IS IT TIME?

The time has come, the walrus said.  Or has it?

Summer has certainly been and gone, such as it was.  Our week in Finistère seemed to last longer than a week, more like the days when we came to France to stay for just one week or two, on holiday.  Generally, time flies by as we grapple with the complexities of life in France, getting everything in place in a language that we are not fluent in, although we do our best.  A friend said this morning that after five years of living in France they finally feel they have everything sorted, the health, the money, the French way of going about things in an official capacity.

Only yesterday we spent hours on a mission to get a damaged car windscreen replaced.  To be fair, much of what happened would have happened in the UK but the added complication of only understanding part of what people say makes it much more tortuous.  But we do our best.

I feel I have come to a crossroads with the blog and have decided that rather than let it go, or abandon it, I will do snapshot posts for a while, instead of long winded posts, which are usually playing catch up!

So I include some of the best pictures from our week in Finistère and will start afresh some time soon!  It was, after all, seven weeks since we were there!!

A WEEK IN FINISTÈRE

Finistère is a department of Brittany and a part of France that we had never previously explored.  We were hankering after a seaside break but finding a suitable gîte proved to be tricky as we had left it a bit late to look for one.  Our principal requirements were a decent sized enclosed garden for Hugo and privacy, or at least not having to share space with other holidaymakers.  We would not want a large and very bouncy dog to be a problem for other guests or vice versa!

We found a gîte not far from a little village called Guimaëc, which is just over 1km from the coast.

The day before we went we had intended to do our packing in the morning and take Yvonne to the cattery in the afternoon.  Instead, we ended up taking a delivery of six stères of logs before 9.00 am and spent all morning stacking them.  After lunch we coaxed Yvonne into her carrier using the little pot of tuna method.

Yvonne's usual cattery (called a "pension" in France) was fully booked but I found another one about the same distance from home.  She is not a good traveller and it was not great.  Her pen was very small and the access to the cat accommodation was via a courtyard surrounded by pens of barking dogs.  She was stressed and frightened but we left her there (we had no choice) thinking that the owner didn’t understand cats too well but at least she would be safe and fed.

A humorous display made from hay bales, announcing a wedding, spotted in a field near the gite.

We set off north on Saturday and the journey to Guimaëc was around six hours.  Hugo always travels well and after just one short break to stretch our legs we arrived around 5pm.  We have stayed in many gîtes over the years and some have been decidedly better than others.  This one was spotlessly clean, had a large enclosed garden, good kitchen equipment, endless hot water and very comfortable beds. It lacked a bit of charm and was short of a few minor things but it was fine.

It was a farmhouse built probably early in the twentieth century alongside the original and much older farm buildings.  The owner had inherited it from her grandfather and it hadn’t been a working farm for several decades.  

Whilst the old buildings were low and cramped, this house was roomy and lofty.  It felt more like a barn than a house but this might have a lot to do with the way it had been converted into a gîte.  It had three double bedrooms upstairs, plus a sofa bed downstairs in the cavernous living room, so was able to cater for a large family on holiday.  

With the formalities over, we drove down to the nearby cove to see the sea, returned to the gîte and cooked a pasta dinner, unpacked and settled in.  In my unpacking I discovered that I had entirely forgotten to bring (amongst other things) any knickers, or a hairbrush.  The first job the next day would have to be some shopping!

GOING, GOING, GONE!

 The view at the back of the house has improved no end!

Yesterday morning Enedis vans turned up in convoy and one by one removed the long since redundant pylons.  The electricity supply was placed underground two years ago.

The first job was the removal of all dangling wires then the digging of the concrete pylons out of the ground.  A man on a tower tied something round each pylon about half way up and it was lifted up in the air then lowered carefully to the ground.  Clever stuff.

It was a nervous moment when they set about the one immediately behind the house as it would definitely have taken out the landing and kitchen if it had fallen the wrong way. But these guys knew what they were doing and it was safely on the ground in minutes, stripped of its glass and metal crown and taken away to join the others now piled up at the side of the road.

Maybe now our farmer will finish the work on the field.  We can hope!

The other thing that happened yesterday is that I had my MRI scan on my head.  I was dreading it but as always, although not exactly pleasant, it was not as bad as I expected.  The amazing thing is that I left the clinic with a CD of more than a hundred scan images and three hours later the results arrived by email, being sent to my GP at the same time.  It makes an interesting contrast with the experience of a friend who had an MRI scan in the UK in July and has been told he will have to wait 10-12 weeks for the results.

It's baffling why there is such a difference.  In France there was clearly somebody assessing the images immediately after the scan was done and produced a fairly comprehensive report, presumably filling in a pro forma document online and sending it by email to both patient and GP.  Why on earth can that not be done in the UK in these days of technology?  I'm sure somebody out there knows why but I would guess that the images are sent to someone who looks at them and sends the report on in just the same way.  Is it because there are not enough trained people to assess them and there is a huge backlog?

The good news is that the scan revealed nothing of significance.  Which is good news especially when added to the blood test results which all came back normal too.  The bad news is that so far nothing has been found yet to explain the weird situation with my ears - the tinnitus, the snuffly cold and the headaches I've been having for the last seven months.  I have however managed to secure an appointment with a different ENT specialist one month earlier - in October.  The previous appointment should have been in July but it was cancelled by the clinic at two days' notice and I had to go to the back of the queue for another one.   The earliest available with that person was late November.  Still, at least when I do eventually see someone I will be armed with all significant tests done.

