Will do. Admire your crisp prose. Must try to be crisper myself. 
Crisp prose training ground - anything written by Norman Lewis.
If you stay outside here you will turn crisp around the edged.
Leaving Brive Hospital the other day there was almost a wall of desperates outside the main entrance, mask on, mask off - puffing away as if ther lives depended on it. Sorry to say, there were quite a few in hospital âwhitesâ.
As an ex-heavy smoker who quit âcoldâ 41 years ago, I have little acceptance for the dependence mentality.
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Ah! Jane! Iâm glad you mentioned that. Where is âoutside hereâ?
You may recall my thread âIs your lawn a biscuit?â Most replies told of grass still green. Would that be said in 3-4-5 weeks time?
Blithely ignoring the reassurances offered, I made a unilateral decision to shift my search area from betweewn Tours and Angouleme to Calvados and Manche.
And lo! One of my faves in bosky Normandy has come off âŹ6,5k, today. Not enough but nice to have my opening bid correspondingly reduced, if I get that far.
I believe it is highly addictive. I have known people who have quit booze and even hard drugs, but never managed to give up smoking.
I quit 53 years ago from being a 40 a day, deep lung inhaler. But it needed several good reasons for giving up and a number of ârewardsâ I could enjoy as a non-smoker.
I have every sympathy with people who are unable to escape the addiction.
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So do I Mike, it took me several goes before I quit and finally managed it about 10 years ago. Nicotine is said to be one of the most addictive drugs there is and even heroin can be easier to quit than smoking. Itâs too easy for ex-smokers to have a holier than thou attitude to those who find it so hard to quit.
Hereâs a link to how addictive nicotine is. Itâs backed up by many others.
Izzy x
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We are in the Clunysois of Southern Burgundy, to be specific in the Val de Grosne, which, I have mentioned before, seems to be in a rain shadow area, although the whole of 71 has a problem.
We have a very deep well and can continue to water our veg and fruit in early morning and then evening.
The farmers are already feeding this years hay to their stock.
I gave up every Monday for years. I finally psyched myself up to do it once and for all on my 40th birthday, as that was a once off. A couple of years earlier when we decided to have a baby my late wife gave up overnight. Stunning willpower.
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Goodness John thatâs tough, to try and fail every week must have been horrible. Well done for succeeding eventually, anyone who manages to quit should be congratulated!
Izzy x
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Sorry, I am one of the dead or dying breed of writers who believe âwhy use just one word, when a hundred will sufficeâ
Twitter and SMS are the things that will destroy civilisation as we know it - back to Grunts for SMS, and back to Trump for Twitter.
Great world to look forward to ? I really donât think so - not for me thatâs for sure.
We are in the Clunysois area of Saone-et-Loire.
We have noticed that since we moved here nearly eleven years ago that the prevailing wind is now totally from the west.
The Atlantic seabord of France gets many more storms than ourselves and they travel up through the English Channel, or go southerly along the Mediterranean coastline and affect the coastline up around Monaco and into Italy.
Our weather is, strangely enough, affected by the rivers Saone and the Loire. If the mist in the winter comes from the left it is the Saone from the right it is the Loire and are often in between.
Janine Marsh has a blog Good Life France, she lives in the Seven Valleys region of the Pas-de-Calais for fourteen years. You might find it helpful.
Good luck.
Didnât Mark Twain once apologise to a correspondent fro having written a long letter, because he hadnât had time to write a short one?
It must be Mark Twain Quips Sunday - Iâve just quoted another of his one-liners to a friend âThe only thing worse than paying taxes is not paying taxesâ
And Meteo Sunday. Thanks Jane. Iâm quite good at meteo. It is one of the modules in the Yachmaster Offshore syllabus and a bit of a âhobbyâ.
In the written exam, a BBC shipping forecast is read out, as it had been on the night. âWight, Portland, Plymouth âŚâ One then has to mark up the synoptic chart with wind speed markers and pressure contours corresponding to the winds and pressure given for each shipping area âFastnet, Irish Sea, 985, falling⌠8 rising Storm Force 10 , Hurricane Force 12 later âŚâ
You end up with something like this, thoâ this anticyclone is the opposite of UK weather a.t.mo. - except for poor old Scotland, as usual.
After weâd handed in our papers, the RYA examiner - also our instructor - said âWell. What did you make of that?â âCrikey OâRiley! Mine was a dartboard!â âMine too . Insane ⌠Nul points!â âMe too âŚâ âSame hereâŚâ
âSpot on, chaps. Well doneâ [there were no women - except the instructor/examiner] âIt was the forecast for the 1979 Fastnet Raceâ.
15 sailors died, at least 75 boats capsized and five sank. Ted Heathâs âMorning Cloudâ lost her rudder but was recovered. Gale Force 8 is a wind speed of about 35mph/55kph.
Then I did World Meteo as part of the Yachmaster Ocean course. That majors on identifying hurricanes and working out the best course to avoid one or get the safer side of the eye if you canât dodge it.
We printed off the shipping forecast every day, with comments, at my boatyard in Devon.
Interesting contrast in the weather today, either side of The Channel. Clear skies over N-W FR
Still waiting for summer to start âweather for ducksâ, according to my pal at Weston-super-Mare.
Perfect illustration of why the difference. High pressure S-E Poitier - continental weather - covering western europe, shovels depressions N-W, to dump on soggy Blighty, as ever
So Normandy will do me nicely - if only someone would buy my flat.
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Of course, I wasnât aware that you were so well read in weather.
Jim took his Day skipper whilst he was working away from home in Exeter for something to do in the evenings.
We have a neighbour just down our lane whose main home is in Caen and this is their second home, a total contrast.
Iâm a day skipper too Jane, plus a radio license and few other odds and bobs I canât remember 
I had a nice boat, a Najad 332, until I came here permanently and the coast is just too far to zip up and down to keep her in fettle. I looked at living on the coast but IMO itâs too crowed in summer and too empty in winter. So I sold her at a stonking loss 
As they say, your happiest day is the day you get your boat, apart from the day you sell it.
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We lost our boat because my Dad died when I was thirteen. He never knew that he had lung cancer and he used to talk to me and say he would sell, Lisa Jane, the boat he converted from a naval pinnace after the war, and buy a Silhouette for us to sail together.
Unfortunately, it never happened and Lisa Jane was sold to to someone whose daughter went to the same school as myself. I saw her afterwards in Glasson Dock on the river Lune and her beautifully varnished woodwork was turned into a treacle brown and it made me cry.
Boats.
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That and âfools build boats for others to sailâ
Variation on yours " happiest day is the day you buy your boatyard, apart from the day you sell it." - at a stonking loss!
Mine was a Sabre 27. Alan Hill design, Marcon construction. Long fin and skeg, my ideal. Excellent sea-keeping but still handles well. They come in bilge keel as well. Good for the Normandy coast âŚ
The Najad a nice looking boat. Looks as if it could be lively in a seaway.
Noooo ! Get thee behind me!
Lovely, Christopher. And yes, the temptation never goes away, does it 
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