November 2014 - Autumn is here

Plage du Platin, France

The weather here has moved properly into autumn now, with temperatures sometimes dropping to just below 10°C at night though still in the upper teens and twenties every day and usually sunny and dry, up to this last week or so.  Leaves are just falling from the trees here and there are lots of nice autumn colours.  The pool’s a bit on the cool side though – about 14°C at present and you have to be very, er.., keen to swim in that temperature.  However, we've also continuued to explore new places locally and went to St-Palais-Sur-Mer last week, taking a walk along the wind-blown but warm and sunny coast to Plage du Platin.  

We’ve kept our social life healthily busy too and are planning our winter activities.  We’ve booked a Christmas spectacle, Le Mystère de Noël, at Puy du Fou for the end of November. Puy du Fou is said to be France’s top theme park after Euro-Disney, but it doesn’t have rides, it has medieval and historically themed displays and spectacles.  It also gives us an opportunity to try Dusty in a cattery for the first time.  We’ve nothing arranged for early next year yet but we’re planning to fit in a trip or two to the UK and a snowy holiday as soon as we can do so comfortably.  We are investigating the possibility of a house/pet sitter for next year to fit in a spring or summer holiday – any volunteers?

Renovations

Our days are still busy, with plenty of work on the house getting done, lots more plans for things to do on and around it developing and at last a builder sorted to do our drive for us. He finished this week and it’s all looking much better.  He also shifted several tons of spoil from the demolished barn so we’ve been able to make a little progress on that as well. 

 

The pointing along the back wall of the house is complete; pointing other walls and rendering continues more slowly and a new project has started to replace the ditch along the side of the back garden with a proper soakaway.   

The drainage from the drive at the front as well as a lot of gutters will run into it so it needs to be better than at present.  We’ve also started removing the giant leylandii hedge to make way for a more manageable one to plant this winter.

Around the house

Crops from the potager have finished now for the season though we still had a few raspberries, strawberries and peppers up to a couple of weeks ago, and of course we have a good stock of our own potatoes and onions.  We picked the grapes off the vines and as well as grape juice from them we have a little wine fermenting, and the walnut tree is busy shedding nuts for us at present – they seem to be better than last year’s, as is the apple crop.  Dusty the cat is regularly bringing in voles and mice to play with and sometimes eat. (Yuk!) We’re trying to discourage her from bringing them in but we don’t know what she gets up to outside or when we’re out.

We now have four night storage heaters working, keeping the place toasty as the temperatures drop, and together with the log burners and heat exchangers we’re sure we’re not going to be cold in the house.  Night rate electricity is relatively cheap here so we think it’s the most economic way of getting background central heating; together with the heat exchangers we hope we’ll be keeping our electricity bills down.  Lots of friends locally cannot afford the oil or gas for their central heating systems, and we reckon that’s only going to get worse, medium to long term. Here in France more than 75% of electricity comes from nuclear generation and there is a slight risk that as these are run down green energy - eg from the hundreds of wind farms etc. - won't replace it fast enough, but it's still more secure than fossil fuel.

And we’ve lots of firewood stored up – enough for at least two winters at present, and a couple of old trees yet to cut down for more.  We’ve only lit one of the fires two or three times so far but expect to do so more often in the coming weeks.  We are also putting together an order for new saplings together which, with a dozen or so oak seedlings to plant, will give us a lot more trees on the land – to create a small woodland at the bottom by the stream.

Chickens

We get way more eggs than we can eat so we frequently give them away to friends and they do seem to be a welcome gift.  We ‘acquired’ an extra chicken a few weeks ago. She is a very pretty Light Sussex variety and we’d absolutely no idea where she’d come from. Jeanne went in to secure the chicken coop door one evening and there amongst our brown chickens was this white one settling in for the night. She’s bigger than our chickens and ate much more food than they do but we didn’t have had any eggs from her.  We’ve no idea how she got into our chicken field as the fence is too high for her to have got over it; we asked the neighbours and one has now come round to claim her, but she’ll be surprised to be back home and will have to settle in there all over again.

Health

Rhys is progressing steadily, (downhill in some respects – eyesight, hearing, twinges etc. due to age no doubt! But otherwise improving gradually) and Jeanne has had to have a couple of days in the clinique for a small operation. 

