OK, so it's nothing as grand as a library, but it's where we keep our books. Once our landing had designed itself, and what we needed from this space became clear, we set about creating a cosy, warm reading and music corner with plenty of storage for books and all sorts of other paraphenalia like … Continue reading The ‘library’
All the houses I have ever lived in have had stairs, and at the top of those stairs was a landing. (Actually, all except one, where the stairs just ended up at the door of the only bedroom). Every landing has posed a similar DIY challenge - how to make the most of a tiny … Continue reading The landing that designed itself
The dappled light through the poplar trees plays on the rippling water, as the bright turquoise flash of a kingfisher startles a heron who lifts himself gracefully into the air and glides off along the river with long beats of his elegant wings... Yes, it is that peaceful most of the time but sometimes being … Continue reading Oh, the romance of an old water mill – not!
Google is your friend During the confinement, at the start of my search (and not really knowing what I was looking for!), I got a bit bored and started googling the name of the mill/ the river we’re on/ the name of the village in various permutations. Once I had got through several pages of … Continue reading Tracing the history of our French home – Part 5
Local historians, past and present You’ll have seen from my last post, Thank you Abbé Toublet, that one particular local historian has helped me to trace our mill back a thousand years. Yes, you read that right – A THOUSAND YEARS! Read about it here There’s no doubt about it. Local historians, past and present, … Continue reading Tracing the History of our French home – Part 4
So it probably won’t come as a surprise when I say that some of the most useful resources I found for finding out about the history of our French water mill were local historians. One of our first visitors when we moved into the mill was a local historian eager to find out how much … Continue reading Thank you, Abbé Toublet.
At 3 am on Thursday morning the alarm on my phone roused us to start ‘Operation Kitchen Collection.’ I’m really not bad at getting up early in the morning (just don’t ask me to stay awake after 9:30 pm!), which is just as well as we were booked on the 8:15am ferry from Caen to … Continue reading Operation Kitchen Collection – and it’s ‘Go’!
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!
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…
