Over the past two weeks it has been immensely hot, to the extent that in the middle of the day it has been too hot to be outdoors. This has resulted in a number of thunder storms and heavy rain. The heat wave has been called La Grande Chaleur in the French media, meaning the great heat and warnings have been issued about the dangers of excessive temperatures. On Monday evening the skies darkened as storm clouds gathered and we heard the rumble of thunder coming our way. One of the things we h...

For all you followers of French culture, you will recognise the line in the title as being from the song Sur la pont D’Avignon and it can be translated as “we all dance there in a ring”. This is rather an obscure way of introducing this week’s blog as we have not been to Avignon but we have been dancing, almost in a ring. We have discovered so far that the French are great people to live amongst and in rural France at least, the most friendly and generous people. Yesterday evening Mrs...

Bon fete, today, the 14^th July is Bastille Day in France. A national holiday to celebrate the storming of the Bastille in Paris during the French revolution. Mrs. Parish and I joined the French in celebrating by going to a local town for a mass car boot sale. The French seem to like nothing more than a boot sale although in France it is called a ”vide grenier” which literally means empty attic. Judging by the amazing array of stuff for sale, there are a lot of empty attics locally. Mrs. P...

Lots to catch up with after 2 weeks and a trip back to England. Sadly I have to report the sad demise of Henny Penny our aged chicken. We inherited her when we bought the house as she was the last of the chickens owned by Dave and Julie. As regular readers of the blog will know Henny was certainly a character. She was clearly top of the pecking order, keeping the cats at bay with strategic pecks. She also had the ability to train her sights on any piece of cake or sandwich that came within he...