Our place in France Chapter 88

At this rate we will be having a white Christmas this year. The UK keeps sending us these cold fronts and although we are grateful for their generosity this is one kind of gift that would be better if not shared. As a result, we have been passing around the latest in cold germs and I was the most recent victim. Please don’t send any sympathy though – a whole day under the covers was just too divine for words. The only problem is that it is the wrong time of year to take days off to be ill. There are mince-pies to make; rooms to prepare and a thoroughly dusty house to clean. At the end of the week we are going down to join Pieter and Tilly in their new house and have Christmas with them. Tilly has promised us a thoroughly French Christmas meal and we are intrigued to find out what that is. All that I know for sure is that there will be no turkey, Brussels sprouts or traditional Christmas pudding. We will stay with them until Tuesday morning when we will all leave, they to Mallorca and ourselves to return to the Aveyron. When we get back we will have to get stuck in and do all the things that we didn’t manage this week so that all is as welcoming as possible for the new arrivals to France at the end of the week. We will squeeze in another Christmas dinner on Sunday before all travelling down to Toulouse to install the family in their rental accommodation. We plan to spend a couple of days with them to help them get settled in and then bring both the girls back here. Courtney will start school again on the 8^th (only two weeks break for Christmas) and Cassidy will spend a few days with her to get the feel of French schools. Courtney did a similar thing last year when she stayed with her friend down near Carcassonne and spent three days in school with the friend. She still says it was the best thing that could have happened to her so we are hoping that Cassy will feel the same about the experience. I do hope that the early morning cold will not put her off! She will of course be a in the hostel as Courtney is (total immersion) so won’t have to catch a bus before the sun gets up as she will while staying with  us. but until she starts there, they will both be braving the cold.

All of which is rather building up to say that there will probably be no blog until after New Year. So I will take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year and look forward to continuing this saga in 2018.

Our place in France Chapter 87

I don’t want to think that winter has really arrived and is here to stay, because I know that it is going to go on until February or March , but I think I will have to admit the fact – Winter is here to stay! The past week has been one of minus temperatures with day times hardly getting above 5 degrees and night times going down to -8. That’s cold! To combat the cold, and to avoid having to stoke the fire all the time, we spend large chunks of the day in our bedroom which has a heater on and so is warm. The bathroom is also well heated so we can dash between the two easily. It is really only hunger that eventually drives us downstairs to find some food. This is definitely colder than last year and the weather office will bear this out On each days forecast there is a section on the history of records and it gives us the temperature on this day last year and what the normal expected temperature should be. It is definitely colder than last year!

We have used the time to do some indoor chores and when Courtney came home for the weekend she put up our little Christmas Tree and some decorations so the lounge now looks quite festive. The trees around the square have also now been decorated so that looks quite festive too. We are not sure if it is our imagination or not but we feel that after the recent outbursts in the UK about putting Christ back into Christmas, a number of businesses that advertise on TV are telling us to ‘Have a happy Christmas’ rather than a ‘Happy Festive Season’; Blackpool has switched on its Christmas Lights where as last year they switched on the Festive lights and we expect to see any moment that the Oxford Street Christmas Lights are on. You may not all agree with me but I think this is wonderful.

Most of the supermarkets here have an ‘English Shelf’ where a number of particularly British goods are displayed. This is where I always find my Bisto Instant gravy powder and until recently, Skiippy peanut butter. Skippy has now been promoted to the general shelves, I am pleased to note. This week I also found custard powder for the first time and, joy of joys, Christmas Fruit Mincemeat for our mince pies. They also have a comprehensive selection of Asian goodies which is where I find things like sweet chili sauce and Chinese noodles., It is a brilliant idea.

