Christmas & New Year continued....

With Enrico and family heading back to the Netherlands it was off to work for me back into my fledgling bathroom to try and complete the plumbing so that I could start putting up walls. It was my intention not to do too much work this holiday, even though we really needed to get on. Christmas is a family time and so it would be unfair to spend it all in work clothes. So I managed to get the plumbing done despite a little disaster of plumbing the hot cold water the wrong way round for the shower. I managed to get most of the plumbing finished and a couple of wall panels up with the help of Franca. The bathroom looks small but it still takes a few full size plasterboard panels, and the waterproof ones required in a bathroom are really heavy. That was the sum total of the work I did over the holiday, which was basically 3 half days. Two of the other halves of those days were spent in DIY shops and the third half was spent with Fleur outside digging the garden an burning a tree that Enrico enthusiastically chopped down for me, yes the tree with the helicopter leaves is no more….

The final chapter of the Christmas & New Year update

On the final day of my holiday we went to the beach, I like the seaside in winter, you still get a strong sun on a clear day, which today was, and my neck is sunburnt to prove it. Fleur also loves the beach so even though it the temperature did not reach much over zero we took the bucket and spade and made sandcastles, we flew kites, well we flew Fleurs cheap Whinny the Pooh kite and crashed the stunt kite we bought for papa to play with 2 years ago. At least I can fly a kite with one string, I just need someone with patients to teach me how to fly a two stringed kite as I cannot get into the sky without it taking massive dives within a few seconds… a challenge for 2009 maybe. We had lunch at a restaurant on the beach, and to be honest the food was not great, but on the 3rd of January, it was the only restaurant open.

And so all too soon my 10 day holiday was over and I am sitting on the ferry after having driven up from Sigogne on a sunny but freezing Sunday ready to go back to work on Monday morning.

I was a great break and fantastic to spend 10 days with ‘my girls’, it’s the longest time I have spent with them in 2008. Looking at 2009 from the view point of the 4th of January it seems a daunting prospect that I have to spend another year commuting back and forth to London, but I know in December I’ll be saying where did 2009 go. I am lucky to have a job to commute back to in 2009 which despite the exchange rate problems will keep help our dream alive. The B&B already has some summer bookings and so things are looking good at the moment. We have rented out the rooms we are currently working on so there is real incentive to get these finished and the room below before we get into the summer season proper, signs of that programme ‘Chaos in the Castle’ on the horizon. One thing is for sure, there is never a dull moment at Au Belle Fleur.

Christmas wishes

I'm 'driving home for Christmas' to celebrate it with wife and daughter, my wife's brother and family are also heading for Sigogne on Christmas Eve, so there will be a nice family atmosphere round the fire side.

Thank you very much for looking at and reading at my blog over the year, and no doubt I will give you a Cristmas update from France.

Merry Christmas to you all.


Darren, Franca and Fleur

Christmas decorations inside

Christmas decorations outside

Wonderfully Sunny Weekend

Well after a horrible week of weather in the UK it was great to be able to see the sun again. Some folks in the north of the UK had between 10 and 20cms of snow where as in London we just had 4 days of dreary rain and cloud. It was lovely to touch down in bright sunshine at Limoges airport on Friday morning after having got up at 4:30am to catch the 8:00am flight out of Stansted. Not so nice this morning to be delayed by 2 hours following a protest at Stansted airport which meant our out bound flight was delayed leaving Stansted.

The weekend however was great, we managed to spend almost all the daylight hours in the garden. On Saturday we put up the external Christmas lights on the house which took quiet a long time because I had to run a new electrical supply to the outside of the house to power them. We got all the Christmas decorations out the cottage so we could sort them out in preparation for putting them out next weekend.

Sunday was spent doing a lot of tree surgery, I removed one tree that was not really growing, I was able to lift it straight out of the ground, so for the three years it had stood there it had failed to take root, so that went onto the bonfire. I started work on another much older tree that want to chop down as it mostly hangs over the neighbours garden and just produces those helicopter seeds that readily take root and spring up every where. We will replace these trees with fruit trees when we have worked out our new garden layout, and it will take me a couple more weekends before I have completely cut down the helicopter seed tree (I can’t remember the real name), and it will give us some nice logs for next winter.

