Life In 79

Winter is but a distant memory, as summer has well and truly arrived. The log burners have fallen silent, several togs removed from the duvet, even my trusty winter gilet is now in its summer hibernation – “sleep, my precious, until we meet again”. Instead, we have whirring fans on the bedside tables, fly screens on the windows and the sticky fly-papers-of-death hang from the ceiling like long Garibaldi biscuits. My hot-water bottle has been replaced by a fly swat, with which, Ninja-like, I splatter the enemy into the coffee table, kitchen counters or any other surface they have landed on.  The paddy field that is our garden in winter has been cooked by the summer sun; the lush verdant grass now golden and when working in the vegetable garden a pickaxe is my preferred tool of choice.   After two years of living like hermits we are looking forward to a packed calendar of social events. Our son is getting married this year so we will be zipping back and forth to the UK for the s...

This was the third time my brother had tried to visit, each time thwarted by new Covid regulations. So a week before his flight, like Harry Potter in the under stairs cupboard, he went into self-imposed isolation.   To many he is a Senior Adult Psychotherapist specialising in Mentalisation Based Therapy (MBT) at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, to me Simon is my twin brother who I have argued, fought, but mainly laughed with for the last 55 years. So it was wonderful to see him in person instead of cutting out, Norman Collier style, on the family zoom. Everything was set for a fantastic weekend: the sun was going to shine, the Deux-S è vres countryside was at its finest, the fridge stocked and it was our birthday on the Sunday. Simon is a bit of an amateur wine aficionado, so we thought Chinon would tick all the boxes: ch â teau, cobbled lanes and old-man river (the Vienne) rollin' along... all surrounded by vineyards.   A packed itinerary had been formulated for the day but we had...

When we moved to France we had romantic notions of wandering around the markets squeezing the melons and sniffing the tomatoes. Anna, my wife, even purchased a wicker basket to carry home the produce. But, in reality we do our weekly shop at Lidl and the basket is used to store our phone and iPad cables.  Every week Anna will stagger back from town with our three bags-for-life full of all the fruit and veg we have to eat before it goes off (so much for squeezing and sniffing). The carrots seem to last 24 hours before giving up on life and the potatoes' black bruises can require continuous peeling until there is nothing left. We like the lack of choice you get in Lidl (not the greatest advertising slogan) and Anna loves the non consumable items at the back. She did the 'big' shop one week and came back with a sewing machine! When it comes to dining out we are equally as unadventurous. We once spent a day in Milan and ate in McDonald's ...twice! We have had Big Macs in so...

For some reason, we had decided to take the ferry back to the UK. Less driving, cabin, meal on board...a bit like a mini cruise? We were taking the van so that Anna, my wife, could buy a few things to bring back (in my mind I was thinking a jar of Marmite and a packet of bacon, how wrong I was). We were also dropping off 43 bottles of French wine to some friends who had recently moved back to the UK, and struggling to adjust to British prices.   We found ourselves killing time in the very up market town of Marlborough (the ferry having dropped us off at 6.30am - we were awoken by three refrains of some soothing lute music piped over the tannoy).   Anna had bought a furry coat from Noz, but the English climate didn't seem to agree with it and the thing had started moulting on her all black outfit. We tried to purchase a de-fluffer from Waitrose, but had to settle for a roll of sellotape, which we wrapped round our fingers then patted her down.   After delivering the wine a...

This month Anna, my wife, and I celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary (pearl). Was it thirty years ago I was staggering around the wedding venue with £900 in my jacket pocket to pay the bar bill? It was a small affair (my mum was disappointed it wasn't a bigger do, with a marquee in the garden, ice sculptures, a firework display and a guest list to rival one of the Queen's garden parties). But the service at my family church, followed by a knees up at the Tudor Arms, Watford, suited us fine. It was perfect and we wouldn't have had it any other way.   I was quite nervous on the day for several reasons other than the £900 (I think some people must have thought I was having heart palpitations the way I kept gripping my chest). My speech was a concern. My reputation for drinking too much at social functions preceded me, so I vowed to abstain until after the speech, when I made up for lost time. Both my mother and my Scottish father-in-law were/are larger than life charact...

When people ask “Where do you live?” I reply “Fifteen minutes drive north of Parthenay, in the middle of nowhere”. A hamlet, made up of four properties (only three of which are inhabited). If we run out of milk it's a ten minute drive to the nearest shop, which is usually shut.  We used to live on a busy main road in the UK. Our windows would often rattle as a high performance vehicle cruised by with bass bins turned up to eleven; beer cans would litter the front garden; our wing mirrors were regularly kicked off and once, some charmer, took the coping stone from our gate post and dropped it on the bonnet of our car. Now, living in the middle of nowhere we occasionally see an old woman walking her old dog, a lost cyclist or an escaped cow.   Annually, a farmer will sever our telephone cable with his hedge cutting machine. This year the telephone company told us they couldn't reconnect us for a week. This coincided with an electricity cut for twenty four hours. Now, I'm all ...

This month we celebrated our six year anniversary of living in France. Was it only six years ago I crashed the hired van into the gatepost on our arrival? Ahhhh! Happy memories. Six years when we thought we had a giant rat problem coming face to face with our first ragondin? Happy memories.  My diary entry from six years ago reads: '...Eventually get back to the house from the notaires. All the lights went out; plunged into complete darkness... then can't get out of the front door, try to stay calm, but ******* ourselves! Eventually find matches, then fuse box and switch back on. Locate candle and a dicky torch incase outage reoccurs (which it does repeatedly). I erect bed and Anna makes meatballs and pasta – both feel shattered and a bit nauseous. The reality of the state of the house hits us and with that a huge hornet flies into our bedroom.' Happy memories. Not the only anniversary this month. We have had our four chickens for a year. Three eggs a day (on average) times...