Another one bites the dust

Interview Grant & Forsyth

If you are interested, here's the link to the interview http://www.guysndollsfan.co.uk
The 1st question is Franca's one.

A glass of Champagne, what else

I had a sudden thought at the weekend, my wife can be described as a true fan, where as I probably am not, when it comes to music, her choice of singers, bands etc. Since we have known each other 3 people have come into my life whom I would never other wise had given any thought to let alone listen to. The first is Julien Clerc, a French singer, and my wife’s number one favourite of all time, I think I scrape in just ahead of him in the popularity stakes but it’s a close run thing as my daughter and I found out at a concert of his in Bordeaux week or two ago. It was a sit down concert, however the point came in the concert when you could go down to the stage, the wife handed me my daughter and just ran for it, leaving us to sit together for the rest of the concert. The other two people are Julie Forsyth (daughter of Bruce) and Dominic Grant, now a duet, but formerly 1/3rd of Guys 'n Dolls a pop group from the seventies (if I'm allowed to describe them as that). We had guests staying with us at our B&B over the weekend, but for two hours whilst Julie and Dominic were appearing on a BBC radio show she was lost to us, sat in front of the computer emailing and listening to the show on the internet. The guests did not seem to mind as they were busy house hunting on the internet, so Fleur and I kept them fed and watered and answered their questions on house hunting

I am obviously not a true music fan as none of my favourite groups would illicit such a reaction from me, the odd classic car might have me running across a road to take a closer look, but that is about it.

Having said all that I would not change the way Franca is for anything, its part of her character and that’s what I love about her. So what did we do on Valentines Day, well I serviced the lawn mower for Franca, dug the vegetable patch and planted up some flowers with Fleur and Franca prepared a room for our guests. Luckily the weekend before was the weekend of the Julien Clerc concert, so it was an early Valentines Day present for Franca. We did surprise our guests when they arrived by opening Champagne for them, well it wouldn’t be Valentines Day without a bottle of bubbly now would it.. oops perhaps that what I am a true fan of :-)

In Surrey....

....everything is white...snow paradise for children.....and some adults....

Julien Clerc Live Concert

A weekend Break

Last weekend I did not do any work on the house as we had a mini weekend away in Bordeaux. Julien Clerc (a French singer for those that don't know) was giving a concert in Bordeaux, and since Franca is one of his greatest fans we had to be there, well she had to be there, we went along to make sure Julien was OK. By we I mean Fleur and I, it was Fleurs' first live adult concert, she has seen the Balamory show live, but this was her first music concert and she loved it. I am not a fan of Julien Clerc but his music is good in parts and so was the concert. He is undoubtedly a good live performer in a French sort of way, what do I mean by that, well you get a much deeper explanation of some of the songs, and all the collaborators get a mention, and even the road crew got thanked by name during the concert. I enjoyed it, and Franca thought it was absolutely fantastic, it would be the other way round if we went to a Pink Floyd or Genesis concert, though I am not sure where Fleur would stand on that one.

Fleur also enjoyed the fact that it was here first time in a hotel, that she can remember, she has stayed in quite a few hotels but she was too young to remember, she certainly enjoyed her breakfast on Sunday morning.. and in the end her eyes were of course bigger than her tummy.

Well now its back to work, the plane flew as normal this morning, and the trains were back to normal as well, just in time for the next storm to arrive! time to batten down the hatches again..

Snow snow snow

Well last week was an interesting week to say the least. Loads of snow falling in South East England meant last Mondays' flight from Limoges to Stansted was cancelled, forcing me to drive to the UK to get to work. All the way up from Sigogne to Lewisham it rained. I had no problems on the roads and I reached Lewisham in the time I normally do in the dry. I saw lots of laying snow from about Paris up wards to London, but I did not see a single snowflake fall.

Tuesday, I got the train in to the office, the train was almost empty and again no travel problems at all. Tuesday evening I decided I'd better get my car from the airport car park before I needed a mortgage to pay the exit fee, so I jumped on the Stansted Express for the 46 minute journey to the airport. 3 hours later I finally arrived at the airport after a points failure outside Stansted Airport meant the train had to go back to Bishops Stortford, that was after and hour of waiting for the points to be fixed, then the engineers deciding they could not fix it, so they sent the train back down the line to Bishops Stortford to catch a bus to the airport. So almost everyone on the train missed their flights that night, and I had a wasted evening.

Wednesday, and the great British public decided they would go back to work and so the trains were packed again, so I was lucky to actually get on the train at all.

Finally Thursday was a near normal day, though I had to go and meet my accountant so I had to sneak off early to drive to Southend, where I got bad news from the accountant and a hearty dinner from my mum. Friday morning saw me setting off at 5:00am for Dover. It was dry when I left London and there were just a few spots of rain as I got to Dover. The rest of the drive down to Sigogne was done in sunshine and rising temps so that by the time I got home it was 12 degrees. Mean while in the UK the South East had once again ground to a halt under a blanket of snow.

Stormy weekend

We prepared ourselves by closing all shutters and removing 'dangerous' obstacles present in our garden and we even extra secured the gates. The forecast was a violent wind who could reach 150km/hour, together with rain.

Luckily it hasn't been that dramatic as it was in March 2007, just when we moved to Sigogne, but it gives you a very good idea.

You see the famous Cognac house, Courvoisier in Jarnac, which is only about 3 kilometers from us.

What's been happening

Barack Obama is now the President of the USA, more British banks are in trouble, and people are loosing thier jobs at an alarming rate, so it has been a tough start to the year so far. I count my self lucky that I have managed to avoid most of the economic fall out that is occurring around me at the moment.

