Okaaayy. So, my attempts to stave off whatever it was that laid low the wife & offspring last week by taking aspirin & oranges in quantity for the past four days have failed and I am now sofa bound with a temperature that suggests a fault with the thermometer.
The distaff side has declared me hors [...]
Continue reading 'Horizontal' »
Now, I’m not talking here about the French Paradox which runs along the lines of “the French eat cheese, cream & fatty pork products from the cradle to the grave and yet still remain the leanest race in Europe and amongst the longest lived: how is this possible?”
Not that this isn’t quite an interesting point, [...]
Continue reading 'The French Paradox' »
It’s sometimes a little crushing to have your place in the pecking order thrown into sharp contrast.
I ran into Jacques the builder at the dump this morning.
He was offloading a small consignment of defunct and profoundly ancient power tools; I was dumping the remains of the kitchen I had spent the previous two days demolishing. [...]
Continue reading 'The Monkey & The Organ Grinder' »
‘tis the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and aperos.
During the summer months, our friends and we see little of each other. We’re all busy. But come autumn a sort of social whirl restarts and we all hit the circuit for “pre-dinner” drinks.
Aperos means going over to someone’s house for anything from a swift glass of [...]
Continue reading 'Cocktail Time' »
My wife was interviewed a couple of months back by one of those “Come & Live in France” magazines on the subject of moving to France with young children.
I’d quite forgotten she’d done this until the publisher concerned very sportingly sent us a copy. I’ve never really looked at one of these mags before, so [...]
Continue reading 'The Living the Dream Thing' »
I may have mentioned at some point my, well, fetish with tomatoes. Mentioned more than once. Probably.
The season I ended up planting a shade under 130 plants representing 21 distinct varieties. I have large ones, small ones, little cherries, red ones, green ones, yellow ones, brown, black pink & purple.
Apparently breeders in Japan have come [...]
Continue reading 'A Rose By Any Other Name…' »
The late August heat lingers on and minds are fixed on the business of staying cool, including the finely-tuned brain of the Brigadier. Our postman braved the shimmering inferno to deliver a package this lunchtime marked “Urgent! Timely Advice & Instruction Enclosed” and I have passed the heat of the day transcribing it for your [...]
I would have posted my thoughts on the subject of the Olympics a little earlier, but with the temperature here in the mid-to-high thirties Celsius, once the work of the day is done, a somnolence overtakes me and I skulk in the shade until evening. This torpor has extended to my brain and has rather [...]
Continue reading 'Game for Anything' »
To the casual observer, David Cameron may appear to have been having something of a rough time at the hands of the French this week.
For a start, President Hollande’s promise to him that British second home owners struggling to turn a crust by letting out their farmhouses through ads in Dalton’s Weekly would not be [...]
Continue reading 'Le Coq Sportif' »
I almost feel sorry for François Hollande.
Only a few weeks into the job and it is becoming clear that he really hasn’t the faintest idea what to do.
I suspect he thought he could simply climb into the captain’s chair à la Jean-Luc Picard and say something along the lines of “We need more economic growth, [...]
Continue reading 'I Know Why the Caged Guinea Pig Squeeks…' »
