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: January, 2016

We bid a weary farewell to Christmas; finally it ceases to be Sunday; we encounter Alpaca antics, visit a forgotten animal park and get back to the repas circuit

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, January 31, 2016,
So it is finally the end of Christmas at La Godefrere after our fourth experience of festivities. This past week we have had our vegan Christmas with Amy and Charlotte. It seems like a long time since our daughter Jo came for the first Christmas back in December. We have had to work hard to cope with an excessive amount of eating and drinking and have played so many board games that we are playing in our sleep. One of the most difficult things has been listening to our CD of Christmas music r...

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No.4 – Christmas with the Vegans; a secret consignment arrives; we have a very French Sunday and find out what the French do in winter

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, January 24, 2016,
It snowed and so winter was here properly. But it didn't last and anyway we had more important things......


Winter from our front door.

So, our fourth and hopefully final Christmas has arrived with visit of my daughter Amy and partner, Charlotte. They are both vegans and accordingly eat no meat or any animal product. So no milk or dairy products. This poses a bit of a challenge in France who are not really used to vegetarians let alone vegans. The usual response is to expect them to eat chicken...

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In the land that time forgot it is Christmas no 3. We have a birthday feast, with dogs and cats thrown in; winter arrives and the cats go into dispute

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, January 17, 2016,

So this week we move away from history to arrive at the land that time forgot. Here at La Godefrere time has stood still and it is still Christmas. At least for us it is Christmas no.3 as our son Ian and wife, Emma arrived along with friend Sarah. They arrived on Monday and we went into Christmas mode with lots of presents to unwrap and of course Kir Royales to drink.

It was also Ian’s 40th birthday and so we had a double celebration and to mark the occasion we had a lamb feast. This was wit...

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Mid-Christmas limbo; Mrs.Parish and the three headed beast from hell; Real Tennis and the headbanging Kings of France

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, January 10, 2016,
It has been a quiet week and not much has happened. We are in a kind of mid Christmas limbo. As I mentioned last week we are awaiting the arrival of our son, Ian and his wife, Emma along with friend Sarah. They arrive tomorrow and we can then officially start Christmas no.3. So this week has been pretty much spent preparing for their arrival.

We have had to go out and do lots of shopping and the cart seemed to be outweighed by alcohol and cheese. We especially had to get some Beaujolais so tha...

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A week with no Christmas, we watch Ming vase juggling; visit the 100 years war; harass a hunter; have a mouse smoky and a bread incident

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, January 3, 2016,
Bonne annee, bonne santé. Happy New Year and Good health. So we have arrived successfully into 2016 and I find that I am starting to write the first week of the fourth volume of my blog about life in France. It seems strange to think that we have now been here for over 3 years and have now had our fourth Christmas in France.

I don’t want to confuse readers as of course we are only through 2 of our 4 Christmases of this year. In fact over the past week we have had no Christmases at all. Our ...

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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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