Last week I actually told someone, to their face, that they were a 'nasty, evil bitch' (in English, because she's English). Well she is. Still can't quite believe that I said that though. All the times I used to come home from work or whatever, having a good moan about annoying folk (managers mostly) and slagging them off with abusive language, wishing I could say these things to them, but knowing I never would or could. But this time I was pushed to the limit and probably what really did it was that it involved Isabella and I blame it on my protective maternal instincts. I can't be bothered to tell you the whole story, but trust me, she deserved it and I'd say it again. In fact, having had time to think about it, I'd add a few things to it as well. Don't mess with Mrs B!

By the way, the pheasant was very nice.

Went out for the day on Wednesday, took the girls as there's no school Wednesdays, which was probably our first mistake. They say they like to go, but really it's not a day out for them as we went to the 'mall' at Nantes. I think I've mentioned it before, not really a 'mall' as we would call it, just a collection of a few expensive shops with a large roof over them. But they have a carousel and Macdonalds and we agreed that they could go to macdonalds. But not the carousel at €2,50 a ride!

When we got there we went to the cafe for our treat and as I was standing in the queue there were two people serving, a woman and a young guy who looked a bit drippy to say the least. I was thinking please, please don't let him serve me, but I just knew, as soon as I saw him, that he would be the one to serve me and it wouldn't go well at all. I ordered three drinks and four cakes which on the whole went ok, except he tried to give me a couple of those milk carton thingys you get in hotels with about a teaspoon of milk in instead of a glass of cold milk for Georgia, even though there was a proper sized carton in the fridge behind him, he said that was for making hot milk and he couldn't possibly serve me a glass of cold milk from it. But he was arguing with me and I won and got my daughter's glass of cold milk.

I took the tray to my waiting family and served up their drinks and cakes, but Adrian had no sugar with his coffee so I had to go back and queue again to ask for sugar as it was behind the counter and not self-service. Sat back down again and had a look at the bill. He had charged me for 5 cakes instead of 4. Get back up and re-join queue. I explain to him the problem (quite simple I thought). Then I explained it to him again. Then he went off to talk to someone else. Eventually they came back 'no it's ok' he says, 'the bill is right, all the cakes are the same price, I just rang one of them up under a different name'. At this point I am begginning to steam enough that you could have used me to heat up the milk that you're not allowed to have cold and I find myself talking to him like the idiot that he clearly is, 'No. I. ordered. four. cakes. you. have. charged. me. for. five. cakes.' Still he doesn't get it. The woman with him dispatches him to deal with the ever increasing queue behind me and then asks me to explain the problem again. 'I. ordered. four. cakes. that. fucking. imbecile. charged. me. for. five. cakes.' For some reason she is a little tetchy and informs me that 'things like this do happen sometimes you know'. Yup, and always when I'm around. Get my refund, go back to my long lost family, drink my chocolate milkshake, which had started life as a hot chocolate, leave tray on table instead of clearing it away as is expected and leave.

It all just makes me think 'why is it always me?' It's like getting in the wrong queue at the supermarket. There's two side by side to choose from, both about the same length, the person on the left doesn't have much but is a doddery old biddery and will clearly take ages sorting her stuff out and when it comes to paying will always pay by cash, insist on using up her change, but can't see it because she's half blind, will tip it out onto tray in front of cashier for cashier to sort out and then start up a conversation with the cashier about how sorry she is to have been a such a nuisance and how difficult it is to be old and how she really should have been shot at 60 along with everyone else that age and done us all a favour. And on the right is a young woman, looks sensible, looks organised, looks like she'll pay by card, but has a huge trolley of stuff that will take some packing.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter which one you choose on this basis, because the person in front of the person in front of you will either be paying by cheque and will take five minutes looking for her cheque book at the bottom of her handbag and then have to go back in there to find her ID card; or she will have forgotten to weigh one item of her fruit and veg purchases and we'll all stand around waiting and pretending we don't mind as she apologises for having to go back into the store, to the fruit and veg section, which is always at the back of the shop, to weigh whatever it is so that the cashier knows the price (why they can't just weigh them at the till like in Lidls and the uk I don't know.They'd probably have to have another qualification for that, no doubt involving a good two years of studying.); or she'll have bought something on offer, but the price hasn't rung up correctly on the till, so we'll all stand around waiting and actually not giving a shit anymore what anyone else thinks, so we're tutting and huffing away whilst the cashier makes a phone call to get someone to check it.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 'mall'. Dragged the kids into Ikea as we had to get flat-pack stuff for the gites. Naturally, they've changed their ranges since we were last there and we couldn't get everything we wanted and of course we ended up spending loads of time wandering around trying to find alternatives. Georgia managed to loose her new headband that I'd bough only half an hour beforehand. Couldn't find it anywhere, she said that 'the lady took it away'. Who knows. The girls were going nuts with boredom and we were going nuts with them. They have a creche which we used to leave Isabella in, but we couldn't this time as they only take kids from the age of four and Georgia would have wanted to go with her, but isn't old enough, so we thought we keep them with us..... Got down to the section where you pick up your flat pack and eventually found what we needed. Unfortunately, we then found that we couldn't buy everything as it was far too heavy and we only had the roof bars on the car to put it on. So we're going to have to go back again to get the rest of the stuff. You can guess we're looking forward to that.

