Life In 79

Spring, spring, I love spring, springy, spring, spring. If only it could be spring everyday of the year. If given the choice, Anna, my wife, would choose summer...SUMMER! Three words: watering, sunburn, flies.  The spring grass is greener, the sky bluer, our windowsills are crammed with seedlings vying for sunlight, much to Anna's irritation. But I have to put up with her demijohns of home-brew, bubbling endlessly, whilst I'm trying to watch The Repair Shop - although I'm not to mention the subject, as the other day we had a glass of the 2025 brew, before the bottling process began, and it had a nasty aftertaste, so we had to pour four demijohns of the Shaws' Shite White (as we call it), down the drain.  She puts so much time, effort (and expense) into her brewing hobby. Now that our children are all grown and flown the nest she needs an outlet for her maternal juices, which she does by keeping her demijohns warm, feeding them, watching them bubble, she even WhatsApps p...

You wouldn't have the Deux-Sèvres down as a holiday destination in February; “Come to the Deux-Sèvres, slop about in the mud, enjoy the flooding and marvel at the high river levels, watch a farmer chop a hedge”. But February, it appears, is the new August. We had a busy old month welcoming friends and family to our soggy part of France.  It meant that our New Year's resolutions were blown out of the water as Anna, my wife, and I took the opportunity to eat and drink to excess.  But where to go and what to do when the weather is rubbish and everything's shut? My brother had to use up some annual leave so popped over for a few days. He is very easily pleased; he gets excited when we take him to a French supermarket, wandering around the aisles like a small child oohing and ahhing at the goodies on offer... buying a lump of pâté to remind himself of the day ...asking if he can have his photo taken near the fish counter.  The only thing better than a supermarket for my brothe...