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: July, 2016

Visitor value; beautiful Bagnoles; eating in style, Archie is caught napping and the chicken protocol

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, July 31, 2016,
I finished the blog last week just as I was preparing to eat a meal prepared by chef, Sam who was visiting us with Emma and her family. He was cooking bouillabaisse a French fish stew cooked in a thick tomato sauce (it also includes langoustines and mussels). I have to say that it was excellent. We ate outside sat round our big table on the patio in the very warm evening sun. With fresh French bread and of course some lovely French wine, it was a great experience. It was also nice to share th...

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The Blight; the woodman cometh; mosquito mayhem; the return of the cows and Mrs. Parish finds a jigglypuff in the garden!

Posted by Graham Parish on Monday, July 25, 2016,

So, our visitors arrived last evening and we had a great evening using our new barbecue as it was lovely and sunny. Of course we also had a suitable amount of wine and sat outside until late when the owls were out and calling and our resident bats were out feeding and flying around. They are amazing as they fly straight towards you but their echo locations system means they change direction at the last minute and never hit you in the head. Most people duck nevertheless.

This unfortunately mean...

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The owls are OK a brief temporary update (more tomorrow!)

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, July 24, 2016,
We are expecting visitors at any minute as our daughter in law, Emma and her mum and family are due here for the next week. So we have been spending all day cleaning up and getting ready. So no time for the full blog. I am hoping to do a full update tomorrow on wood; mosquitoes; the return of the cows and of course the full blight crisis. In the mean time after last week’s excitement you will want to know that the baby little owl is fine having survived its close encounter with Moggie. It h...

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Storming the Bastille; the peace and quiet of rural France; dive bombing owls; and an attack of the blight

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

This week on Thursday was France’s national day “Fete nationale” in France but probably better known as “Bastille Day” following the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789 which is recognised as marking the start of the French Revolution. But what happened on that fateful day?

On the morning of 14 July 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of alarm. The partisans of the Third Estate in France (basically everybody who wasn’t a clergyman or a noble), had earlier stormed the Hôt...

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We are a European family; nature’s ups and downs; the Tour de France comes by; foot de France; and the chicken lady rules

Posted by Graham Parish on Monday, July 11, 2016,
Well, I have just sat down to write up my blog and I am sorry it is 24 hours late. This is entirely due to the unfathomable way in which the French operate. We are members of the Euro Mayenne Association. This is an organisation formed 25 years ago with the express purpose of welcoming European citizens who have chosen to live in the Mayenne Department. The aim is to help those people settle into the area, introduce them to french culture and to help them to learn how to speak French. The Fre...

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Out of Europe twice in a week but Allez les bleus; Samsung syncing; owlets out, cat comedy, cows clear off and chicken manoeuvres and rainy rain

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, July 3, 2016,
A week has gone by and still Mrs. Parish and I are discussing how it all went wrong. How did we come to be out of Europe, who is to blame, were we lied to and it is a national disgrace? However much time we spend going round the problem, looking at it from different angles and completely analysing the problem we just have to face the facts England lost to Iceland and we are out of the Euro 2016 tournament. Oh the humiliation of such an abject performance.

Of course we had an immediate message ...

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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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