to absolve, are you with me so far? Well you might have guessed what we are having for dessert this evening, YEP, lovely scrummy pancakes, You might ..read more

Hello dear Readers, I woke in the middle of the night with a start, what was that I thought, you know how you suddenly wake up and wonder whether you actually heard a noise or if you had been dreaming  (I do a lot of that) so I lay there waiting for it to happen again and hoping it wasn't going to, bang, there it was again, John was well into a very deep sleep so I thought I had better get up and investigate, as I got downstairs I realised the wind was blowing a gale and the rain was coming down in buckets, this is not good news as our little house has a very shaky roof and when the wi ..read more

Hello dear Readers, It really feels as if spring is starting, everything is bursting out all over and it is so refreshing to see things coming to life, there are also new baby lambs dotted about in the fields, sadly I was driving and couldn't stop to take a photo of them, I am sure this time last year it was really cold, I would say even frosty so I hope this isn't going to be a faux ami. Around the garden there are so many signs of new life, but due to being tied up with other things over the last few weeks and the fact that it is happening so early this year we haven't begun the great gar ..read more

Hello dear Readers, This blog is a cry for help as I am experiencing real problems with my blog, I really am a bit of a technophobe, my blog has been running perfectly ok since 2009 and now I am having problems with comments, it seems that only people who comment via Google + can be seen on my posts, therefore I am not getting comments from some of you and cant answer, I hate the fact that some of you dear people are commenting and thinking I am not answering, I have tried everything I can and it is not working, I am tempted to open up another blog with a different provider but hate the tho ..read more

Hello dear Readers, Our life in France has been an adventure and along the way we have met lots of people some have come and gone, my Mother would have called them fair weather friends, the sort that are always around while the going is good but as soon as it gets difficult they are nowhere to be found, and some stick around and become best friends forever, for the last eight weeks John and I have been supporting one of those forever friends, he was told a week before last Christmas that he had cancer, previous to this he had no symptoms, he felt unsteady on his feet and went to see his GP w ..read more