As a result we’re still great fans of the French healthcare system which is a mix of state funded (actually paid for by our previous national insurance/social charges) and a portion paid for directly by the patient. Basically most things are paid for 70% or in the case of hospitalisation 80% by the state and you pay the difference yourself. You can take out insurance to pay for your contribution. As the charges are not high (23 euros to see your GP of which you pay 6 euros) we chose to pay top-up insurance for hospitalisation only which costs 58 euros per month for both of us; if you go into hospital you just have to pay ‘board and lodging’ which is about 86 euros per day for a single room. 

Jeanne first saw our GP at the end of July, saw the consultant mid-August and he asked if she wanted to have the op in September.  She said this wasn’t convenient as we had visitors so we scheduled for October instead! When we visited the clinic to see the anaesthetist the week before surgery and to reserve a room we were told that 100% of the costs of the surgery were being met by CPAM (like NHS) as it was considered ‘essential’, so we or the insurance would only have to pay for the board and lodging element. The net result is that even if we’d no insurance the bill would have been easily affordable. 

However we do have one whinge – the hospital food is generally awful! The day of the operation for her evening (only) meal Jeanne got a bowl of unidentifiable soup (same as the previous day’s soup) with a stale roll, a plate of mashed potato in a swirl (it tasted like instant mash) and a slice of boiled ham followed by apple puree. However as the anaesthetic hadn’t worn off she threw up every time she took a mouthful so it was no great hardship!

Rhys and Jeanne

Our fourth summer here draws to a close

We sailed through the three-year critical point in July and are still enjoying being here, and intend to continue as long as possible. Summer has been hectic, with a combination of several visitors – very welcome – a lot of work restarted on the house following Rhys’ indisposition earlier in the year, and some rather mixed weather.

The weather is cooling off a bit now – mostly upper twenties °C this week with the odd excursion into the low thirties, and down to minimums of 13 to 15 °C at night, so still usually a good bit warmer than the UK. The pool has been mid twenties °C for a couple of weeks – cooler but still comfortably swimmable.  We’ve had much more rain than is usual here this summer – the stream is still flowing and the grass is still green and growing – both rare in August, but it’s usually been very warm and our guests have been happy with it.

Visitors

We’ve managed to catch up with most of our family this year, with two great visits from Sam, Mike and Elizabeth, two lovely visits from Jennie, Ian and Dylan and a very welcome one from David, Lynne and Charlie. 

Charlie with David and Lynne on the beach

Dylan in our pool with Jennie and Ian

Unfortunately (for us, not them!) Peter, Lianne, Jack and Tommy spent their holiday this year on a spectacular trip to Florida so couldn’t fit us in and although Rhys went over and saw them, Jeanne hasn’t been able to as yet.  Maybe one direction or the other later in the year. 

We’ve also had Rhys’ sister Claire with George to visit earlier and Jeanne’s cousin Clive with Kitty.  Her sister Christine with Jay are booked for later this month and another cousin, Lynne with Tony, are also due to arrive in a couple of weeks.  And a few friends have been staying – some of whom we hadn’t seen in quite a long time – Karen, Martin and Jean, and George and Audrey. As you’ll have gathered we love having guests and whilst we have no intention of turning the place into a B & B, we’ve plenty more capacity.  At the same time it’s great to go over to the UK or the other side of France to see family and other friends as well, but we are not able to do much travelling ourselves this year for various reasons.

Renovations

The house has benefited from attention to some of the walls – Rhys has been pointing sections of the old stonework and to do so, learning about preserving old buildings, as this is, so working with lime instead of cement.  The results so far this summer are looking good but there is plenty more to do. 

First section of back wall completed

New window fitted

Pointing still to do

Hopefully next week will see the last big section of the back of the house finished, and perhaps some more rendering done on the unsightly exposed block walls. 

It’s difficult to keep up with day to day stuff, like cutting two acres of grass regularly, when trying to get one-off jobs done.  We had two people round to look at doing our drive for us but neither has come up with a price or start date so we’re still waiting for that to get done, but otherwise we’ve just a long list of smaller jobs now, though we have just had a few tons of sand and gravel delivered for some of them.  Rhys also needs to finish connecting up the new storage heaters before it gets really cold, but this means doing a major rearrangement to the consumer unit and some more of the wiring so needs a few days of concentrated effort when no guests are here.

