Now, those of you who live in France will know that the French protect their work-life balance quite jealously. Thus, if an organisation or business is open on a Saturday, not only will it almost definitely be shut on Sunday, but quite likely at least part of Monday will be taken as compensatory leisure time … Continue reading Operation Kitchen Collection 3 days away…and no van!
The time has come. We’re ready to tackle installing a new kitchen at the mill. We’ve found the kitchen we want, designed it all and ordered what we need. That took quite a while in itself, but that was the easy (and fun) bit. Having looked at furniture and appliances in France, investigated the choice … Continue reading Take delivery of the new kitchen – sounds simple but…
How do you get on with meeting new people and making friends? I’m quite a reserved person and find it quite difficult to get to know people. Our new village has about 1200 inhabitants – not enormous but not so tiny that everyone immediately meets everyone else. It has been quite a different experience here … Continue reading It’s all about the people
Back in the spring of 2016, when we first saw our new house advertised, we were fascinated by the description of an ancient water mill with a working wheel that the present owner had adapted to run the central heating. When we first visited the mill in April the owner was ‘asleep in bed’ and … Continue reading OMG, we have heat!
If you have ever lived in France or know anyone that does, you will probably have heard many complaints of how the French just loooove their bureaucracy. I have friends, both French and English who constantly moan about the poor customer service and ‘jobs-worth’ attitude of most French officials. Everything has to be done in … Continue reading Fighting the system
Our Christmas New Year break at the mill was never going to be a lazy one, was it? We had originally intended to set to and rip the upstairs bathroom out. I had even brought over the new floor tiles that I wanted to put down. We had managed to strip the heavily embossed blue … Continue reading T’is the season to be…FREEZING!
“So what happened next? You left us all hanging! You need to keep posting” Last weekend we were out celebrating a family birthday, back in England, when the birthday boy surprised me with this question. It’s true, I’ve neglected my blog - Workaday life very quickly got in the way, as soon as we got … Continue reading The next chapter begins…
On Thursday morning we left early, not even sure that anyone else would be there. The meeting was being held at the office of the vendor’s notaire, about half an hour away. Waiting outside, I felt sick with nerves. Bang on 9 o’clock, Maître G, Chris and Gérard all arrived and we were shown into … Continue reading Coming out the other side
It seemed like ages since we had come back from France in August but the time had not been wasted. Plans, bookings, lists and more lists - I AM the epitome of a list maniac. But now everything was happening with military precision. We’d caught the overnight ferry to arrive in Avoise first thing on … Continue reading Ready to go
“…And for the weekend a band of heavy showers, moving in from the Atlantic, which could merge to become torrential downpours in places and temperatures rather disappointing for the time of year – about 17 degrees….” The sunny smile of the weather presenter did not quite sit right with the news she was imparting. We … Continue reading Weekend escape
