The Rake’s Progress
I have a rotten hangover, and all because we have so much land to look after. It is a French Property Paradox that the gardens attached to British-owned holiday homes in France will...
View ArticleWeather or Not
So far, it’s been a funny old summer in our current neck of the French woods, the Loire Valley. Last year we lost a lot of friends through trying to fob them off with hundredweights of home-made...
View ArticleCock and Hen Story
I like to think I am no chicken, but have been moved down the domestic pecking order chez nous. It all started because our sole remaining hen was obviously down in the beak. She would mope around the...
View ArticleAnimal Magic.
The thing about moving around France so much is that one needs to be organised with the dispersement of goods and chattels. Most of all, you need to have good friends with spare room or rooms in which...
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On The Road Again
Blimey. I have just worked out that we have driven the equivalent distance of to the moon and back on French roads over the past 40 years. I have mostly enjoyed the cut and thrust of taking on the...
View ArticleShare and Share Alike
I have just had another brilliant idea. It is my fourth this month alone, but the others did not stand up to the test of prolonged philosophical analysis or more mundane considerations like whether...
View ArticleThe Fat of The Land
Zut alors! Can it be true? According to a new report, yet another brick has been wrenched from the wall of Gallic supreme self-confidence, or as some Francophobes would say, arrogance. Once upon a...
View ArticleGoing Down Le Pub
Quelle horreur! France’s new-ish President is pushing for a whopping 160 percent increase in tax on beer sold on licensed permises, and brewers and bar owners are reacting by predicting the death of...
View ArticleWeighty Matters
Here we go again, then. Isn’t it good that Christmas comes but once a year? After years of getting it wrong with our Xmas arrangments, I think we may have got it right this time by employing a...
View ArticleNobody Loves Us But We Don’t Care
To some Brits, the following fact may appear to have come from the Department of the Bloomin’ Obvious. In a recent survey*, the French were voted as the most arrogant nation in Euroland.. No surprise...
View ArticleHome is where the Heart Is
You know what’s really upsetting me nowadays? Not the exchange rate, our broken fridge-freezer or even the lack of availability of my favourite fruit-flavoured Spangles. Between you and me and I...
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A River Runs Through It
For donkey’s years, British Francophiles have been bigging up ‘The Dordogne’ when they actually mean lots of different places in the heartland of France. Extract from The Dordogne River-from source to...
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George’s French Impressions
If anyone should know his onions about France and the French, it’s George East. Over the years George has written more than a dozen books and several thousand newspaper and magazine articles while...
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Wherever I Lay my Hat…
One of my all-time favourite towns, Bergerac The bridge at Bergerac across the Dordogne I have a problem. Every time I’ve toured and taken a close look at a new area of France, I have...
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First Catch your Frog…
I have been exploring France and collecting regional recipes for more than 20 years while keeping my travel writer husband George in some semblance of order. Amongst other hobbies I include making and...
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Food for Thought
Just one of the things I love about France (and my husband does too!) is the sheer variety of styles and types of cooking found in regional and even local dishes. People tend to think only about...
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French Myths (No.1)
Never mind about Scotch Mist, it’s French Myths that have been bugging me of late. What I mean by that is the amazing number of misconceptions we Brits insist on perpetuating about our nearest...
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Let me eat cake
I’ve often heard it said (mostly by admiring or envious English women) that French women retain their slim figures longer than the rest of us because they don’t eat between meals. I was reminded of...
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Going to Les Chiens
Barfleur Quayside Beyond a visit to a greyhound stadium (not that they seem to have any in France outside Paris) ‘going to the dogs’ would, I suspect, make little sense to the average French person....
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150 ways to please your lover
Moulin de la Puce George and I lived for many years in the Cotentin peninsula in Lower Normandy, which is a more rugged and agricultural place than the more generally gentrified Calvados. The...
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