Animals

Dusty (the cat) is coming up for her first birthday and is pretty well full size, and although she still eats well she usually seems less desperately hungry all the time – hopefully this is only because she’s stopping growing rather than a reflection of all the wildlife she catches outside.  We’ve seen her with mice, voles, shrews, birds, lizards, a snake and various insects.  You don’t want to know what she does with them.

Our chickens are continuing much the same. The new pullets have mostly been laying well but one laid a slightly faulty egg with only half a hard shell but two yolks the other day – it still tasted good though!  One of the bantams, Beryl, the Belgian, died at the end of July and the others haven’t laid any eggs at all for several weeks.  Two of the three left of them have had problems. Lily, a Pekin, was the most serious – we thought she was dying a couple of weeks ago as she got a severe infection, became very listless and dopey and was getting bullied and pecked at by the newer hens.  We made and moved her into a quarantine pen in the back garden and put Yvette, the other Pekin, in with her as she’d been broody for a couple of months and we couldn’t get her out of it, even trying the cold water dips that had been suggested, but unsuccessfully.  The absence of nest boxes in the temporary pen may have done the trick though.  We now have to consider moving them back in with the stronger birds or keeping them separate.  Wendy, the Wyandotte, seems to have gained a new lease of life joining in with the new hens very actively.

Produce

We’ve had bumper crops from the potager and nearly everything is coming to an end now, though we still have sweetcorn, peppers and lots of second crop raspberries to pick.  We’ve had two pears from the one pear tree – very nice, and three of the apple trees are bearing plenty of rather small apples.

The grape vines are about ready for picking and we’ll probably do that next week.  A couple of the old vines are dying and it will be a while before the new ones do anything useful, but we should get a good crop anyway this year. We’ll see what it amounts to and then decide whether just to turn it all into grape juice or make some wine with it.  

Health

Rhys was due to start another phase of his treatment but is set to decline it as he’s getting better anyway – with remarkably low blood test scores – and the side effects of the treatment are still extremely uncomfortable.  Slightly risky but hopefully the new diet will do as much or more than the treatment, but without the side effects.  It’s been nice to have so many people say to him how well he’s looking, and he does feel much better than before the original treatment started, though still not 100% yet. 

Jeanne has to go into hospital for a couple of days in October for a small procedure but will be uncomfortable herself for a few weeks afterwards and unable to travel so we won’t be up to much for a while.  Rhys has been finding out so much about cancer and natural ways of treating and preventing it, mostly through nutrition, that he’s started to write a book on it as well as follow the information he’s learned.  It won’t be a quick project though – maybe by the end of winter?  (Don’t ask which winter!)

France and French

We’ve continued exploring the lovely area in which we live, trying to take a day out once a week to check out somewhere new, and we’ve enjoyed taking guests to some of the places we’ve found and indeed finding new places with them.  Ile de Ré and Ile d’Oleron have both had recent visits, and we’ve explored beaches along the coast, local towns and cities, cognac and wine producers, and joined in various activities with other English and French people including a dinner club, a wine tasting course and some drama events and most recently a monthly aperos club, though they are trying to get us into the monthly quiz night at our local café bar.  

Our French language is still coming along and we get by quite well now, and when we hear newer British visitors eg. in restaurants, we can really tell how well we’ve improved.  We rarely need to speak any English in restaurants or shops now, but doctors, hospitals and some specialist merchants can be a different matter, though Jeanne is really getting on top of almost all of them as well. 

We’re still here !

Well we’ve just had the third anniversary of our move here which apparently is a critical one. A number of people told us when we first moved out here that those who are not going to make it give up and return to the UK within or around 3 years. We love it out here and can’t imagine living anywhere else, the lifestyle is wonderful and we love our house and we have loads of lovely friends in the area and good neighbours.  Obviously we still miss family but we try to see them as often as we can. 

Rhys went to the UK for grandson Dylan’s first birthday; he is staggered how much he’s come on since we saw him in April but obviously children do change so quickly at his age. This picture is of big Charlie and little Dylan together for Dylan's birthday celebration.

Jeanne stayed home to water the plants and look after the cat and the chickens. It’s easy enough to get a neighbour to look after the chickens but it is too much of an imposition to get people watering the garden for us, this makes winter an easier option for a holiday as we could put Dusty in a cattery - or maybe a house-sitter is the best solution when we want to go away together anytime. We’re open to offers!