Today I am ill. A bad cold and I feel really crap. So bad that I had to lounge around on the sofa most of the day (after I finally dragged myself out of bed late morning) and I even had to put the tv on this afternoon, I'd tried reading but it was just too much. But then I discovered that there's nothing to watch in the afternoon. It's so utterly dire, all these channels and nothing that I could even mildly cope with. At one point I left the picture on, but turned the sound off it got so bad. Yes, I could have turned off the tv of course, but I needed a distraction from my ailments and I mistakenly thought it would help. I even tried qvc at one point in the hope that I could have a battle with myself not to get the credit card out and be tempted into buying stuff I don't need, but they were having a crap day too and try as I might, I just couldn't be tempted by easy-yo yogurt or flowery bedding for the spare room I don't have or genuine real fake diamonds set in genuine real sterling silver with almost realistic gold effect overlay. I'm only sitting here typing because I can't face getting up and persuading the girls to get ready for bed. And what a load of crap they've eaten today - I had to revert to the morning sickness diet for them - ie get up, drag arse into kitchen, grab a couple of items from freezer (usually involving some kind of processed potato product (ie chips) and processed meat product ('wahey, chicken nuggets, thanks mum, you're the best')) and bung in oven, crawl back to sofa, get back up again, drag arse back into kichen and switch oven on this time, crawl back to sofa for 15 mins, go back into kitchen, tip everything onto plates and serve up to grateful children with lashings (there's that word again) of mayonnaise and 'no there isn't any more ketchup, I've told you several times now we've run out and you'll have to wait until summer when some kind family leaves a bottle behind for us, I'm not spending money on that stuff if I don't have to'. So there you go, that's me being ill, wish you were here?!

Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going in the garden to eat deadly mushrooms. (Well, what's the point in eating worms? Need them for the compost heap.) See how you feel then, eh?

Tresspassers will be shot!

We had a tresspasser in the garden this afternoon so Adrian shot him:







































My hubby the pheasant plucker.












Look away now if you're squimish....



That'll be a good meal for us all. I'll let you know what it's like.

The boys just call me camouflage

On patrol outside the house. Camouflage not working very well.
















Boo!



















































What a handsome fellow

Got loads of work to get on with in the gites, so decided to brave the low temps (minus 3 outside, wind chill not accounted for) and go down with Adrian this morning (to the gites). My job of the morning - painting the new skirting and door frames he has put up (A big improvement on the previous owners bodge job of strips of tongue and grove held in place with large screws). There's no heating in the gites and in my left hand I was holding the small (yet very expensive) metal tin of paint. It was so cold, the paint was like syrup (although not as tasty) and not easy to paint with. After one and a half hours I had severe trouble removing my hand from the tin. Then Adrian noticed that there was ice on the inside of the double glazed windows. I was going to complain to the management about sub-standard working conditions, but then I realised that I am the management and I ended up get a good telling off from myself to stop bloody moaning and get on with it, some people don't even have a job don't you know?

Decided to go back to the house for a hot drink to warm up, but was unable to use my hands for 20mins as they had died and gone to a better place. When they decided to come back, they made sure they let me know they were here by inflicting severe pain in the fingers. Needless to say, we did not go back down the gite to do any more work today. This afternoon we had a bit of light hail which then turned to rain, which hasn't since stopped. How it is raining I have no idea, at 3pm we had icicles forming on everything from garden furniture to plants and the roads were getting icy. Then the school called as they were asking all parents to go and fetch their children early as the staff were getting worried about getting home this evening. After being made to sign a form which actually stated that I was requesting special permission to remove my child from school, I went to Isabella's class to pick her up. The remaining children were all seated quietly and behaving very well, but their teacher was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, one of the kids pointed her out, she was in her store cupboard texting her husband!

And in our kitchen, where the fire has been burning for the better part of the day, I went to the cupboard this evening only to find that what was left of my chocolate bar had melted.

I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't had any of the snow that you guys have had there, especially with all the cold temps we've had. Went to the tip on Saturday morning, two trips and it was -4 at 9.30am when we started and the tip is on the top of a very exposed hill, god knows what the wind chill factor was but it certainly felt a bit fresh. I looked good as usual in old jeans and trainers, yellow suede working gloves, old green coat and purple hat. My glasses steamed up as soon as I got back in the house, which always leaves me with the dilemma of leaving them on and not being able to see anything or taking them off and not being able to see anything.

It's so cold the front door key snapped in half whilst in the lock the other day. I'd been out with the girls so we were trying to get into the house. Fortunately for us, like most other things out here, the lock is crap anyway - you don't get 'yale' locks over here, it's the type which you have to remember to lock when you leave the house and go to bed at night, plus you can have a key in one side of the door and still be able to use a key in the other side. This was to our advantage as Adrian happened to be inside the house at the time, although at the back, so after several hours banging on the windows he finally appeared and was able to unlock the door from the inside with the spare key.

The pipes in the house keep freezing, dad has re-routed them and wrapped insulation around the parts he can get to, there's also an old duvet over them now, but they keep freezing up. Just hoping that they don't burst, because it looks like they're freezing up in a place we can't get to. The fire's been on every day lately, eating through our meagre wood supply and I've even had to increase the amount the heating comes on to nearly five hours a day and hang the cost of the gas...

I've just seen my first Easter egg advert of the year (it's 10 January). It was a very informative advert - apparently the creme egg season now officially runs from 1 Jan to 4 April. Bloody ridiculous.

Oh! What's occurin'? End of Gavin and Stacey, truth be told. I'm gutted, I am.