I’ve had a quiet week, I have a month long ‘arrêt de travail’ because of this so sitting at home convalescing mainly!
3 Likes
We’ve got plans for the little gîte which we started modernising in 2012 … and it is still not finished… 
Kitchen walls to be lined (OH’s task) and I’m emptying the cupboards… hoping to find some treasure… 
Glad you are obviously feeling better… albeit incapacitated …but doesn’t stop you giving orders… I bet 
1 Like
Work on house in UK readying it for sale.
1 Like
do you have much to do?? … must be exciting…
another step in the right direction…
Where’s that Mat?
Far too much!
Tomorrow repairing window sills…
Then plastering, then repointing, then wall repairs, the decorating…
But most importantly chucking stuff away!
1 Like
Near Bedford.
1 Like
Been doing some pointing for a friend this week, making the most of the good weather here. Tomorrow, Tattoo convention in Aubusson…maybe some more ink 
2 Likes
Every day is pretty much the same for me as a carer. However, the weekend means sport, which I love, so I will be following all the football (in particular the mighty Spurs who play West Ham) and the US Grand Prix (I will be hoping the winner is anyone but Lewis Hamilton, sorry).
I also hope to do a little cooking. Planning a roast chicken dinner 
and a bread & butter pudding .
4 Likes
Yes, US grand prix late Sunday - Hammer time 
2 Likes
I’ve had a wonderful week…!
Had one of my daughters and her kids…two of my grandsons here with her boyfriend and also my only son…my home isn’t big enough to put them all up in one go so my daughter rented an apartment two miles away for her and her boyfriend and her two little ones…and my son stayed here with me…
A bit late in the season so some of the places we aimed to visit were closed…it was my grandsons (5 and 6) first ride on an aeroplane…next time when she brings her sons she would prefer somewhere a little bigger…maybe a house rather than an apartment but you never know til you try…
My daughter is taking a degree which hopefully will give her a chance to teach…she loved the look of the schools we came across and was envisioning a move to Brittany somewhere near me…looking up the prices of houses we saw a vendre…(her boyfriend said that if he lived here full time he thinks he would become vegetarian…lol…)
we ate out once…my son ordered a Breton burger…took one bite and about spewed up…first intro to andouillette…we’ve laughed so much about it that I expect to see his write up go viral in the very near future…x 
My son loved it here with me as always as ever…he spends all his holiday days here…we easy get through a crate of kronies every night and then some…x 
The weekend will be spent recuperating…lol…x 
7 Likes
How lovely Helen. Must have been wonderful to see them all. I hope you have a relaxing weekend 
5 Likes
Awww thanks Mandy…I’ve not been back to uk yet so I absolutely love seeing them…my eldest daughter hasn’t made it over yet so I’ve yet to meet my youngest grand-daughter…she was born after I left…
3 Likes
Need to get on the roof to replace some tiles - must keep telling myself that I don’t have a fear of heights…
3 Likes
Busy week wrangling Wizards, Elves and Santas… now relaxing with a Pink Gin Martini. 
Get well soon James.
3 Likes
Sat am RDV haircut 0900, rest of am gardening.
Sat pm probably gardening pm TV
Sun am clean out chickens clean abreuvoirs plant some pivoines and tibuchina bush for my wife soup and bread lunch
Sun pm maybe local walk with OH Sun pm later BBC radio 4 while ironing sheets oreillers etc
Sqeeze a bit of SFN fun in while supping tea or Bovril at odd times.
There’s half a Leclerc strawberry tarte to finish, impulse buy by OH who very very rarely eats anything sweet, must need the sugar!
Humdrum but bliss to be here, alive and kicking! 
4 Likes
I’ve had a fear of heights since I was really little…no relatable traumatic experience that I can recall but I can’t ever get even half way up a ladder and if I ever happen to find myself looking down from a great height then I get instant vertigo…Out with my family this week we found ourselves looking over walled remparts and castle walls…my immediate feeling despite the wall as a barrier was that I was going to fall off…
I can’t even watch a video taken from a great height without experiencing vertigo…a physical sensation in the back of my legs that I’m going to fall even though it’s not physically possible to do so…(especially if it’s virtual lol…) my daughter is the same…we had climbed some steps to a castle wall…looked over and stepped back and then noticed open grids that we were standing on…! Even if the grids had given way then the worse that could have happened is that one leg may have fell down the hole…
Good luck…half way up a ladder and I would freeze and be hanging on for dear life…I’d never even reach the roof line let alone venture out onto the roof…x
2 Likes
Lovin’ your description Pete…
Having had my son and one of my daughters (plus her family) here for a week they have left me with everything they didn’t eat so as not to waste it…
I’ve got cereals that I never eat…meat that they bought but didn’t fancy so they left it for my Collies…
The whole week cost me an extra €14 over and above what I would normally have spent and that was entry fee to the aquarium in Vannes…x
Edited to add that whilst we all enjoyed the aquarium we were all of the opinion that it was no place for the sea turtles…naturally travelling thousands of miles to the magnetic pull of the earth we couldn’t help but feel that the tank they were held in wasn’t at all natural…
1 Like
Re: “Lovin’ your description Pete…” @Helen6
Thanks, ‘cos I do feel very self-indulgent about my long and potentially showy–offy rambles down memory lane. … but as one nears one’ s final curtain (cue Sinatra) one recognises the value of revisiting past experiences, near and far, with added relish and appreciation for life’s goodness, the goodness of everyday life without dressing it up too much; a bit like the French person’s attention to, and appreciation of food, always fine in its own right, but dressed to charm and beguile and satisfy.
Writing (and narrating, story-telling) has always been a vital part of my life, and keeps me tethered, so to speak. SFN is a great boon because, apart from its value as a huge repository of experience and reliable guidance, it is richly literary, with so many varied and skillful voices: a rare enough find in these rather barbarian times. And a refreshing honesty, empathy and carefulness of peoples’ feelings and states of being.
I think the last couple of paragraphs have a substrate of too much strawberry tart and fromage frais, don’t you ? 
I’m turning in early to read a Michael Crichton pot-boiler, but he writes very gripping fiction and his character portrayals. big and small, are very realistic. There are cardboard boxes full of little literary gems in the local English Shoppe in rue de la Liberation, our local High Street. It combines selling English groceries with being the Citizens Advice Bureau, branch of the Salvation Army, Samaritans, and there are very likely other depths I have yet to fathom… 
Keep up the good work, Helen xx
PS I find the sea-turtle story very distressing, they must be almost out of their turtle minds with bewilderment and frustration. Like old demented folk locked in a care home trying endlessly to open the locked doors to find their way home, “Can somebody open this door for me please…?”
4 Likes
I’m loving your rambles down memory lane Pete…I always have…I’m not listening out for the final curtain as I would miss you very much…x
Enjoy your book…
Yes the sea turtles were/are distressing…haven’t got them out of my mind yet…they maybe had the largest tank there but as far as I could tell they weren’t able to reach dry land even if it may be the case that they only go ashore every 3 years…the two of them circled the holding tank endlessly…reaching out a flipper feeling for a way out that didn’t seem to be there…
There was also a crocodile called Eleanor…
2 Likes