Dusty the cat

Dusty continues to thrive and has probably become a little less adventurous. She no longer tries to go out late at night and happily settles in between 8 and 10 pm.  Nor does she seem to wander off and get lost as she did. A few weeks ago she came back smelling to high heaven, she appeared to have rolled in some farmer’s fish fertiliser and we had to shower her to get it off!

Chickens

Our new pullets have been laying well and we are mostly getting 5 eggs a day from them plus the occasional ones from the bantams. It’s actually quite difficult to use up 3 dozen eggs a week so we have been giving some away to various friends, then we hit a spell where production went down and some days we only got 1 egg! However we are now back up to at least 5 a day.  We gave them all coloured leg-bands so we could tell them apart and now I think we should name them after their bands, hence Blanche for white, Vera for green (vert), Jeanne for yellow (jaune), Violet for purple and Cyan for the pale blue. However on the days when they don’t all lay we haven’t got a clue which one has missed out. The eggs are delicious though, so visitors are in for a treat.

One of the chickens (Blanche) developed a problem with her foot, it became swollen and we understand it’s called Bumblefoot. We watched a YouTube video and read up on how to treat it and it looked horrendous involving scalpels etc. You can’t really take chooks to the vet here as they’d think you were off your head as the vet costs 40 euros each time and a new chicken is only 9 euros, the usual solution to these mishaps here is to dispatch the chicken; our next door neighbour offered to do it for us. However I did go to the vet’s to enquire and they recommended an antibiotic that I put in their drinking water for 5 days. We also bathed her foot every day with antiseptic solution and applying Savlon. After a few days the swelling underneath reduced but it became swollen on top like a boil, so we lanced it.  When it looked like it needed doing again a few days later we lanced it again but then we could feel a mobile lump of something so we cut her skin with sterilised nail scissors, removed the lump and dressed the wound with surgical tape. Blanche has now stopped limping and the swelling as gone, I think we can add ‘chicken surgery’ to our CVs now!  She’s still laying despite the trauma.

Sadly one of our elderly bantams (Beryl the Belgian) appears to have gone blind in one eye. Other than that she seems OK and is eating and drinking, at least one of the other bantams stays with her to look after her during the day and she usually roosts close to Lily resting under Lily’s wing at night.  It’s quite touching really as all our books say if a chicken starts failing the others will pick on her but this has not been the case so far.

Renovations

We have been pressing on with our gradually decreasing list of jobs; we had someone round to quote for doing our drive which is our last major piece of work that we need outside help for but we’re unlikely to get it done now before this Autumn as everything shuts down in France in August.

We bought some modern English storage heaters to replace the ancient electric heaters that came with the house. We know so many people here with full gas (in a tank not mains gas) or oil central heating who find it incredibly expensive so impossible to run that we decided (after advice and demo from Doug Ibbs of the Grand Designs Creuse House fame) that supplementing our wood burning stoves with a few strategic storage heaters on cheap night-rate electricity will give us sufficient warmth for the few weeks it’s really cold in winter and be a better long term solution than gas or oil. Rhys is busy installing them at the moment and they look good, nothing like storage heaters used to be like.

Produce

Our orchard is starting to settle in but is not very productive yet though we got 3 apricots which were delicious but not enough to do anything else with. We should get some apples and pears later in the year as there are a fair few small ones on the trees at the moment. We are likely to get a bumper crop of grapes this year as the vines are looking very heavy with fruit. We’ve had loads of plums – over 10 kg – off the first plum tree and more to come off the second and I’ve made some new jam. I’ve also made apricot (with bought apricots), redcurrant and blackcurrant (home grown) jams even if I say so myself they do taste much nicer than shop bought ones, delicious with a warm croissant for breakfast. The gooseberries, which are red here, not green, only gave us enough for one dessert but again were delicious, the same with the raspberries and strawberries - not enough to make anything sizeable yet but good to eat in small quantities. We’re currently eating tomatoes, peas, beans (broad and haricot) and courgettes from the veggie plot and have got potatoes, onions, beetroot, sweetcorn and carrots well on the way but I don’t think we’re ever going to make the fully ‘self-sufficient’ grade. I suppose if we ever got desperate we could live on egg and chips or Spanish omelettes for a few weeks!

