There are three chickens in the garden.
But not for long.
France
Thoughts on happiness from a hospital canteen
[A story with a happy ending]
What a teeny tiny difference between the words well and unwell.
Just two letters of the alphabet. Continue reading
Chickens vs fox: the prequel
I was against having chickens for obvious reasons.
Unfortunately no one else in the house understood any of them. Continue reading
The truth about travelling with kids
Every now and then travellers are rewarded with a moment of sublime timing.
Ours came at the end of a lovely day exploring The Camargue wildlife reserve, spotting flamingoes, wild horses, beavers and thousands of water birds. We were planning to top off the day with a late afternoon ice cream at a sleepy seaside village nearby.
But Saintes Maries de la Mer was not asleep.
Ditched
The quality of this photo reflects the mental state of the photographer
“Opp.”
That’s the soft little exclamation many French people make at those unexpected wee moments in life.
A coin slips from your grip. you spill a little wine, you crash your car into the ditch…
Opp.
That was the sound of Sabbatical Man’s perfect driving record evaporating in one teeth-suckingly embarrassing moment when our leased car nudged, teetered, then hurtled off the road, scraping, banging and crashing its way along a steep trench.
Yes, the very road referred to in an earlier blog.
The absence of Dog
Dog gone
All is not right.
This is the year of our dreams.
Almost everything is better than we had dared hope when we decided to take a break from real life and spend a year in the French countryside.
But there is no Dog. Continue reading
Eating local
You really can’t get more local than your own driveway.
The cherry tree is the size of a small house and heavily laden but we hadn’t noticed the fruit was almost ready until the truck delivering the new fridge took out a branch and knocked a couple of hundred to the ground.
What a day! A cherry harvest and a new fridge (there simply wasn’t enough room in the tiny temporary one for both rosé and food for the children. Sacrifices had to be made).
Perils of the home straight
Nerves of steel are required to drive this road every day
Whoever dares to question French courageousness needs to drive on my road.
Countless fearless Aixois commuters do it every day of the week. Twice. At speed.
The road is as wide as a catwalk model’s ankle.
Steep ditches line each side of it.
Huge trucks travel at ferocious speeds on it.
Tractors and trailers, graders and even horses and carts can be seen on it.
Yet the only one who is terrified is me – leaning pointlessly toward to the centre of the car where it feels a tiny bit safer.
Travelling with terror
Reconnaissance in Central London
Border police never used to show any interest in me.
I had never been escorted to a department store’s security office.
I’d certainly never been shouted at by a fellow traveller in an airport lounge.
All that has changed, now that I travel with three young terrorists.
The 10 sweetest French phrases you’ll ever hear
C’est ça – sweet as
Some French idioms are guaranteed to bring a smile to your dial.
They’re not fancy, you probably won’t study them in French class and the person saying them to you will think nothing of it.
You, the novice French speaker, will notice because at their heart these phrases all mean one thing: “You are making sense to me”.
Continue reading