Nothing to say

Sorry.  Writer's block.  Ha ha!  In the meantime, here are some piccies of hubby's new ride on it's maiden voyage.  Wicked.

Strike action

What is the national sport of France?

a) Football
b) The Gallic shoulder shrug
c) Eating small life forms that no-one else in their right mind would eat (except maybe Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall and Ray Mears)
d) Going on strike

Unfortunately, I am unable to provide you with the answer as the people responible for answers are currently on strike.

Will somebody please do some bloody work?!!!!  No post for a week now as our local posties have been on strike and today is apparently a 'General Strike' countrywide.  Fortunately the school teachers managed to make it in today, but then they did have their strike just 3 days after the school year started again.  I wouldn't mind really, but it just so happens that I've got quite a bit of stuff on order and already on it's way, mainly for Georgia's birthday and it bothers me that the more post stacking up in the Post Office the more likely it is to go missing.  That, plus I'd actually quite like my stuff now.  And no doubt Mr Postie will be around at Christmas asking me to buy one of his calenders so that he can ensure that he provides a good service for us next year (service appropriate to the amount I choose to pay, there is no fixed price, get it wrong at your peril).  Actually, he's a very nice guy our postie, so I'm not whinging about him personally.  Although when he was round here, sitting at our table, drinking our wine and accepting our gifts (Tyres.  Don't ask.) just 6 days beforehand, he might have had the decency to forewarn us.

Monsieur Le Stig

Je vous présente the all new Monsieur Le Stig.  Some say he's been spotted in France.    

He's got a new ride as well.

New title

Been messing about with the blog a bit (well, hubby is watching Eastenders, so nothing better to do).  Changed the title due to my current obsession with jam making.  There's supposed to be a picture at the top, but it keeps disappearing.  Have to put up with it for now, am a bit bored of messing about with it.  I'll have another go next time...

peaches!

Went to a 'sale' of sorts in someones house on Sunday.  They've set up a little business selling other people's homemade stuff.  Good idea and some of the things were very nice and quite professionally made and presented.  (And some of the English sellers really ought to have learnt a bit of French first if they want to sell to the local folk, or at least learnt how to use 'google translate'.)  I bought a second hand jigsaw for us all to do (Where's Wally?!).  Well, nice though everything was, there wasn't really anything that I either needed or couldn't do myself.  My mother bought a nice pottery cheesboard though, so we did contribute. 

However, that is not why I'm telling you about it.  The bargain of the day for me was a large load of free home-grown peaches!  They were sitting by the door when we arrived, two buckets full, with a 'help-yourself' notice on, although for some reason I didn't really like to, but the woman running it was quite insistant that they must go, so I took a whole bucket-full in the end!  Well, I wasn't sure how much I'd need for jam, although you'd think I could tell having made so bloody much this year. 

Well, when we got home I weighed them and it was 10lbs!!!!  Blimey, I'd been a bit greedy I think!  Looking up recipes I found one for peaches in Brandy and having found half a bottle of brandy in the back of the cupboard I made up two jars of that.  The rest of them I've chopped up and are currently sitting in sugar and lemon juice and ginger waiting to be made into jam tomorrow (ran out of time today).  And in the end I didn't take too many as I've used about 4lbs for the jam, but the rest of it has unfortunately been ditched because they were too bruised for eating.  Which is why I ran out of time to cook the jam - took ages to chop up the peaches and chop off the bad bits and re-weigh and replace and all that faff.

Car booty!

Been to four car boots in the past month and managed to pick up a few bargains.  Two of the car boots were big (one apparently had about 700 stalls and I can believe it, we certainly didn't get to see them all) and two were very small, one barely had 20 stalls!  I know that you're desperate to find out what we got, so here's a little list of what I can remember:

1. Winter clothes for the girls at 1€ each (which, even though second hand, tend to be better quality than the cheap crap that I can afford in the shops over here which just fall apart after a few days.  After sifting through the unwashed stuff at the car boots (seriously!) when I find good stuff for sale it tends to be properly good stuff).
2. A winter coat for Isabella, long and pink and suede effect for 3€.
3. Adults and kids board/boxed games for the guests (although the kids ones seem to be in our house at the moment) for 2€ each.  Monopoly, Triominos and Connect Four, all in 'as new' condition.  I'm sure there was another one, but I can't remember what it was now...
4. An electronic keyboard for 2€ for Georgia for her birthday.  Got one for Isabella's birthday at an earlier car boot for the same price and they both love it.  Hence they needed one each for the sanity of their parents.
5. A couple of cheap books for the girls.
6. A bike for Isabella for Christmas, not just from us, but from her grandparents as well.  She has started to grow out of her current bike, we'd raised the seat and the handlebars and it was better for her, but it has no gears and she was struggling a bit when she was coming out riding with me on our 'flat, but not flat' roads.  She also can't get up much speed on the flat roads....  Anyway, had a look at some of the bikes in the shops and the prices are horrific and the gears are often very stiff, even I struggled to change them.  This bike in the car boot was in excellent condition, a nice dark pink colour, has five gears which are easy to change and came with a good adjustable helmet, all for 60€!  Still a lot of money for us, and probably more than you'd pay in the uk, but we could never afford a new one, so we took the opportunity whilst it was there.  The new version of the same bike is currently selling for 150€ in the shop, plus the helmet at 17€, so all in all a bit of a bargain.  Had fun trying to get it in the car though, just about managed!

Bath time

Had a bath this morning.  Ok, so that may not be headline news, but it is a rare event for me.  Don't get me wrong, I do shower daily, but sometimes I need a bath.  Unfortunately, ours is not a proper bath, it's a french bath which is more like sitting in a large bucket.  But today I am ill and couldn't face standing in the shower so I dug out some essential oils (marjoram, rosemary and eucalyptus, not sure if they really go together but I've pretty much lost my sense of smell and I figured they're all good for a cold) and ran the bath.  The base of our bath is about 60cm long (two rulers worth) and it's not flat either - half of the base is about 5cm higher than the lower half (for sitting on) with a drainage channel going down the middle of it (don't try to picture the reasons for that).  So whatever position you're in, you are always guaranteed to be cutting off the blood supply to your lower legs.  That is, you can either be sitting up with your knees bent; slightly lounging back with your knees bent double or slightly lounging back with your legs outstretched, but bent at the hip so that your feet are half-way up the wall in front of you (this position has the added bonus of making your stomach (well mine anyway) look like it's auditioning for the part of Michelin Man).  So therefore, every few minutes I have to stand up to allow the blood to drain back down to my feet again in order to avoid pins and needles.  Very relaxing.

And you may think I can't be that ill if I'm sitting at the computer, but I tried watching daytime tv, and Saturday morning daytime tv at that, and it was making me worse.