The blog is late this week and it is entirely due to the visit of our good friends from the red ramblers. We have spent the weekend walking and eating and stayed up late chatting and drinking Armagnac, whisky and Emile’s calvados. So I have had no time to write up the blog until after they left this morning. The red ramblers are a walking group set up from friends in the Labour party in Weymouth. When we lived in England we went walking around beautiful Dorset once a month and always had a ...

I have decided that it is time to start my missionary work and try to teach the French how to play cricket. It has clearly been one of Britain’s greatest triumphs to take cricket around the world and to create teams that end up beating us! Although I see today that we beat New Zealand in the first test match. I explained last week that Mrs. Parish had been tasked to return from her visit to England with a cricket set so we could start playing cricket and encourage the French that cricket is...

A quieter week and no bad thing. I managed to survive until Mrs. Parish returned from her visit to England for a school reunion. By all accounts she had a great time with 40 years worth of catching up with her old friends. Apparently after 40 years they all look exactly the same!! Mrs. Parish arrived back at midnight on Tuesday via the ferry from Portsmouth to Caen. It is then a 2 hour drive to our house. That of course had the advantage that I had all day on Tuesday to clean up the house and...

It’s hard to know where to start this week as there has been much excitement here at La Godefrere. What more? I hear you say, surely more excitement cannot be possible in one small place. Well this is magical France where there is excitement and wonder every day. (That may be a slight exaggeration). To start I must make you just a little jealous. I am sat in our garden on a gorgeous sunny afternoon. I have a glass of white wine (a rather nice Macon) and I have been watching from my chair th...