What have I been up to since the snow fell in the Charente, well nothing out of the ordinary really. The bathroom for the family suite has finally been boarded out, which means the plumbing has progressed far enough that it is finally in a state where I can cover it up. We have finished the annex room to the family suite, it just needs carpet and furniture now, so it is on to getting the family room itself finished and the en-suite bathroom which is proving a bit of a challenge. I have to plumb everything taking into account the bathroom which will be installed directly below it downstairs, and a new cloakroom, OK its another toilet really, but this all has to be done in one go so that I do not keep undoing things. Project planning they call it…which is what I get paid for during week at the moment. Oh well back to the grind stone, I am really looking forward to those lazy summer days now, it has been cold and rain in UK since 2009 began, and in France too, it time for the days to start getting longer and warmer. Sadly I think we have another 6 weeks before we really start to see and feel spring time...

For all the mums, but dads can watch too!

Snow in the Charente

As you can see from below pictures, Sigogne has been hit by snowfall. The views are from Au Bellefleur towards the fence and from the fence to the house. The street with the trees is where our house is and the vineyard opposite us.
Fleur on her way to school and later on playing with a friend in the garden.

On our way to school this morning, for once we were early, only to find out that there wasn't school today. There was only one teacher and it has been decided that it was too dangerous to keep the school open to all pupils, at least that was thier take on the situation...., but believe it or not the whole of normal life here has come to a compete stand still. The lorry for the rubbish didn't come and nor did the postman...

Well, we're having a great time in the snow...

More snow in the Charente

Once upon a time...

...in the South-West of France....in a village surrounded by vine-yards, called Sigogne, there was snow......and last night was the night! It snows so little in the Charente due to its micro climate kept warm by the gulf stream, that when it happens it is a big event. It also snowed in London at the same time though it looks like more snow fell in Sigogne than London. Temparatures in the Charente are also lower than London at the moment, though it is getting colder in London now, its been a strange winter this year so far, hopefully the vines and other crops will survive this spell as January and February are planting out times normally in this area.

The promised Christmas & New Year Update

The first blog of a new year, and a look back at my 10 day holiday which seems have gone by in the blink of an eye, there are a number of posts to read, so scroll down a bit... and as if by magic a bit later some photos will appear... thanks Liefje..

It all started at 4:30am on Christmas Eve when I set off for Dover to charge down to Sigogne, it was a dull day, but then that’s the best sort for driving. It was surprisingly quiet on the 06:40 crossing to Calais, unlike today which it is absolutely heaving, and so I guess the boat will be full, even the first class lounge, usually a quiet haven is full today.

Back to Christmas, I arrived in Sigogne in brilliant sunshine, which as usual came out just as I got to Poitiers, strange how that almost always happens, driving through France under dull skies only for the clouds to part at Poitiers. I passed our guests, Franca’s brother and his family, twice on the run down to Sigogne, Franca’s brother was coming down to stay with us for Christmas.

So by 6:00pm we were all around the fire with a glass of Champagne starting to get into the Christmas spirit. Enrico, Franca’s brother and Marlies, Enrico’s wife and 2 year old son Mauro came down from the Netherlands, so their drive was even longer than mine which meant an early night for one and all before the big day. Fleur was excited about Christmas for the first time, where as Mauro did not quite understand what was going on. Fleur managed to get to sleep and slept until 9:00am, so none of the getting up at 4:00am to see if Santa has been yet...

Franca and I said that we would not have so many presents this year but when you looked under the tree there still seemed to be an aweful lot of presents for such a small family, and it took and hour and a half to open all the pressies, everyone was very pleased with their low tech pressies, the only person who got high tech stuff was Franca, and I still have to set up her new radio for the kitchen which has an iPod connection, and the idea is to buy Franca an iPod so she can listen to all the songs she wants to when she gets fed up with the radio.

More from the Christmas & New Year update

Christmas continued when Jean-Luc our neighbour dropped in, to very kindly bring Fleur a present, around 12:00pm and so we broke out the Pineau, which set the tone for the day. I was Christmas day chef along with Franca, who made her infamous broccoli soup, which as usual went down a storm, followed by a little salmon amuse. The main course was venison steaks with a red wine and black berry sauce with roasted veggies and roast potatoes, which was well received and then it was British Christmas pudding with brandy butter and ice cream. A very nice Christmas dinner, I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. There was of course copious amounts of bubbly wine, and a very nice bottle of red Margaux 2004. So that was Christmas day interspersed with playing a few games with Fleur, and loads of chatting of course, all in Dutch.

Boxing day, a normal working day in France, was Enrico’s turn to cook, so it was off to the supermarket for provisions and then off to Cognac for a walk around the old town and a visit to a few shops, followed by the inevitable visit to a bar for a drink, then back home again for Enrico to go into the kitchen. Enrico produced an amazing mushroom risotto, with left over roasted veggies which still tasted fine, the standard of cuisine was being set pretty high this Christmas.

The following day (27th Dec) was Roulliac market day and so despite the almost sub zero temperatures we headed off to the market for a tour round the clothing dominated market, which I find a slight disappointment as would like to see a lot more food stalls. Still Enrico had volunteered to cook again and stocked up with provisions from the fish stall and produced and Italien style ‘Fruit de Mere’ which again was fantastic. We retreated from the market after about an hour as it was really really cold. I needed to get back to chop wood, Enrico dived back into the kitchen to make his ‘Fruit de Mere’, whilst I set about chopping wood for the fire.

On Sunday the 28th we went to Au Fin Bois, a really nice local restaurant, for lunch giving everyone a rest from cooking. Since little Mauro was only two years old, he still punctuates his day with a sleep in the early afternoon, which was fine for us as it means everyone got a little rest, usually. It was a really great few days with Marlies, Mauro and Enrico. Sadly they had to go back home on the 29th as Enrico and Marlies had to return to work, as the saying goes better to quit while you are head and we had a great time and would certainly do it all again.