Elizabeth riding Jean's bike

A picture of Elizabeth riding Jean's bike at Easter 2011 at the front of our house - a little bit big for her but she seems to be enjoying it.

EDF success!

Have managed to get EDF to agree to take our meter readings and refund the excess payments for the electricity. Another little step forward!

Easter 2011

We had a great time out in France over Easter, though not without its frustrations.  What went well:

• The weather - most days into the mid 20's C, bright and sunny and a bit breezy
• Samantha and Elizabeth came over to stay with us for almost a week - it was really nice to see them 
• Decorating - got one of the guest bedrooms painted and it looks very good now - very sparkling and comfortable
• Gardening - had the veggie plot rotovated and Jean planted lots of potatoes - we're hoping they will survive without our intervention for a couple of months
• Cutting the grass - we took delivery of our new garden tractor and a brushcutter, cut lots of grass and generally tidied the garden up a lot.
• Sprayed the grapes against mildew - not all that many plants but they're heavy with tiny grapes already
• Met the French neighbours and had several friends come round to visit, including Audrey & George who stayed over in the newly painted guest room 
• Got the phone, broadband/internet and TV working (both UK and French)
• The cherry tree is full of cherries which were just starting to ripen, but they'll all be gone by the time we return, though the walnut tree will take a lot longer for its nuts to ripen
• Lots of good food and wine as usual

What didn't go quite so well:

• It took the TV company two weeks to get our satellite dishes to us - they were put up on our last day!
• It took Orange/France Telecom over a week to get the phone working after the internet line was working - lots of expensive, frustrating phone calls on a mobile with almost no signal
• EDF are charging us on an wildly high estimate of our electricity usage and we can't get them to bring it down to a sensible level until August
• Sam and Elizabeth missed their TGV train home, due to our mixing up the time and some roadworks on the N10, but they got another one which got them home not much later than planned

So the good far outweighed the not-so-good. Can't wait till next time we go out. 

History - 3

8 April 2011

Happy Birthday Claire. 

At last managed to get hold of Orange / France Telecom on the phone to arrange delivery of the phone broadband/TV kit. Apparently they already delivered it to the Intermarché in Pons. Intermarché returned it to them so they're now going to try to deliver it to our house next week.

4 April 2011

Now into April and our next trip is getting near. We spent the weekend in Dorset visiting Rhys' mother and staying again at Kimmeridge Farmhouse - always a great pleasure. One of life's funny coincidences - we noticed that their paintwork is the same pale green colour that we are considering for our shutters in France. We're busy booking appointments for people to go and see (including the bank in Saintes) and people to come to see us (including a French architect).

March 2011

Now that it's getting near we've set up this new website / blog and new email addresses. We've arranged for France Telecom to provide us with a phone service when we go out next time and we hope to have the last of our odd stored items sent out before we get there.

February 2011

We had another trip out over the half term holiday. Took lots of stuff out, got some builders and electricians to look at various aspects of work we need done, and ordered a tractor-lawnmower for delivery at Easter.

History - 2

January 2011

Just spent two weeks at our new house over Christmas. We did a few jobs and met lots of people (and used up a good deal of our firewood). We really enjoyed being there and it was difficult to come back to the UK.

The picture was taken on the morning of Christmas Day 2010. Note the blue sky and sunshine. It was a lovely day.

History - 1

December 2010

We signed the Compromis de Vente for our new house in September 2010 and completed the purchase on 3rd December, in snow - the first time in living memory that the locals had seen snow in December, but it wasn't as bad as the snow back home in the UK - we had a nightmare journey getting down the country to pick up the channel tunnel train.

Welcome

We've decided to try out Blogger for our blog, to get us going and make it easy for us to update it more simply and quickly than writing onto our own main site all the time. Hope you like it. Do get in touch if you've any questions or suggestions (!)