In other news, we have had a busy week.  On Monday morning Nick went to the GP for his prescription review and in the afternoon he drove me to Chatellerault to collect my Harley from the garage complete with a service and a CT (MOT) good for three years.  On Tuesday afternoon Nick got a haircut then I drove him to Chatellerault to collect his Harley with the same and it's good to see them both back in the barn, gleamingly legal and fettled for riding.  On Wednesday morning at 7.15 the nurse arrived at the house to take blood samples for Nick's annual review and we met up with friends for a pizza in the evening.  On Thursday (yesterday) I got my MRI scan and by the time we got home the last few pylons were being removed.  This morning (Friday) we had six stères of logs delivered  at 8.30 and we had stacked all of them in the wood shed by lunchtime.  (A stère is roughly a cubic metre and six of them makes a big pile of logs!)  It was jolly hard work but we were glad for the light drizzle and to get it done before the sun came out!

Last but not least, as I write this Yvonne is corralled in the bedroom because we are going on holiday tomorrow.  We shall use the dish of tuna method to trick her into the cage but she clearly has already sussed that something's afoot.  Then she will be trying out a new cattery.  The one we usually use was fully booked so it's fingers crossed that she will be ok with the new one.  Fingers are however already crossed that we can actually get her into her cage!

Then, tomorrow morning, Nick, Hugo and I are off to the seaside.  We have booked a gite near the north coast of France in a region called Finistère.  We have never explored that area before but it looks beautiful.  It will be the first real holiday we have had since our wet week in Norfolk in May 2021!

LE QUINZE AOÛT a nice day out and another picnic.

The 15th August is a popular bank holiday in France and in our area people make the most of it.  This year it fell on a Tuesday and it definitely looked like plenty of people did just that by taking the Monday off work and having a lovely long weekend.  This is called to "faire le pont" or bridge the gap between the weekend and the bank holiday by using a day's leave.

There are many events going on around us, undoubtedly the biggest being the brocante and display of old cars at Lesigny.  

How many can you identify and which would be your favourite?

I'm torn between the red Renault 4 and the E-type!

We rounded the day off with a picnic with live music at a friend’s house and were rewarded with a fabulous sunset.  Happy days!

HAPPY EASTER !!

We are normally in France by Easter every year.  In fact, even when we had the little holiday home in the village we spent every Easter there.   It was the first chance every year for a break away from work.  Even way before that, ever since Nick and I first met in 1993, we have spent every Easter in France on holiday, one way or another.  Last Easter we were stuck, like everyone else, at home, wishing things were different and wondering how it would pan out.  We never dreamed that one year later we would be spending another Easter still in the UK and not in France.   

This means I have to go back two years to find pictures I took in France at Easter time.  These pictures are of a shopping trip we made in 2019, wine shopping to a couple of our favourite producers.  Having just arrived in France for the next few months we needed to stock up and on the way we stopped at St Aignan to give Hugo a walk along by the river.  

We stayed in the Grand Hotel many years ago, in Spring, probably in about 1995.

That year we were on our motorcycles and treated ourselves to a few days in a nice hotel.  The holiday was most memorable for the weather, which was terrible, and the hotel dining room.  It was really old fashioned, serving a very traditional French menu (which we liked) and it was the first place I watched a waitress serve the cheese using two knives.  Balancing the cheese plate on the palm of one hand she deftly cut slices of cheese with the other using two knives.  We were in awe!!  The cheese was delicious (the local goats cheeses are fabulous) and we had the cheese course every evening just so we could watch the two-knife spectacle.

The weather was pretty nippy at Easter in 2019, judging by Nick's thick coat.

Hugo enjoyed his walk by the river, which looks quite full and very grey, reflecting the cold grey sky.  Hugo himself is quite grey now.  I sometimes forget how totally densely black his fur was when he was little more than a puppy.

A double row of tilleuls - pollarded linden trees along the Cher river bank.

They're a frequent sight in France, waiting for the change in the weather that brings them into bud and then magnificently into full leaf providing so much important shade from the sun.

I hope you get a bit of sun wherever you are this Easter.

MORE OLD STUFF, SOME FREE, SOME NOT.

First the free stuff.

This pâté dish, or terrine, was in a pile of identical dishes outside the little grocery shop in Montresor.  Next to it was a notice saying "servez vous" which means "help yourself".  So I did.

I thought it would come in handy if I ever wanted to make a terrine or meatloaf, but then I realised it would look good on my recently acquired oak steps with some trailing plants in, maybe.

This little container is almost certainly not very old, one of the items that goes under the general heading of "shabby chic".  In other words something new made to look old.  It wasn't quite free either, but nearly was.  The man selling it at a brocante saw me pick it up and said "50c".  I hesitated for a moment and he said "gratuit" - but I gave him 50c anyway as it was worth that.

These items were on the "help yourself" table at the déchetterie this week.  The plates will come in handy for those occasions when I take a cake to an event and am not too bothered if I get it back.  The little pots will be nice for a small bunch of flowers and the jug - well, you can never have too many.

This mirror and matching wall sconce were definitely not free.

In fact they were not cheap by my standards but it was one of those "when am I ever going to see another one of these at this price?" moments.  I had in mind exactly the right spot in the house for them and couldn't leave them in the shop.  I've done that before, changed my mind and when I've gone back someone else has snapped them up.

The painted detail on them was just so pretty.

I don't know what this rusty old thing was meant to be but the seller suggested it was a cake stand!

This is not old either, found in the "shabby chic" shop in Loches.

Nick had been looking for ages for an old watering can and was thrilled when he found one, for just a few euros at a brocante.

These small candle sticks might be quite old, or possibly not, but I liked the little faces on them.

I suspect this book holder isn't that old either, but it's just the right size to hold a cookery book open at the right page to follow a recipe.  I can't do with peering at a mobile phone screen.  All that scrolling up and down - give me a proper cook book any day!