So I’m finally on the plane to London, 2 hours late, some of the team I work with are going for a Christmas lunch today, which I have now missed, but maybe I’ll go for a drink with them afterwards depending upon what I find when I get to the office.

With so many jobs lost in London why is there no extra space on the trains

I mentioned in an earlier post that thousands of people in London were loosing their jobs at the moment. It is strange but you really cannot tell if you are in and around the City of London. Have ALL the jobs been lost in Canary Warf? I would not know as I never go there. My train is just as full as it ever was, the 6:19 from Lee to Charing Cross is so full you cannot read a newspaper, you still cannot get on a tube in rush hour unless you live close to the end of a line, and the huge commuter army marching over London Bridge in the morning and evening rush does not appear to have diminished either.

Yet when I go to my usual sandwich bar Paulo and Claudio, the owners say business is terrible. I have to admit here and now to taking sandwiches for my lunch at the moment, but that is because in the West End of London where I end up most lunch times, it is so expensive and the queues are still very long that it is easier to take sandwiches, as well as the need to save money. As I have said before, a contractor taking sandwiches to work, times must be hard. But with the exchange rate between the Euro and the Pound approaching equilibrium I have to make savings where ever I can.

I must be thankful I am still working, it is not nice being unemployed, but I still can’t help wondering if there are thousands of Clives out there, still going to work even though they have been made redundant. Clive is the side kick of Alex in the cartoons of the same name published in the Daily Telegraph.

Well since I am employed I had better get on with some work….

Cheers

Christmas is coming....

Its well over time that I updated the blog again, but what to write, Tell it like it is, as the instruction goes

I drove down from London to Sigogne this weekend as I had both my cars in London for MOTs bad timing having them both so close together but that’s life. So on Friday morning I drove down to Sevenoaks to leave the car at the train station, this means I do not have to drive out of London in the middel of the day, and it gives me a 20 mile head start on the drive to Dover. The ferry was over an hour late by the time we reached Calais having set off 45 minutes late due to congestion in the ports. ETA in Sigogne was originally 11:00pm so this was going to be a late one. A decision had to be made, do I go via Paris or Rouen. Since we were an hour late I would not hit Paris until after 7:00pm going in from the North so I thought I would risk it hoping that I had missed the rush hour. No such luck and it took an hour and a half to get round Paris all because there was a big jam for one junction on the peripherique, so now I’m another hour late, but the rest of the went without incident and I arrived home at 12:45am so I made up some time, as the roads south of Paris were empty.

Another weekend of work saw a bit more progress on the bathroom though not as much as I would have liked as I had to keep re positioning a wall where the shower was due to be installed. I re plumbed it 3 times!! But hopefully the wall and the pipe work for the shower are now in the right place.

Bogdan our builder is making good progress on the main rooms, my new bigger hallway has been made, 30 centimeters wider than the old one, but nearly 2 meters higher at its highest point so it should give more of a feeling of space as people walk up the stairs, everyone has been laughing at me for moving a wall 30cms so I hope I will be proved right, otherwise it will be known as Darren’s folly.

The weather was aweful, it rained almost the whole weekend, with a big storm on Saturday night/Sunday morning, so it was a staying in weekend. Franca did lots of Christmas Craft work with Fleur, which meant I could get on with working almost undisturbed, which was really great of her as she looks aftrer Fleur all week on her own. The slight down side is that Fleur is now getting exited about Christmas and its only the 1st of December. This coming weekend I have to put up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house, so Fleur can help me do that. so I hope the weather is going to be better than last weekend. Then the following weekend it will be time to decorate the Christmas tree and the inside of the house, if Fleur can wait that long.

Cheers for now….

John Sargent quits Strictly Come Dancing

Well reader its nice to see the newspaper media keeping thier senses of proportion in these troubled times. The London Evening Standard, tagging its self as London's quality daily paper leads this evening with Fans Furious as John Quits Strictly. A reference to John Sargent's decision that he is going to stop being the butt of everyone's jokes in the BBC's hit Saturday night show Strictly Come Dancing, so what the hell I may as well jump on the band waggon as well. After all its not that important that another 10,000 Londoners lost thier jobs today, I guess that is just not news any more. Even another interest rate cut on the cards did not enthuse London's Quality Daily, and the coverage of the Baby P enquiry has reached that point where it slides from the front pages to the inside as the papers wish for something else to come along and grab thier attention, as they start to run out of things to say.

