Welcome to the Blog part of the website. This is my attempt to make sense of Kate and I living in France, the lifestyle,the french, my home and animals and anything else that seems amusing to me. Sorry I have a strange sense of humour!! 

The blog is written on a monthly basis with regular  news of my adventures and those of my animals at La Godefrere.  You can now look us up on our new facebook page - La Godefrere.

This website can no longer host my blog so I have changed to using wordpress. This can be accessed through the following link:

Link to my blog

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Browsing Archive: March, 2015

A week in which we: hear why learning French is important; have problems with Emily and Pam; retaliate against the moles; discover a rebel cow and enforce the outside cat regime

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, March 29, 2015,
Another week has gone by and as ever here at La Godefrere we have no time to be bored. Life in rural France is delightfully quiet and slow which suits us and the life style we have been adopting. Some English friends ask whether we get fed up and have nothing to do. Well first of all, Mrs. Parish subscribes to the “idle hands make the devil’s work” philosophy so she is always busy and has that woman’s knack of doing several things at once. I am more of “the slow and steady wins the ...

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Spring recedes, we buy a ruin for a Euro, visit the mayor, new lambs arrive, the moles fight back and the hunting gendarmes return

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, March 22, 2015,
I finished last week’s blog to go and try Jean-Pierre’s Pommeau. Wow, it is really very good. In fact so good I had to have a second glass just to make sure. Of course it could be the quality of our apples which were used to make it. Or maybe the calvados but it is very smooth and suitably alcoholic. Anyway we have three bottles which should last a while although maybe not.

What has happened to the spring? Last week we were outside in the garden in glorious sunshine and Mrs. Parish was eve...

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We meet the wild rover and a yellow submarine; have cat capers; get an apple return; Mrs. Parish has a back puff, goes to Binkyland and I have Eeyore syndrome

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, March 15, 2015,
We have just returned from our latest Sunday lunch experience. This time we went to a little village over the border in Normandy called Mantilly. This was another in Emile and Yvette’s round of lunch time events at various village halls around the area. This one was in aid of veterans of army service in Algeria just for a change. This was a much smaller affair than many we have been to but French nonetheless. It was the usual arrangement with the tickets saying from 12 noon. We arrived at 1...

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We experience the sun, hook up the tractor, engage in rustic crafts and encounter moles, mice, cats, birds, bikes and the ants awake

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, March 8, 2015,
I said in my last blog that there were signs of spring and that maybe the weather would change. Well, after a couple of weeks of cold and rain the sun has finally arrived. We have had a glorious week of clear skies and sunny all day. The wind has dropped and so it has been really lovely and warm. The mornings are lighter so there is a real incentive to get out of bed and get on with the day. There is a lot to do out in the garden and of course this also means it is tractor time!

The grass desp...

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Another week of giboulees; decorating with Dylan; Gendarmes at the door; cats and madness; first signs of spring!

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, March 1, 2015,
As I predicted last week the weather has once again been awful and we have had another week of giboulees (icy showers). Even the cheery woman on the French weather has found it difficult to maintain her cheerful enthusiasm as every evening she shows weather charts showing nothing but rain or if you live in the Alps or Pyrenees, then bucket loads of snow and reports on another wave of “perturbations”. However it seems that her dresses have become more colourful and brighter as the week pro...

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About Me


Graham Parish Graham Parish is a former UNISON Trade Union official who retired to France with Kate (a previous self employed gardener and now resident gardener here) to start a new life of wine, cheese, french bread and a vegetable garden on a large rural french farm with holiday gite, and associated animals.

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