Wednesday, October 24, 2007

All hail to our Renault Scenic

Well a quiet weekend here in Sigogne, if you exclude England being beaten in the rugby final, Lewis Hamilton loosing the F1 title by a point and Fleur getting sick and stopping me watching the rugby final. What is more important nursing your daughter or watching TV, no competition, the family is the most important thing in the world, which is why I try my dammedest (is that real word or not) to get home every weekend, and why in November I will have to do a couple of silly trips as I cope with doing some work in Limerick in Ireland, and doing battle with the winter flight timetables between London and South West France.

All this and we have to keep a close eye on the cash flow as well as we appear to be on the wrong end of tax bills from both the Dutch and English authorities at the moment. These tax bills could have a serious effect on our ability to be ready for the start of the 2008 holiday season, however we will soldier on. No one said it was going to be easy but some things come out of the blue in an attempt to knock you off course, and this double whammy tax bill is one of those things, but we will remain strong and come through it.

The good news is that by Monday Fleur was better and actually asked to go to school when we were prepared to keep her at home.

On a totally different subject I must pay a little tribute to our humble Renault Megane Scenic, which we bought primarily for my wife when we first arrived in France, it was in fact, our first major purchase. Franca chose it because it gave her a very good seating position i.e. you sit higher than in a normal saloon car which made watching the road that much easier. However it has turned out to be a pretty good purchase, we are using every facet of its MPV features. It is a great family car with a very responsive diesel engine (1.9 DCI), one of the fastest and most responsive 1.9 diesels I’ve ever driven (I keep getting told off for driving too fast). Its load carrying capacity is fantastic for a medium sized car, having almost the capacity of a Ford Escort van when you remove the rear seats. On Monday I went to the local DIY store and bought a complete shower unit and two toilets, which all went in with loads of room to spare for the odd kitchen sink or two. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone that is thinking of Buying an MPV, the only change I would make… the next one will be a Grand Scenic.

A bit of a disjointed up date from a chilly South West France this week, but that probably sums up our situation/mood just at the moment... c'est la vie

Sunday, October 14, 2007

One's flabber has been ghasted England in the final again!

Well I thought I had to add my comments to the rugby world's collective flabber being well and truly ghasted, how on earth are England in the Rugby World Cup final? I should have been on the 66/1 odds being offered at the beginning of the tournament instead of the 7/1 being offered before the semi against France. What a game, but am I alone in thinking that the victory was almost gifted to England by Bernard Laporte's substitutions, or was it just that after the French epic performance against NZ they only had 60 minutes left in tank to beat England. Either way it was England's fitness and willingness to put their collective bodies on the line that in the end drove us through as the French weakened, only slightly. It was not pretty, but then when England try to play pretty they get beaten, although I think the pre sub'd French team out rucked and mauled us in the first half and we did very well to hang in there with some great last man tackling.

I was handicapped in the second half as my daughter fell asleep on my lap preventing me from shouting any encouragement towards the TV, so when Jonny's drop kick went over after some typically perfect setup play from England, I could only give it the Jasper Carrot yup (as in the football supporter in the wrong part of the ground when the away team score sketch), when everything inside of me was going crazy with this uncontrollable desire to run around the room shouting and screaming.

I feel very sorry for the French who obviously gave everything, to get to the final and in many ways deserved to be there, but hey I am English and, despite living in France, I'm proud of it, at least most of the time.

Now I have to get back to the building work, we have a French farmhouse that still needs a lot of work.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

French rugby clears restaurant

Not too much to report on the building front this week, the builders appeared to have a taking it easy week so there was not too much progress on room 2, though we, Franca and I, have put the first two coats of paint on the walls and ceiling of room 2. Allegedly the builders would like everything finished by Friday this week, well so would we, Franca is not that optimistic though, can’t think why…

We found a really nice restaurant in Rouillac on Saturday evening, it was a bar restaurant and the people that run it were really friendly, the food was great value for money the only problem was it was full of English people, it could have been a case of bad timing because France were playing New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup at the time we arrived. Strangely the restaurant emptied when France began their come back, and when we went to pay the bill we discovered everyone glued to the portable TV in the corner of the bar. I wonder what is going to happen now that England have to play France in the semi finals, will the entente cordial survive the experience?