But back to the band waggon... I mean.. pressing news of the day... did John Sargent jump or was he pushed, I'll let you make your own mind up.. but lets get the swingometer out to measure public opinion, what does Mr Obama think, I'm sure he is tapping a note to the BBC on his Blackberry at this very moment, will John's poor timing affect the England performance tonight..

ok ok enough is enough :-) or is it....

Birthday weekend....

Last weekend was a special weekend, it was Fleur’s birthday. Friday was her actual birthday and she took cake and drinks to school as is the tradition in France, and now apparently in the UK too, never happened in my day that I can remember…

Saturday was the day of the Fleur’s birthday party, and to be honest it was something I was slightly dreading. The thought of having ten 6 years running around that I could not understand, and they not being able understand my feeble attempts at French, was not my idea of fun. However as it turned out I had nothing to worry about it all went well and I understood most of what was said to me and I think I mostly made myself understood as well.

Franca of course did most of the talking and she did an excellent job of organising all the games, and marshalling the children. We did all sorts of old fashioned games such as musical chairs, musical statues, blind mans buff and a few others I had never heard of, and all the children took part enthusiastically. Everything was conducted at 100 decibels or more and at lightning speed, as six year olds never walk they always run (not like Sting’s Englishman in New York). After three hours Franca, her mother and I were exhausted, but it seems like children had a good time, and fleur enjoyed herself which is the main thing.

Fleur got lots of lovely presents I think more than 20 in total as well as quite a lot of money too, from us she got a new bike, a proper one which is just a tad too big but she was enthusiastically riding it around the garden on Sunday. She also got a traditional Dutch game from Franca’s mum which we played at the party called Dutch Shuffleboard, which is quite addictive. Thanks to all those who sent pressies and money Fleur appreciated them all.

No sooner is Fleur’s birthday over than thoughts turn to Christmas, I popped in to Toys r Us in Bordeaux as it has been years since I have been in a toy shop (excluding Hamleys once a year for stocking pressies), to look at potential Christmas presents, and the queues at the checkout were enormous, I was glad I was not buying anything, Still my Christmas shopping weekend is this coming weekend as I am in the UK, still with the credit crunch hopefully the shops will not be too crowded.

Christmas in France is not as huge as it is in the UK luckily so we will not be mortgaging the house for presents like some folks do, though we seemed to have joined in the competition to see who can get the most lights on their house, though we are way down at the bottom of the league thank goodness. Christmas is a one day festival in France with the 26th being a normal working day. The turn of the year is marked very quietly too, no crazy parties, and no fireworks, though the French do push the food boat out even further than normal with a 12 course meal and midnight almost passes without acknowledgment in comparison to the UK and Holland.

leaves on the line.....

Its that time of year again in the UK, when all the trains are delayed by leaves on the line. For 2 weeks or so each year during autumn when the wind and rain combine they strip all the autumn leaves off the trees in a very short period of time which for railways is a fatal combination. The weather in the UK over the weekend had been wet and windy so...

This Monday I landed at Luton on time and the shuttle bus was waiting to take me to the railway station, so we got there nicely on schedule, I just had time to buy a ticket and a sandwich before the train arrived. Then it started, "First Capital Connect is sorry to announce...." and then three trains in a row were cancelled or severely delayed, so instead of arriving at the office at 2:00pm it was after 3:00 when I finally arrived. Travellers were confused as first one train was scheduled to arrive then suddenly it is changed to another. Luton Airport Parkway station may be unique in suffering from too many public announcements, the automatic announcements are so loud that you cannot hear the ones made by the station controllers, so you are none the wiser.

There was also chaos at London Bridge in the evening as well as trains were delayed or cancelled there were changes of platform, and a total lack of announcements about the situation as the destination boards flipped back and forth trying to keep up what was going on on the ground or should I say rails.

To be honest we really do not know if it was leaves on the line or something else entirely as nobody told us, but as it appeared to be so widespread we can only assume that leaves were the problem.

oh the joys of being a London commuter, why don't we give it all up and move to France..... ah....

