So, I’ve been away from home for three days and just writing that has made me realise that although I still have a foot in the UK I really am feeling that France is actually home now.
I discovered Julia Child just a few months ago after several decades of being completely unaware of her existence. From this you may deduce I am not an American. I say this as, since I first heard of her I’ve discovered that she is in fact an institution and a legend to Americans.
It’s a blue day today – not blue skies – a blue feeling day. It’s rained every day now for four weeks. Here in the Pas-de-Calais we do not have a hosepipe ban – the way things are going we will need to invest in a small boat to get about!
Not very far from where I live, there’s a tiny village, quite pretty with a handful of houses along the side of the road which leads to somewhere else more inhabited. There are two commercial buildings. One is a butcher’s shop – it’s very traditional looking and sells fabulous fresh meat from local farms. Opposite [...]
Hayley Flurer – a brocante afficianado and a lady with a great eye for vintage French accessories and jewellery tells us how she discovered brocantes, vide greniers and braderies – the second hand markets that are held all over France and are a national passion for the French – when she moved from South Africa [...]
My sister came to stay at the weekend and she brought her granddaughter Lily with her. Lily’s name sake is the lily of the valley flower – those delicate plants which at this time of year in France are absolutely everywhere – filling the shelves in shops and perfuming the air with their beautiful scent. [...]
As its approaching May, we normally start to cut down the amount of heating that we need in the house. We don’t have central heating but a big log fire which heats most of the downstairs and then we have additional oil heaters or electric heaters as needed.
Normally, as I said to my friend Katt, when it comes to nightlife, bugger all goes on round here. Where I live, there are no bars within walking distance – marathon running distance maybe but I am not a marathon runner and neither is Katt.
. I know that lots of people love their animals to extremes and I myself am pretty fond of my own animals and I adore my sister’s dog Louis – he’s like a human in dog form. He pretty much communicates and has different noises for things he wants, a low growl for biscuits, a [...]
Today’s post is more about the photographs than the words. I went to the World Kite Flying Championships last week at Berck-sur-Mer in Pas-de-Calais. Berck is not a huge seaside resort but there always seems to be going on and the Kite Flying Championship event was a total surprise to me – it was so [...]
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Well, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that the sheep across the road has gone to the great pasture in the sky. When I bought my house nine years ago it came with a sheep! The lady who owned the house before me had let the man across the road [...]
The allure of the good life in France and the charms of the beautiful town of Beziers ensnared British expat Mark Binmore who runs the highly successful Maison de l’Orb, a beautiful B&B. Mark told us that he lived in London since the early 1990s, worked as a pub landlord for several breweries, is the [...]
Expats in France Donna and Dave Faulkner fell in love with Deux-Sevres in the Poitou-Charentes region when they visited friends who lived there. When Dave was unexpectedly offered a job – they said goodbye to Britain and jumped head first into life in France in their new home which needed a bit of renovation as [...]
British expat Sue Aitken lives in south west France and runs Blackhen Education – a business that she set up after planning to move to Spain to be a teacher. She and her partner travelled through France on their way to jobs and a life in Spain but they fell in love with [...]
How two Brits met and changed their lives with a move to France… Chris was a veteran of 30 years in the Metropolitan police, running his own outdoor activity business specializing in mountain biking, walking and climbing, father to three grown-up children and mentor to many more. Charlotte was a classic single “Social Butterfly”, [...]
I was recently asked to write about expats in France, people who leave their homes in all areas of the world to go to France to live. I thought back over the years about the many expats I’ve met, interviewed (I am a journalist not just a crazy person going round firing questions at [...]
It’s good to know some things stay the same When my mother bought her holiday house in northern France 35 years ago, I had no idea how large a part this lovely country was going to play in my life. I was eleven at the time, and simply enjoyed the trips across the Channel [...]
As you might know by now, I cannot resist a French flea market and the one I went to on Sunday on my French countryside jaunt was particularly small and not great but on the last stall in the road there was a cage with a cockerel. The sign said “Cockerel Nagasaki €5.00”. The [...]
