French education is the best

aillis — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:46:01 +0100

For various reasons most our children ended up in the Catholic school system which is semi-private ( the fee is 150€ a term and the school meals are more expensive ) but our youngest Xav has done most of his time in the state school. I don't think there is any difference in educational standards its just in the state sector you lose about 2 weeks each year due to strikes so the teachers set a good example. A couple of weeks ago they had a one day strike protesting against theRead More...

Public holidays in France 2010

lesfragnes — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:44:28 +0100

We’re in a holiday hole at the moment No official days off coming up for another two months. That’s ages! In fact, 2010 is a bit of a bad year for days off as three of the jours feriés fall on a Saturday – 1st and 8th May and Christmas Day – and one, Ascension on 15 August, is a Sunday. That seems to be cheating. The children certainly feel hard done by with fewer days off school this year!

So here are the pubic holidays for this yearRead More...

Candlemas

lesfragnes — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:58:29 +0100

Today is Chandeleur - Candlemas Day. It marks the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. So winter is halfway through. That’s encouraging news this year as it’s been a tough one here in Creuse. But is it over yet?

The weather today will give us a clue as to what’s in store for the coming weeks, according to some old French sayings.

Chandeleur noire – hiver a fait son devoir.

Chandeleur trouble –Read More...

Paper paper everywhere

janetlangman — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:57:32 +0100

The French adminstrative system has a well deserved reputation for impenetrability and being completely unavoidable. Estate agency has of course its own complement of documentation and many trees have died in the service! Today I am in the Orthez office. Not a good start - a buyer has backed out saying they arent going to buy because they cant fit their fridge into the kitchen without knocking down a wall. Hmmm ......as Marge Simpson would say. Another client hasRead More...

New month - start a blog!

janetlangman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:32:27 +0100

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.

I will be blogging about my life as a DIY assistant, mum, estate agent and wannabee crafter and hope you will enjoy being part of my life.

Today, as on all MoRead More...

Quick recap

lesfragnes — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:14:54 +0100

You might have noticed there was a big gap in my blog postings – from July 09 to January 10 to be precise. I’m not quite sure why it happened. We certainly were very busy during the summer with the gite and our llama trekking business. And during the summer months we’re outside pretty much all the time so not much computing takes place. However, I did keep going with my own blog at www.bloginfrance.com so you can catch up with happenings during those months there.

Officially accounted for

lesfragnes — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:34:58 +0100

Nouzerines in the snow - with daughter on sledge!

The census taker has just left. We’ve filled in all the official forms and won’t be recounted for another five years. That’s because we’re in a commune of less than 10,000 inhabitants (in our case, a lot less!). Censuses in France take place on a rolling basis. All small communes are censused every 5Read More...

A winter snap

aillis — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:09:40 +0100

We had been watching the weather in the UK and were thinking we had missed the cold snap, we didn't get our first frost till the week after Christmas, but then last Saturday we had a 6inch dump on us overnight.Driving was impossible and as Paulien was suffering from nicotine deprivation we had to trek into Plestin in our ski survival suits. It took about 3/4 of an hour a walk you could normally do in 25 minutes and its much more tiring walking on soft snow. The main road from Morlaix to LanniRead More...

"Bloavez mat " tout le monde

aillis — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:46:52 +0100

I've had a bit of a nightmare with my Internet connection this month just over 4 weeks without a regular service and trying to get it fixed is difficult. France must be the only country with a TV program mocking "SAV " ( service apres vente ) they are just not interested, first you contact the service provider which has a call centre in North Africa, someone speaking french equally as bad as mine telling me to do things I have already done and then over the course of two weeks they sentRead More...

Websites about Brittany.

Jilly — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:52:23 +0100

Hi Everyone,

I thought being that everyone on here must love France, I live in Brittany, and I thought perhaps people would like to see my new facebook group called 'Interesting websites in Brittany' http://www.facebook.com/...p;ref=nf, I am trying to collate a group for everyones eyes of interesting, bizarre, funny websites about BRITTANY. Take a look and if anyone has a said website let me know, (can be a blog as that has a website address) and I can then feature you with aRead More...

Chapter Seventeen: Pompier And Circumstance

French Times — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:20:09 +0100

It can happen anytime time between the hours of eight in the morning to eight at night. It starts with an eerie low bass note and builds to a shrieking crescendo of earth moving, body piercing cacophony of sound, like something crawling from the depths of hell, with a serious headache, indigestion and a major root canal problem.