We’ve had some very hot weather - into the upper thirties C - but also a lot of rain, so we end up with a proliferation of weeds and we spend hours weeding, so now we know why so many of the local farms and vineyards dose everything with ‘Roundup’. We’ve had to follow suit on non-cultivated areas like the drive as we just can’t hand weed everything but we do stick to hand weeding around the fruit and vegetables as we’re trying to be as organic as possible.

June Update - a bit late - sorry!

Visits

Our stream of visitors continues, with two bookings for the summer and one more possibility so far, but still plenty of room and time to fill.  Anyone who fancies a working holiday would be especially welcome!  The weather has been hot for the last few weeks but we had over an inch of rain in the last 24 hours – very welcome to us for the veggie garden and, no doubt, for the local farmers. But it’s sure to settle down to the customary hot and dry summer weather – we’re in the second sunniest part of France here.  We have made a visit to friends in the Dordogne for a couple of days’ break – that was very nice.  

Our animals

Dusty (the cat) continues to grow and thrive, though she’s had a couple of frights very late at night that got her running in with great speed and a little blood. She doesn’t like to go out in the dark now.  She’s becoming very defensive of ‘her’ territory, chasing off other local cats quite vigorously. We took her with us on our Dordogne visit rather than put her in a cattery.  It seemed to work quite well and she is less unhappy in the travel box than she was now – it’s not only for trips to the vets with painful consequences!

The bantams have run their laying down to an average of one egg a week between the lot of them, but even that is good going.  But the new browns are up to speed and we’re usually getting four or five eggs a day from them, and delicious they are too.

The house and garden

We’ve been making progress with a few of the smaller jobs on the to-do list, and several that were not on it.  We got the interiors for a long (4 metres) wardrobe run a couple of weeks ago and have installed all that, and are just waiting for the doors to come in to install them.  We’ve spent a lot of time on the potager – the veggie garden – and now have six rows of potatoes growing very well, french and broad beans and tomatoes just starting to crop, courgettes another couple of days, sweetcorn a few more weeks, etc.  We’ve cropped all the blackcurrants and redcurrants and Jeanne’s made jam from them, and we’re taking raspberries most days. So quite a successful year so far despite the early rain and the recent heat.  Elsewhere in the garden the grape vines have never looked so full – we’re in for a bumper crop and may have to make more wine with them (oh dear !) Similarly the two plum trees are bearing fairly well and one of them is just starting to ripen its fruit. Even more jam coming up, I suspect.  Our developing orchard has two apple trees bearing fruit and looking healthy, one pear and one apricot, which I don’t think is a bad rate considering the difficult land there. We’ll get some more fruit trees for it this winter. 

May update

Visitors

We had a lovely visit from Jennie, Ian and Dylan in March, followed by visits in April from Clive and Kitty first then Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth, and most recently Jeanne’s ex-Barclays friend Karen. Lots of trips out and welcome help on the garden, and the weather was mostly fine and warm for all of them.  Brilliant really for so early in the year. The pool is up and running and both Kitty and Elizabeth swam in it. We have more visitors booked in but plenty of time and space for even more.  There is a gap of a few weeks now but we’re looking forward to our next booked visitors in June so our number one priority for now is the French tax forms!  Everyone has to do them here, a bit like the UK's self-assessment but not as straightforward.

Our ever-growing menagerie

Dusty (the cat) now weighs 3.4 kg and she’s eating like a horse!  She now ‘goes’ outside so the litter tray is not being much used, which is a great step forward.  In the event we didn’t have to do anything specially to train her to do this, she just gradually started ‘going’ on the garden, and she’s very fastidious about covering up the evidence.  However she’s also getting much more adventurous and disappears for hours at a time now, returning for meals, of course.  She got up on the roof (how?) the other evening and couldn’t find her way down so a little rescue operation was needed.  Often she will shin all the way up the walnut tree in seconds and get herself down quite safely, though she generally lands in the chicken run, to the hens’ consternation!

Our four bantam chickens are still soldiering on despite their great (for hens) age! They moulted in the winter but now have splendid new coats and look ready for the show ring. Here’s a little beauty parade:

To our great surprise the bantams are laying again, though not very frequently. Their eggs are, of course, very small – about a third the size of a normal medium egg so it takes a lot to make breakfast scrambled eggs, but they’re good as there is a much smaller proportion of white in each egg and relatively big, tasty yolks. 