Silly Me...

I have to come clean here and admit to my English language reader (because Franca has already told it in Dutch) about the howler of a mistake I made last week.

It is probably one of your worst nightmares, next to loosing your passport in a foreign country, it is also why there has been no blog for a week or so, I flew back to the UK last Monday as usual with no problems went to work and then at the end of the day headed back Lee for a well earned early night. However when I got to the front door of the house I could not find the keys, and then the sudden horror dawned on me that they were probably still in France, so I phoned the wife and yes they were on the bedside table. Franca phoned the house owners in the hopes that they had left a spare key some where and indeed they had, a neighbour had a key, trouble is you need two keys to get into the house. So I had no choice but to go back to London and then to my parents in Southend, going via Next & Boots on the way to buy some clothes and toiletries. Luckily I had somewhere to go otherwise it would have been London hotels and it would have cost even more, just when we are trying to save as much money as possible for the house.

Such is life, I still do not know what the keys were doing on the bedside table, I never take them out of my jacket pocket in France, the departure checking before leaving the house will be even more rigorous, and I will get a spare second key cut to leave with the neighbour,... and Joy I appreciated the text on Sunday night hahahaha...... I don't think I will forget keys ever again...

A Marathon Weekend....

This weekend was Jarnac Marathon weekend, we had 9 runners staying with us on Friday evening, and they all needed breakfast at 6:30am on Saturday morning so no lay-ins for us on Saturday either. So having feed the runners and waved them off at 7:30 we cleaned out the rooms ready for our marathon run on the washing machine, and I got to work trying to install the new ceiling for the new bathroom I am working on.

I worked the whole day Saturday until the light ran out and it really did not look like I had done a great deal, but as they say it is all in the preparation. Bogdan our builder told me on Friday afternoon I needed to double up on the insulation I had put up which meant lowering the ceiling by installing ceiling rails that hung from the existing wooden roof struts. He told me I was putting them in the wrong way, I was fixing the rails along the roofing struts instead of across them, but this worked out better for installing the marine plasterboard. By the end of the day my arms and my shoulders were really suffering, I find it hard work working above my head for a whole day, marine plasterboard may only be 1.5mm thicker than normal plaster board, but that still makes it a lot heavier than the normal stuff, so I collapsed in bed around 9:00pm and slept quite soundly.

Sunday was tidying up day and cake making day, it is Fleurs birthday next weekend, so we needed to make cakes for school and for her party on Saturday afternoon. Fleur and I did the tidying up together, we tidied up the mess I left from yesterdays work and the mess that Bogdan left on Friday, I’d rather tidy up for him, then I get a bit more real work from him for my hard earned Euros.

The cake making was nothing short of a disaster, for someone who spent a year making them professionally. It came down to not knowing your ingredients, or at least trying to match an English recipe to French ingredients, and then learning the French way of doing things. The first two cakes I made did not rise a millimeter, then I discovered that although I had got flour for patisserie it was not self raising flour. Then it was trying to get the amount of baking power right, which I failed to do on the third cake and I think only just got right on the 4th cake, so finally after 4 hours of cooking we managed one dubious cake for decorating, I then discovered that my ready rolled lazy persons icing had gone missing, so Fleur and I made our own, and finally we managed to get one cake decorated. (you can see the results on Franca's blog). Franca is going to have a go at another cake during the week, using a French recipe, and I think that is the key, trying to use French ingredients with an English recipe does not always go smoothly, as we have discovered more than already.

So its Monday morning in the rain, which has fallen for most of the weekend, and I am at Bordeaux airport waiting for my Easyjet flight back to Luton, November is nightmare flight month, as everything is expensive (half term holidays), the winter time tables have started, and the best time slots have been given to winter destinations, so I am on a 12:20pm flight back to the UK and on Friday the return takes off at just after 9:00am so I am loosing a lot of billable time, luckily over the last few weeks I’ve built up a lot of additional hours credit to tide me over.

Snow in Southern England Today

This is extremely rare but it has been snowing in Southern England today, the earliest many can ever remember...





Snow in a Stevenage garden with thanks for the photo from a www.netweather.tv member

The step