Photos what are they about?

The photos are of our veggie patch the after one week, watch this space for regular photos (yawn)
A couple of photos of Terry and Rick mowing the lawn (at least Rick is)
Terry in Andorra and Carol at Barbasite a local view!!

Sorry forgot to mention we had a night in Andorra last week very pretty scenary.

If you cant see the photos just click on image.

Cheers

Photos

Second update/end of June

Slack you might call it but I would say busy busy busy, doing what you might ask? Socialising I reply!!! It has been two and half weeks since we arrived in France and in that two weeks we have had our dear friends from Australia, an Aussie barbeque for 20 odd people, a number of meals out with different people and I have had a return visit back to the UK for a family Golden Wedding Anniversary 'do' in Somerset. I had a fantastic time catching up with cousins, aunts and uncles and friends.

We are now experiencing proper South West France weather, very hot and sunny, which is great but we are used to a very dry heat in Aus and this is rather humid so working in the garden will have to stop midday and as per the French tradition we are going to have to have an afternoon siesta (or for most of us a granny nap). How very civilised! Now I am sure there has been some dramas since we have been here and we won't disappoint those sad people who actually want to read my ramblings. Our first drama mentioned in my blog was the electric gates, they actually came out and repaired the electrical fault, (caused by lightening)however, since coming out, now one gate closes while the other one opens, all very confusing and I really don't think my limited French will stretch to explaining this very strange phenomena, thank goodness for our English speaking French friends who we will ask to make the call. The next drama has been all our gardening machinery (say it quickly and all in one breath does not sound too bad). Let me explain we have a wonderful French man called Dennis and he owns a garden machinery repair shop, we are seriously considering offering to buy shares into his business, as surely this will be much cheaper or even better get him to set up in our garage, it will save the almost daily trip into Mezin with one or other piece of equipment, Mezin is about 15mins each way. Anyway as soon as we got here the tractor mower broke down after two mows so good ole Dennis came in his van and trailer picked it up and gave it a service, when he dropped it off we asked him to take the strimmer as that had packed up, at the same time he delivered back the chain saw, which broke down at the end of last year. We went to pick up the strimmer from Mezin and he said it worked perfectly and did not need any repairs. We duly took it home with Terry looking forward to a couple of hours of strimming and low and behold the bloody thing was not working, I must say the words coming out of Terry's mouth was unrepeatable and I don't think it helped when he started kicking it and actually tried to throw it across the garden. So back it went, Dennis is now rubbing his hands together with glee (stupid Australians back .. keeping me in business) and he dismantled it and got it working, back Terry came and actually managed to strim for an hour and surprise, surprise it broke down again, so no prizes to guess where it is now and will be picked up tomorrow. (By the way Dennis is a very patient and helpful man that does not charge us every time we go in).

Mole score – 1 down

Honestly, it hasn't been that bad, we are really enjoying the lifestyle. Today for example, we met up with my aunt and her partner (Philippe) and went to a village community meal, this involved the Baside village called Vianne, a stunning old place with an almost medieval setting. For 13 euros a head we had a selection of food from about 10 countries and then we seat down at long tables and chatted with the other village people (all French) luckily Philippe who is French helped with the translations. It is quite amazing how much easier it is to understand what people are saying without actually speaking the language. Saying that with all the natural immersion into the French culture we are picking up quite alot of French and people are very helpful as we are making the effort to communicate.

We have also been battling with our communications, telephone and internet, but I think we are about 80% sorted out so won't go into that annoying and frustrating drama, which once again was caused by lightning last week, in fact the pharmacy in our local village SOS was struck by lightning which caused a fire at the pharmacy and the house next door. In all happens in sleepy France.

I am sure that will wet everyone's appetite until the next instalment (if you are still awake that is).

Abiento

June 2008 First Week

Well it's that time of the year again and we are back in our little area of paradise. We spent 6 days socialising in the UK with our friends, other than the continuous gluttony we had a great time. Of course I hit Marks and Spencers and to my delight I only had to double the pound instead of tripling it thanks to the strong Australian dollar, needless to say I had to make a couple of visits!!!

We arrived at Capet via a supermarket and garden centre (explain later in blog), the garden was looking 100% improved to our arrival last year, except for some reason every flower bed sported metre high purple poppies (today I explained to the gardener that even though he thought they were very pretty they are in fact weeds). I have removed them swiftly before they started to seed and take over, the grass had been cut in a fashion but due to the incessant rain over the last few weeks it has been difficult to cut.

The other little problem is that the electric gates are not working, we had visions of climbing over the gate with our suit cases but luckily one side would open. I tried to ring the company that fitted them, all in my best abbreviated French and the man at the end of the telephone was not at all forthcoming and kept prattling on about electrique, I said I know they are electric but not working, in absolute desperation we rang our English friend who then rang them and apparently I had rang the wrong number and had been speaking the man who fitted our television!!!!! Bugger. Thanks to Julie the electric gate people are coming out on Monday, apparently due to the number of electric storms in the this part of France there are a large number of people with gates that do not open.

We have got our first visitors the day after we arrived, Dei and Rick are our goods friends from Australia who are travelling from Portugal through to Amsterdam and dropped in to spend four or five days with us. Today we went to our local Auberge for the plats de jour 11.50 euro 5 course lunch (including house wine and coffee!!) and when we went through the door, all our friends were there so we felt like royalty going from table to table chatting, its great to be back. (I hasten to add that they were all English so the chatting was easy).

We have been busy in the garden planting out our veggies, tomatoes, courgettes (zucchinis for the Brits) and lettuces, we figure that due to the fact we are here for four months we should reap the benefits of the home grown produce and of course we love pottering around in the garden. I am sure everyone is sitting on tenderhooks wanting to know how the moles are fairing, well in fact there seems to be only about dozen moles holes, but enough to keep Terry occupied with planning his attack with the explosives. He was hoping to have a competition with a local friend but Richard seems to have eradicated his mole problem at the moment.

Well this is the first instalment and hoping first of many now we have got our internet on at the house and if anyone wants to call the phone number is: 0011335040557012 from Australia and from the UK it is 00338442323945 as from tomorrow Saturday 14^th June.