We have also bought five new full size pullets which we’ve had for almost a week and have had just one smallish egg from them so far. Makes it a very expensive egg!  Here are the new ones:

The two groups (hardly ‘flocks’) are just being mixed so they are sharing the big hen-house and the whole run area.  The two groups are still getting used to each other so there’s a little bit of fuss at times.  I plan to re-fence the old chicken field for them so they’ll have lots more space to rummage about.

We’re getting a bit tired (surprise surprise!) of cutting our two acres of grass, although most of our guests like to take a turn, but the cost of the petrol is mounting up as well so we’re thinking about getting some sheep, or maybe taking in a rescue pony or some other grazing animal, but are having to give that some serious thought as we know it would tie us up much more firmly than we are already, and we feel we need to keep as much flexibility as we can.

Jobs done and to do

The big jobs in the house are all completed, though we have a long list of small finishing-off tasks to do, but we got diverted a bit from them by Rhys’ treatment and preparation for and the arrival of the new chickens.   We’ve made good progress on the work outside, just about managing to keep the grass mown while doing all the other jobs.  Lots of vegetables sown / planted in the potager, including potatoes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, melons, broad beans, peas, peppers, lettuces and a couple of goji berry bushes.  The fruit bushes we planted last year are starting to crop and we’ve had a few crops of tasty rhubarb already.  Jeanne has worked wonders on the ruins of the old barn and there is now the first plantable area there in what will become a formal garden eventually.  The only thing we need a contractor for now is the drive, which needs a new surface.

Rhys’ health

Rhys’ radiotherapy treatment has finished now, thank goodness, so he now has to get over the side-effects, which is happening gradually. He’s getting back into the anti-cancer diet to try to fend off the possibility of any recurrences. It has left us full of admiration for the French health service which has been fantastic. One of the smaller advantages is that you never have to pay for the parking at the hospital and the health service is even supposed to refund us the mileage for driving ourselves there every day !

Diary Update February 2014

Visitors

We’re delighted to have a number of visitors already firmly booked in for this year, in March, April, May and June and more possibilities yet to finalise. However this still leaves plenty of room all year especially in the main summer period. The two guest bedrooms in the house are completed each with its own bath- or shower-room, plus the apartment is available as well.

Our cat

Dusty - Isabelle continues to grow bigger and more adventurous every day. She’s going outdoors several times each day for increasingly longer times and she’s keen to extend her times out, but she doesn’t seem to have got the idea about toilet – she sometimes dashes back into the house to use her litter tray rather than going while she’s outside.  Not sure how we’ll train her to do that. We had her sterilised last week and are due to take her back to the vet’s tomorrow, but she’s already removed the huge and very sticky plaster and most of the stitches herself. She particularly enjoys roaming about the top floor of the hangar and we had our hearts in our mouths when she climbed right up to the top of the roof beams, and had some difficulty getting back down again.  Her main indoor home is in the former kitchen that we’ve done up as an office / spare room and we’ll fit a cat-flap to one of the outside doors shortly.

The seasons

The weather’s been milder but much wetter than usual so far this year, so we haven’t got much done outside despite Jeanne’ sterling efforts on the old grange, but that leaves plenty to do for working visitors when, hopefully, it dries up a bit. The signs are promising (touch wood!) with several warm sunny days recently and we heard from friends that the cranes are already flying north from Spain to Scandinavia – we usually get a few flocks over us, making a terrific din, but we’ve not heard them yet. The French say that as soon as the cranes fly north, winter is over.

The house

We have now finished the ‘bureau’, converted from the old kitchen, and installed all the office stuff in there as well as it becoming the cat’s night-time home.  Also in the house, Rhys finished installing the ‘hotte’ – the extractor fan – in the kitchen over the range, and he’s nearly finished a new linen cupboard on the landing – we found a set of oak double doors, floor to ceiling, at one of the bricos at a substantial reduction and they are installed now – just a bit of finishing off to do there.

