Christmas 2010

Well after my last post about the balmy weather the snow God obviously heard me and decided to sprinkle a few centimetres of the white stuff over us just before Christmas. This is unheard of here and so promptly caused a 19 hour power cut on Christmas Eve.

Fortunately power was restored in time for me to cook Christmas dinner. We also managed to get the satellite dish connected so we had TV over Christmas. Inspired by Gordon Ramsay does Christmas, we had scrambled egg and smoked salmon on toasted croissants for breakfast and then went for a walk. Most of the snow had melted by this point but there was enough to create the feel of a white Christmas.

The rest of the day was spent eating and resting. For the first time in many years we didn’t have to worry about how much we drank because we didn’t have to drive various parents everywhere.

On Boxing Day (not a holiday in France) we went for a longer walk around the lake and visited some neighbours. It was all very non commercialised and low key.

As we now have a ceiling in the dining room we have decided to have a New Years Eve party amid the building site. It has given us a focus to work towards in our endeavours to make the place feel comfortable and we are looking forward to welcoming our English neighbours to see in the New Year with us.

12 days of Christmas (rolled into 3)

Christmas is over for another year. It wasn't white but it did involve approximately six and a half hours on the M25 ,adding to our carbon footprint! My mother is now back in her apartment, my sister and brother-in-law are by now asleep in front of the TV at their place, my brother and family are hopefully in Italy skiing by now, Ian's mum has cleared up her house after having us all round yesterday and is now relaxing in front of the TV and Ian's sister finally made it out to Milan a day late after the snow disrupted everyone's travel plans. Ian's man-flu is getting better and we are all packed up ready to go to France tomorrow morning. All is well.. and if I don't get a chance to blog before then, happy new year.

A white Christmas?

Well it is looking more likely every day!

A whole week has gone by since I last wrote. Christmas is always a busy time of year and this year it seems worse than ever, although that is probably my imagination. To add to the chaos the weather has suddenly turned from wet and very mild to bone dry, snowy and ice cold, making the everyday tasks of shopping, getting to work and organising the Christmas round of relative visiting much more difficult!

We had the first snow of the year on Friday. There wasn't a great deal down here and by mid-day the roads were clear. However, the snow over the North Downs and Ashdown forest was much thicker and they lay between Ian's house and mine. Friday night for the first time in years I didn't go to Ian's and it felt very strange to be sitting in our separate houses at the start of the weekend. I packed up and left the following morning, not sure of what to expect. Ten miles out of Eastbourne the snow at the sides of the roads was thicker and although the main roads were clear the side roads were thick with ice. As I got further and further into the Ashdown Forest the snow and ice encroached onto the road more and more and by Crowborough my tyres were gliding over the icy tracks left from the previous nights attempt and clearing the road. This continued to Tunbridge Wells and that, and the number of people going Christmas shopping made it a slow and tortuous journey. I also had to stop twice to pee, which meant leaving the beaten track and driving over the ice covered service station forecourts! Driving required a lot of concentration, which was a shame as the snow and the Christmas lights made everywhere look like a fairy tale Christmas except that I couldn't really stop to look. Driving was also made more hazardous by the abandoned cars at the side of the road and drivers generally not used to driving in snow!

Coming back today the snow and ice was still bad across the North Downs but by the time I got back here a fine rain had washed away most of the snow and ice (although it is looking like it might return tonight).

Looks like the iced theme of this years Christmas cake is very appropriate!

Lovely's Christmas message 2009

As Christmas approaches its time to look back on the last year and summarise what has happened. I'm quite suprised that I have managed to keep with blogging all this time. When I started off nearly three years ago I thought I would soon get fed up with it, in the way that most people give up with writing a diary after a few months, but I find it quite enjoyable and therapeutic at times. It is true that when I am busy I find it hard to find the energy and sometimes the entries are not as frequent as I would like but never the less I have mostly found time to write things on a regular basis. For those of you finding this page for the first time, in the archive of previous posts you will find all sorts of details of the mundane day to day events of my life, so to avoid the need for you to trawl through them I have produced a brief summary here. They are divided into the following sub-headings: The house in France, Moving to France, Holidays and Family News, although the first three are very much linked!

