Saturday, April 25, 2009

I think I need to cut the grass

After the high of last weekends birthday celebrations this weekend is a bit of a low since I cannot get back home to France, due to having to work in Limerick for most of Friday.

However this does give me a chance to do a few chores at London HQ, Joy & Simon I hope your reading. I must admit to negelecting the garden a bit, well be honest....alot, I've not been out there this year, so I thought it was time to cut the grass. So Saturday dawned and it was raining but it cleared up by 10.00 so grass cutting was on...

It would certainly would have been a lot more bover with a hover, taking words from a very old advert, so I purchased a heavy duty petrol powered strimmer, which we will need in France as well as it carrying out a little job for me here in the UK.




So I am ashamed to say this is the before shot....




and hopefully below it is the after shot with Toro the strimmer who made short work of the elephant grass in the back garden.


There you go Joy and Simon, next time your over you'll be able to sit in the garden with a glass of something, but don't leave it too long, don't think I'm due another weekend in London for a while.

Hopefully it will now be a lot less bover with a hover...

Time for a glass of something....

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Franca's Birthday

Last weekend was Franca’s birthday so the occasion had to be marked in French style which means going out for a meal. Franca chose the restaurant and so early on Saturday evening we headed off to l’Essille in Bassac. www.hotel-restaurant-essille.com/. Strangely I was talking to Sue one of my fellow commuters on the way over to La Rochelle and she was singing the praises of this very restaurant, at the time I didn’t know that it was the same restaurant Franca had chosen.

Franca, her mother, Fleur and I set off for Bassac arriving at the restaurant bang on 7:30, making us first the guests of the evening. The restaurant was light and airy so they were off to a good start in my book as I do not like stuffy dingy restaurants, and l’Essille had plenty of charm too.

The meal was great and the atmosphere was good too, and by 8:30 it was pretty full, although the quality was reasonably high, the restaurant had a good relaxed atmosphere of people out to enjoy them selves. Sometimes high quality food means the atmosphere is a bit to still as if you are supposed to respect the food rather than enjoy the whole restaurant experience, and that was not the case with l’Essille. The food was well cooked and presented, everyone enjoyed what they ordered and the wine list was one of the better ones I have seen in our local area. The menu had a wide choice, but focussing on localish food, so lots of fish & seafood from the coast and meat from the Limousin.

We finished off the celebration with an excellent birthday dessert for Franca, so a good time was had by all and with Franca’s birthday well and truly celebrated we can recommend L’Essille the to one and all.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

We are family










Some family pictures with Franca, Fleur and my mother-in-law. Fleur's picture has been taken in restaurant l'Essille in Bassac where we've been on Saturday for Franca's birthday celebration dinner.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the office…..no really

I was dashing through Liverpool Street station heading for the tube when I spotted a gap in the crowd to a free ticket gate, so I went for it.

It was only as I went base over apex flying through the air watching my mobile phone performing aerobatics above me that I realised why the gap was there.

A gentleman was pulling, perfectly concealed behind him, the largest wheelie suitcase I have ever seen (or not seen in my case - pardon the pun).

As I lay flat on my back on the station floor watching my phone trying to make good its escape through the ticket barrier I had a moment to remember something I heard on Danny Baker's 5 Live program the night before. He was asking had you ever been fouled in real life, well here I am laying on the floor of Liverpool St station waiting for the ref to show the puller of the titanic suitcase a straight red card...he took both my legs out ref...

It made a few commuters smile for a moment.... I hate wheelie suitcases almost as much as I hate umberallas.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

They marched us up to gate 45 and marched us back down to 43 again

Another busy weekend at Au Bellefleur, the change of Ryanair?s timetable means I have less time in France at the weekends for a short while. We also had guests staying with us and they wanted to eat with us each night so that kept the kitchen busy too. I also had to try and get at least one toilet ready for use downstairs before Easter as we are basically full over the Easter Break.

Friday was a farcical departure from Stansted, not only was it foggy, and Barack Obama was departing from Stansted shortly before us, but Ryanair could not work out which gate we were going to be flying from, so we were marched from gate 45 to 43 and then back again to 45, and then back to 43 again in the space of 15 minutes. We were also well over an hour late on departure, mutter mutter mutter. Then again it has not been a bad flying winter, the Stansted ? Limoges bus service was pretty reliable, I guess around 80% of our flights were on time, not many were early though. The summer is going to be a challenge as Ryanair keep changing flight times, so I have no flights settled past the early May bank holiday.

Our guests over the weekend were returning for their second visit, its always great to greet returning guests because it means we must be doing something right. One story which will go down in the annals of Au Bellefleur history was when our guests went down to Jarnac market, a cheese seller from the Basque country was selling his sheep cheese and giving away free samples. Our guests thought this cheese tasted so good they would buy some, unfortunately forgetting to look at the price first. They enthusiastically encouraged the cheese man to make the slice they were buying bigger and bigger. They handed over a €50.00 and €2.00 back, €48.00 for a piece of cheese!! Of course they never heard the end of it, cheese jokes all night? they took it in good spirits, or at least I hope they did, maybe if they never come back we will learn that they did not take the ribbing that well.

I was busy with new toilets for the two bathrooms I am building at the moment. I had the job of concreting in the waste pipes, always a scary moment as this is the point of no return or least not without and awful lot of pain. Fleur always wants to help, and so she must be one of the only six year old girls that knows how to mix concrete, and she did a good job working with a full size shovel. The pipes are concreted in and the plumbing for the toilet is half complete.

We are full for Easter which will slow production down, but the good news is that Bogdan our builder is back so things should speed up for a while after Easter.

I do not like flying back on a Sunday evening as this makes the weekend feel quite short especially as my flights to France in the summer are on a Friday afternoon, however, since I will be in France for 5 days at Easter this trip back is not so bad. But I will be searching the timetables for a Monday morning flight after Easter.

I am flying from La Rochelle, and a slower bunch of passport control and customs people I have never met. They were taking an eternity to process each passenger through passport control and then the security checks, if that is standard the I will be doing everything I can to avoid La Rochelle. Fellow travellers have said that flights have been delayed because they are so slow.