I am sure that I have said this before but the pharmaceutical companies and the chemists here really bug me. Between us, Neels and I take 8 tablets day. That is rather a lot to keep track of. In South Africa we were given exactly the number we needed per month, the pharmacist carefully counting out the number required and then labelling the container with the dose for each. So it made no difference to us if the original container held 100 tablets or ten – we were always given the amount necessary for a month. Here they have a different approach. If you have been prescribed 30 tablets for a month but said tablets only come in boxes of 28, they will give you two boxes. This means that at the end of the month you still have 26 tablets over, but they are tablets you take all the time so you just continue to take them and after 26 days you go  for a repeat. But the chemist then wants to repeat all the tablets on your prescription, some of which came in boxes of 20, 28, 10, 30, 60 or 90! And they all run out at different times.  And they don’t label anything! They do, however, give you a printout of the prescription for you to work out for yourself. I am impressed by the level of intelligence they credit to all the citizens of this country! All I know is that I find it very frustrating and disorganised to have my medications so higgeldy-piggeldy all the time. And I often wonder how many old dears have taken the wrong tablets at the wrong time.

Our place in France Chapter 86

I am really sorry about last week and the non-appearance of the blog, so I hope that this week’s chapter will make up for it. Last week was, in any case, a very slow week with nothing of note happening. Until Sunday, that is, when the annual Villeneuve Christmas market took place. We st had to attend thisds market as we had heard wonderful things about it and someone had already suggested that I sell my little dolls then, but as my stock is only eight dolls, I thought I would save that pleasure for next year. I foolishly mentioned this to Courtney who immediately zoomed off and put out names down for a stall selling knitted dolls, small table candles and fig jam. I see a lot of work in the months ahead!

The market was pretty amazing though. Everything is handmade and locally made and the creativity shown was incredible. Everything was of a high standard with items like wooden toys and bowls having a really tactile finish that just invited one to stroke them. There were, of course, knitted and sewn goods – clothing and toys, but also stained glass Christmas tree decorations and small decorative panels; cut-off wine bottles turned into tumblers, candle holders and bird-feeders. There were models of the nativity scene and other little buildings and much, much, more. There is a llama farm not too far away and they had a stall with a variety of goods. I bought a pair of gorgeous snuggly gloves which I have worn almost every day since. There were a mass of people crowded into the hall and with the heaters on too, it was a very cosy place to be.

On Monday Courtney went off to school as usual and I have to admit that I felt quite evil when I had to send her out into the freezing, dark morning to catch the bus. We consoled her with the thought that the bus was well heated and the school was more pleasant indoors than our house, which I think helped a bit.

Pieter arrived on Wednesday from Mallorca and Tilly joined him here on Friday after having been away in the States and Canada for almost a month. She drove down from Paris which she has done before, but had an appalling trip. About halfway here the motorway was virtually shut down after three accidents blocked the lanes. This was all due to an unseasonable snow storm which caught eve3ryone unawares, and she had to take a huge detour which added at least an hour to her time. By the time she finally arrived here, she had been on the road for eight and a half hours on top of a long flight from New York which culminated in her luggage being left behind there. Today, three days later, it has still not caught up with her and they leave early tomorrow to go to the new house. I really think Air France owes her some new clothes.

This afternoon we went to another Christmas market, this time a little further away at Lanoujoules. It had much the same content as the one the previous week but I was definitely a bigger market and there were other stalls added in which we hadn’t seen before. AND, there were more people What a crush But all very jolly and good-tempered. This time there were also stalls selling foodstuffs of various sorts. Home-dried prunes and fresh apples; delicious-looking apple desserts made with apple puree, cream and filo pastry; cakes big and small and plenty of biscuity things. Jams and jellies, tins and bottles of foie gras and confit de canard, to say nothing of the wine and sirops of all kinds. And then there were the takeaway eats – crepes, pizza slices and some rather strange aniseed cakes, mulled wine and coffee so there was a delicious aroma spread throughout the hall.

I hate to harp on about the weather but this latest cold snap that the north has sent on down to us was really not a kind thing to do. The last few days have been really bitter with day time temperatures hardly rising above 5 degrees and night times plummeting to as low as – 6 and -8. That’s really cold and we are battling to stay warm. Last year was cold but not like this and even the locals are complaining. Hope it will back off soon and get back to normal December weather. I am getting tired of feeling like a Michelin man with four or five layers of clothes on! In that vein, I just had to include a picture of Pieter all kitted out to go down to the laundry to get the washing.