Christmas week has been and gone. We ate too much and drank too much (well at least I did). A time which should have meant peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind turned out to be a bit more incident packed than we would have wanted. Mind you that could be the case most weeks at La Godefrere. My retirement retreat to the quiet and solitude of rural France has not quite lived up to expectations.

This last week started badly with a cake crisis (une crise de gateau). Sounds even more dramatic ...

A brief blog update this week as Christmas festivities descend upon La Godefrere. Hopefully will be back to the full report next week.

So it is now 22^ndDecember and officially winter started yesterday. Coincidentally the cold weather has disappeared and we now have rain, lots of it. So the cruel frost of last week has gone and I have managed to complete my poor man gathering winter fuel routine. All the wood is safely gathered in and stored away either in the wood shed or around the grounds, n...

Brightly shone the moon that night,
though the frost was cruel,
when a poor man came in sight,
gathering winter fuel.

As we move closer to Christmas we of course have to get out our CD of cheesy Christmas music including lots of Carols. Mrs. Parish has set up her version of Santa’s workshop in her sewing garret and is disappearing for hours at a time “making Christmas”. Actually most of her work has been on designing and making Christmas cards and wrapping presents. A book has just arrived ...

'Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane.

It has been a bit like a scene from Macbeth this week as I seem to have spent hours in the garden moving brush wood down to our big field for it to be burnt. The brush wood is all the small branches and leaves that came off the trees cut down or pruned. This meant that all around the garden there were great piles of brushwood. Mrs. Parish likes a good bonfire so decided that we should burn the brushwood i...

It is cider making time and as you might assume this is of great importance to the French. Emile and Yvette came round last week for the final lot of our cider apples. We had some late fruiting trees and so collected them up. Mrs. Parish also went round to help Emile pick up his apples and spent a happy afternoon on her knees! I was unable to help as I was allocated to important Assistant Tree Surgeon duties. More of which later.

Once the apples had been collected we were invited round to watc...