For those old enough to remember, it sounds like the old air raid sirens from the Blitz, for my younger readers it's the beginning of a very hairy fairgroundRead More...

FIRE! Or How I learned to become a 'ramoneur anglais'.

Bertie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:21:50 +0100

Fire! Or how I learned to become a “ramoneur”.

After two freezing winters ("it never snows here," said the French neighbours), we decided that the romantic appeal of the 'poêle à bois' was becoming rather jaundiced. With firewood available from our little copse, and generous grants available from the Read More...

The quiet season

aillis — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:50:18 +0100

Its very quiet here now since the autumn half term the place is empty of visitors for the first time since the beginning of April so we can shout and scream and no one hears us except perhaps the neighbours.The weather has changed like a switch as soon as the last visitors left at the end of October , the last two months have incredibly dry and warm and now its the rainy windy season which is good for the ground and gardens.i had a quick visit to the UK to pick up a few goodies I Read More...

My neighbour

aillis — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:58:34 +0100

We had quite a shock last Saturday in the bar someone mentioned Francois Rolland had died of an aneurysm, he's our neighbour just lives a few fields away. Regular visitors will have seen him working the fields or he would often drop in for a chat leaving the engine of his John Deere tractor running as he had a quick beer and gossip with me and Paulien. We have known him 17 years and he lived at Coat Aillis before we bought the place and he had a large hanger in pRead More...

Flat hunting in Rennes

aillis — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:50:30 +0100

I had to go flat hunting in Rennes with Max as he and Bas are studying there at the university next month. I left the arrangements up to Max and he had 2 rendez-vous organised. The first was on a purpose built block modern Ok if you like fitted carpets on the walls and one of the bedrooms wouldn't have taken a double bed, so it was small,but it was passable and then the agent at the end of the visit said the owner didn't like students, so it was a waste of time and for the second appRead More...

Local History

aillis — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:54:55 +0100

We have recently come in contact with our immediate neighbour's ( Etienne ) sister during the EDF chainsaw massacre ( 24/05 post ) as she was doing a dossier on the damage they had done. She is a very formidable short woman with incredible energy when you think she is 84yr. She explained she had a grandson staying in August who wanted to improve his English so we arranged an exchange with Teddy who is staying with us before his parents arrive.During her second viRead More...

Toxic smells toxic beaches

aillis — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:54:00 +0100

There was a bizarre story in the press 3 weeks ago of a horse rider who's horse fell in a hole next to the a river and it died allegedly with its head in the seaweed of a toxic gas given off by the seaweed decomposing in the sun. The weed is known as sea lettuce and would be the equivalent of taking a walk on a pile of rotting garden lettuces which have been left in the sun for 4 weeks, something you just wouldn't do.However it being the age of litigation and no one takes responsibility for tRead More...

The Terrific Tour

lesfragnes — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:39:44 +0100

Today was our third live Tour de France. Our first was
way back in Ireland in 1998, but that wasn’t the proper Tour. We went to cheer on
Chris Boardman but he had fallen off down the road at Dungarvan. And there were
just the cyclists, not the publicity caravan. Going to the Tour is all about the
freebies, as we found out on our second Tour, last year. It passed very close so
we were able to cycle the 12 or so km to Chatelus Malvaleix to take in the experience.
This year it was abRead More...

Europathy - or is it Eurapathy?

lesfragnes — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:51:18 +0100

It’s the European elections this week, but you’d hardly think it. Now, I always feel obliged to vote in elections, given what the Suffragettes went through in order to win the vote for women, but at the moment I just don’t feel well informed enough to do so. Out of the 21 candidates for our region, less than a half have bothered to put up a poster on their allocated section of the hoardings outside the Mairie. Ruadhri and I had a good look at the ones that are there this morRead More...

Fowl times

lesfragnes — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 +0100

It's been all about poultry lately. Just over a week ago, I collected Christmas Dinner and his/her five brothers and sisters (Thanksgiving Dinner, New Year's Dinner, Easter Dinner - and so on, you get the idea!) from Boussac Market. We've always had Dindes Grises in the past (Bronze turkeys) but this year only Blanches were available. They're not quite as pretty but they're identical in every other respect. They have the same nice turkey nature and no sense of fear at all.

In fact, theRead More...

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