Lost-in-France.com

I was hanging the washing on the clothes airer in front of the fire the other morning, which is how I dry the clothes in winter since neither budgetary nor planetary concerns will allow me to invest in a tumble drier. I idly wondered if Carla was doing the same thing chez les Sarkozy and quickly realised that was extremely unlikely. I also imagine it’s equally unlikely that they keep just the one room warm during winter, or buy stuff from the reduced shelf in the supermarket.

Our water bill landed in the post box with a moderate thunk this year, fortunately not as heavy a one as I’d expected. However, we’re still paying €530 euros between the two houses and pool. Of this total, almost half, €220, isn’t actually for water.

The end of term was marked, as ever, by the Christmas specatcle (show) performed by the co-operative of three local schools, one of which Ruadhri, our youngest, attends. He starts at collège (secondary school) next year so this was the last one for us - no more seasonal jollity.

We have now been living and working here for 10 years and every year we hold a Christmas party for all our French friends and artisans who have helped and supported us throughout  the year. Well, officially its called an "Apero" and invitations state, date and time and  RSVP. In the ten years we have been doing this, maybe one in forty odd  invitees responds. The French do not understand RSVP!

I have had numerous conversations about it and it is alien to them. As they say "you invite us to a party/apero with food and beverages we come....we don't need to tell you every year!"

Hello

I live in the South West of France - just 60 kms inland from Biarritz - with DIY husband and young adult kids who are still cluttering up (literally) the second floor of our farmhouse.  We moved out 6 years ago and I work with local estate agents to help people find and buy property.

We were all sitting there in late October last year, staring at our TV and Computer screens and seeing report after report of bad news coming out of the International Banking and Property sectors. The sub-prime mortgage balloon had burst and brought major chaos in the financial markets, firstly in the US, and then rapidly followed by similar collapses in the UK, Germany and the Far East.  Bad news seems to breed bad news, even if there is little linkage between each reported event, and the mainstream popular media in particular feeds and thrives on it.

Just over six years ago, on 13th December 2005, I arrived in France to do some final checks on Les Fragnes before we went ahead and signed the Compromis de Vente.

It's easy to fall blindly in love with a building - or in our case, lakes - when you're property hunting abroad, without looking beyond it. Here are a few things to think about, especially if you're coming over with a family.

Doing some housekeeping on my computer, long overdue, I stumbled across this description of our move from Ireland to France which I wrote in 2009. It might still serve as inspiration! I'll be bringing it up to date imminently.

We wanted to be below the cold isobar that on every weather map seems to run due east of La Rochelle, yes Normandy, Brittany and other points north are beautiful, but decisions had to be made. We didn't want Mayal's mansions, the expat England of Dordogne nor the Costa del Cote D'Azur,. What we did want was proximity to the Med for summer swimming, the Pyrenees for winter skiing, an airport, a motorway system nearby and a train station just in case we wanted to escape.

Gigi, the cat, has just brought another mulot into the house, and been quickly chased out. Mulot is the colloquial term round here for any sort of small country rodent.

The cranes (grus) are back. We last saw them in spring as they were flying north to their breeding grounds in northern Europe (Sweden, the Baltic sea and northern Germany). That was a welcome sight as it meant that good weather was coming.

Today we saw them heading back south to Spain where they overwinter. Some go to Algeria and Tunisia. Although a fantastic sight, and wonderful sound, it does mean it's about to get very cold. Winter follows the cranes as sure as night follows day!

This is my new house guest Wart. Wart used to live outside in the garden but he has recently decided that he doesn't want to live outside with all the other toads, no Wart has decided that he'd rather enjoy the comforts of home.

Oh my god! I didn't think you got locusts in France. Just read in the news that some parts of France are being hit by plagues of locusts because of the heat and drought, it all sounds very biblical - I'll be keeping an eye out for the 4 horses of the apocalypse.