TROC

This being an old traditional French style house we came to the conclusion we needed some old traditional French style furniture to set various rooms off now they are complete. We were pointed towards TROC which is a chain of second-hand furniture stores with some quite brilliant pieces amongst some amazing junk. We took our first delivery last week which is a magnificent Louis XV bookcase which we got at a bargain price. Most of the locals move into much smaller houses these days which cannot accommodate these wonderful old pieces which is why they sell them. However we were surprised by what some people will buy, there was a fairly dreadful set of furniture in dark green laminate that had a sold sticker on it. We can’t wait to take our visitors to see our local store!!

Rhys’ health.

We think that pretty much everyone knows now that Rhys was diagnosed with prostate cancer over a year ago and has been receiving treatment for several months. His treatment moved into a new phase this month. He’s been having radiation therapy for the last three weeks, which will run for a couple of months with a short break in the middle. Hopefully that together with the hormone therapy he’s been on since last May will sort it. Thank you to everyone who has sent supportive messages. We’re trying to be positive about it all and are experimenting with some well researched new approaches to nutrition to reduce or eliminate the possibility of it spreading or recurring. Lots of turmeric and green tea, even more fruit and veg and less red meat and dairy etc.  Since this happened Rhys is astonished to find out that almost everyone of similar age he’s in touch with either has the same condition actively or had a very close scare. It’s an epidemic.  He found it a bit depressing that almost all his birthday cards from the UK were postmarked with an advert for Prostate Cancer UK. Unfortunately the side effects from the radiation have forced a compromise on the anti-cancer diet but, in a silver lining, we have enjoyed having a few more steaks etc.  

Happy New Year

Doesn't time fly by?  We've had an eventful few weeks since our last update.

Dylan's Christening

We were delighted to be able to go to Dylan's Christening on 1st December. It was held at the parish church in Uppermill where Jennie and Ian got married, and afterwards a reception at a nearby hotel.  Jennie and Ian had invited lots of family and friends so it was great to be able to catch up a little with so many people we've not seen for ages - too many to list - as well as closer family we see as often as possible. Here are a few pictures:

At the font in church 

At the hotel

Charlie engrossed with a game 

Aunty Kath having a cuddle

Christmas and New Year

We returned to the UK again at Christmas, first a quick visit to my mother in Swanage, who is still going strong, though not quite as strong as when we took her home there in summer. Then up to Manchester to see Jennie, Ian and Dylan again; Peter, Lianne, Jack and Tommy - great meal out at Chiquitos in Ashton UL; Dorothy; and Jeanne's sister Christine with Jay, Charlotte and Francisco - and another meal out. Charlotte and Francisco had just flown in from Dubai, where the temperature was in the 40s centigrade, so Charlotte was frozen despite being well wrapped up.

On the Monday we drove down to David, Lynne and Charlie's to spend a few days over Christmas with them. Dorothy came down with us, Jennie, Ian and Dylan came down the next day and Lynne's mum and dad - Dareen and John, and her brother Duncan, his wife Andrea and their daughters Rebecca and Sophie were all with us for Christmas day, Christmas dinner and stayed over. David and Lynne definitely need their big house at such times. Lynne did brilliantly with the Christmas dinner and Jeanne and Dorothy made three dozen mince pies which disappeared very quickly. We took a few bottles of our own wine over, as well as some 'proper' stuff, to help lubricate proceedings. Overall it was a great Christmas - one of the best we've had. Many thanks to everyone who made it so.

We returned home Friday / Saturday 27/28th, only to go off again on Monday 30th to stay with friends in the Creuse for a gala New Year event. A very pleasant and peaceful few days.

Our new Moggy

4th January is Jeanne's birthday and this year her present to herself was une chaton - a kitten - said by the owners to be about 4 months old, a month ago. They called her Papuche, pretty much the equivalent of Kitty in French, but we decided she'd have to be a British cat with a British - or at least international - name, so we settled on Dusty (after Miss Springfield, and her coat is a rather dusty tabby / colour mix). However we took her to the vet yesterday and he told us her race is European (no surprise there) and her 'robe' - her coat markings & colour - is "Isabelle tortil tabby". So, we thought, perhaps we should have gone for Isabelle / Issy/ Izzy for her. Anyway the vet also said she was only about 3½ months old now, judging by her teeth, so it's too early to have her spayed, tattooed or chipped, so she just had her first vaccinations. She now has a veterinary 'dossier' - the French love their dossiers.  Here are a couple of pictures of her.

She knows how to relax !

 

That's all for now. Resolution to keep up better this year!