The most important event of the weekend was Sunday lunch, where Janet and Martyn who rented us a gite whilst we were property hunting a couple of years ago near Saintes, came to see what we had finally bought after 2 years of searching. We were also able to test our cooking skills again and I am pleased to report that everything went according to plan this time, we served what we planned to serve with no major disasters, everyone liked the food, and it was a nice relaxing afternoon, the sun even came out so we could eat outside, great food, great wine and great company, who could ask for more.

Our big fridge tried to influence proceedings by deciding to break down again, I’m sure it knows when someone is coming to lunch or dinner, and just shuts down, but its had its chips now as a replacement has been delivered. Franca ordered it on Saturday and it arrived on Monday, amazing speed for a French business.

I managed to get a Working At Home day from my Boss for Monday of this week as Ryanair were not running their Monday morning flight, so I had to take the evening flight instead. I gave a lift to one of my fellow commuters to La Rochelle airport as she was going to the UK for 3 weeks and that is more than 100 Euros in parking charges, you can buy an aweful lot of wine for that sort of money, and it was nice to have some company in the car for a change, instead of Mike Oldfield, I really must remember to change the CD.

Our commuting club, the 10 or twelve of us who do the trip regularly from London to La Rochelle are in a bit of a quandary at the moment because the summer timetables are coming to an end, this means less flights to our area as the low cost airlines switch destinations for the winter to provide cheap flights to the snow. Poitiers flights are summer only and they have finished now, La Rochelle will be closing on Mondays from the end of October and all the flight times appear to be changing. The folks that fly Friday and go back on Sunday evening are fine for the moment, but those of us that fly back on Mondays are having to seek alternatives. Some are going to Nantes, which is a two and a half hour drive for me, so I am going to try British Airways from Bordeaux again, prices should be back down at a reasonable level from the end of October. October seems to be the month of rumours around La Rochelle airport, so far I have heard that in 2 years time La Rochelle airport may close because they can’t expand it, and the Angouleme rumour has surfaced again, with talk of both BA and Ryanair flying there from the spring, wonderful if it is true, I'm not going to get too exited, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Sweeties

In hotel Karina after a nice meal, playing with Lilly or Molly. We never know who is who. Picture is taken in July 2007.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

A heavy right winger...

So I am back at La Rochelle airport, I’m doing the round trip with Flybe from Southampton, which means flying out on Saturday Morning, returning Monday afternoon. I flew out on Saturday because there were no flights available on Friday afternoon or evening something to do with a little rugby tournament going on. We were in illustrious company on the flight out, with world record breaking yachts woman Ellen MacArthur (check her out at www.ellenmacarthur.com , I had to as I really did not know that much about what she has been up to since her round the world trip) .

We flew out on a little Embraer jet instead of the turbo prop we had last week which means the journey was about 20 minutes shorter than last week. I had pre-booked my seat on the Flybe web site but when I got to the gate I was collared by the ground staff to have my seat changed ‘for the trim of the aircraft’, am I really that heavy. When I got on board I discovered the real reason, I was booked in seat 7D however there were only three seats across in this plane, so you could say it was for the trim of the aircraft, I don’t think they wanted passengers sitting on the wing!

I made it back to Sigogne in record time, there is a lot less traffic on the road now that the main tourist season is over so it only took me an hour and ten minutes to drive from La Rochelle. Franca and Fleur waited for me before they went off to a birthday party for one of the children at Fleur’s school. Whilst they went partying I was laying more bricks. Three hours on Saturday afternoon and three hours on Sunday morning and I finally finished my little bit of wall. It had taken me 12 hours to cut and lay 26 load bearing breeze blocks to hold up a wall which I did not think was particularly safe without the extra support. I don’t think I would do very well on a building site being paid by piece work. That was about the extent of the work for this weekend, having lost most of Saturday to travel and Sunday afternoon to networking at a brocante at a local chateau. The brocante was nothing to write home and we left after only about 45 minutes, I never used to visit car boot sales in the UK and now I know why, although in this brave green world we now live in the more that gets re-used the better.

Building work is progressing well on room 2 and it should be more or less finished on time, apart from some debate over sourcing the bi-fold door for the bathroom, which is apparently not really known in France, except on wardrobes. If the building work is complete, then next weekend will be taken up with painting room two.

The plane has just arrived, and it looks like we have got one of Flybe’s new Large Embraer jets, so we will be back in Southampton quite quickly, that’s three different flights and three different types of aircraft, let hope there is a seat 7D on this flight because my seat has not been changed this time
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