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: May, 2017

The mystery of the French poubelle; Batman returns; the smart Ant City; don’t forget the moles and the nature trail develops

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, May 28, 2017,

Everyone who comes to France is, I suspect, like me amused and intrigued at the French name for a dustbin as a “Poubelle”.  It has connotations of the word poo. Perhaps it means “beautiful smell”. In fact, it is not a translatable word as the humble French dustbin is named after the civil servant who first introduced the idea of a container to collect household rubbish. It was named after Eugene Poubelle.

Poubelle was born in Caen. He studied to become a lawyer and obtained a PhD. He t...

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The story of French cock; the owl starling; cycling gadgets and circling buzzards; tax deductible lunch.

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, May 21, 2017,
This morning next door’s cockerel Victor was in full voice. It may be that Giselle and Daniel
Have invested in some new chickens. This usually produces some extra effort from Victor and he usually starts early in the morning and he goes through a full repertoire of crowing.

Of course, it is relevant to remember that the cock is a French national symbol and this led me to seeking an explanation as to how a humble chicken got to such an elevated position. The Latin word Gallus means both "roost...

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Macron, President; The beast of La Godefrere; donkey drama; a chicken stroller; gite special offer; cat thieves

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, May 14, 2017,
Well, in the end it was a clear victory for Emmanuel Macron who won with 66% share of the vote compared to Le Pen who got 34%. What is in many ways more significant is the number of abstentions and what in France are called “votes blanc” (literally a white vote as the voter puts a plain white slip of paper into their voting envelope to signify that they have voted but not voted for either candidate). There were 12 million abstentions by people who stayed away and did not vote. There were ...

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More culture starts with a mad monk; French election insults; on guard owls, casual cows and lamb’s legs and ends at afro – fusion with Mad Lenoir

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, May 7, 2017,
We continued our French culture theme with our friends from the North. We felt it only right to carry on our missionary work with Sandy and Kathy, from up North. So, on Tuesday we went to see an art exhibition by Bernard Chardon. 

The artist is a priest and the museum housing his work is situated in an old chapel which is part of a large nunnery come old people’s home just outside Lassay-les-Chateaux. Being a religious artist of course I always refer to him as that mad monk artist and have ...

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Our friends from the North arrive and are culturally enhanced; whisky is tidied and we are visited by 14 buzzards and then the lamb feast

Posted by Graham Parish on Monday, May 1, 2017,
This week we have our friends Sandy and Kathy here to stay. They are from Yorkshire in the north of England and therefore from an area culturally deprived. Therefore, we felt it would be a good plan to spend the weekend introducing them to the cultural magnificence of France. Our immediate thought was wine! On Friday, we took them to one of our local supermarkets which just happened to have a Spring wine sale with plenty of special offers. This ended up with us buying a trolley full of wine, ...

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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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