The House in France

If you have read these letters before you will know that we have been building a house in the Dordogne, in between working and living in two different places in the UK. This year has seen significant progress with the house. At the beginning of the year the walls were finished and the roof was put in place, making it at last look like a proper building. The windows were fitted in March and the house was finally 'closed and covered'. Once this happened we could start thinking about the interiors and in March and April several journeys too and from France were made with van loads of plaster board and insulation (as the decrease in the value of the pound has meant that most things are now cheaper in the UK). Interior walls and ceilings were commenced and temporary plumbing and electric installed. Our hours spent planning the previous winter were not wasted as we knew where most things were going to go although to be certain we had not made a mistake we spent the first visit marking out the position of the baths, toilets and kitchen cabinets on the floor in chalk! We stayed in the house for the first tiime in May while more work was done to the inside. Over the summer we engaged a man with a digger who did some ground work and started work on the septic tank. This project has taken longer than we thought and is still half finsihed. We started some plumbing, varnished the windows and finished off some of the walls and in autumn we continued. Our next trip back is after Christmas, when I think our main aim is to galvanize the buidlers and the septic tank man into the next stage. The buidlers have been finishing off the outside in readiness for renderring and we have been waiting for the septic tank man to reappear. It has been a case of two steps forward and one step back but compared to this time last year it has progressed quite well.

Moving to France

We made a big step towards this goal this year in that in September we finally made up our mind and set a date. It won't be possible for us both to go out at the same time but the plan is that Ian (sic) will give up his job at the end of February and make a start on preparing for the move and I will go out when possible. It is hard to be more definate as there are still a lot of ends to tie up but we thought that if we left it much longer then it would just get move difficult to move and will end up taking until we both retire. So, now is the time to jump and I can't wait! Hopefully this time next year I will be writing this from France. I will give up my job as soon as we have a more concrete plan and I must admit I am looking forward to it. I may do some part time work with the Occupational Therapy School in Bordeaux  or I may just focus on running our bed and breakfast and llama farm!

Holidays

As you may have gathered we didn't really have time for any holidays as such as we were busy spending them working on the house. The work was quite tiring physically but mentally was a great relief from our regular jobs and so felt like a break. It also enabled us to get to know the area down by the land better. The only break we did manage was last Christmas when we joined by brother and sister-in-law skiing in France. We also had a long weekend to Northern France to go to a wedding of one of Ian's friends. Next year we may get a weekend in Germany to buy our central heating boiler as they are half the price when bought direct.

Family News

The biggest family event was my sister's wedding in July. She got maarried in Windsor Guildhall, where Charles and Camilla and Elton John had their wedding. She was very happy and the whole day went well..

My sister and mother outside the guildhall

Bride and groom

Brother and mother of the bride

My brother and sister-in-law are still continuing with their 'grand design' project in an old recording studio in Holland park and are hoping to complete the work next year. My elderly cat Norma is still alive despite her increasing age!

All that remains is to wish you a very happy Christmas for 2009 and to hope that 2010 brings you all you wish fop.

The end of the turkeys

The turkeys were cooked and eaten yesterday and they tasted pretty good. No sign of food poisoning yet! Christmas day was spent opening presents and then we went for a leisurely ski (although for me even a gentle ski leaves me feeling knackered!). In the evening we had a few flakes (flocons) of snow to accompany our Christmas dinner. The only down side is that my coccyx is still bruised after falling off the chair lift the other day making sitting down a bit uncomfortable.

The Saturday before Christmas

What is it about Christmas in England that makes grown men walk around B&Q wearing a Santa hat (and he wasn't an employee!). Yesterday at work we did a group teaching session with staff and students wearing party hats and listening to a tape from Top Gun! (The Christmas Carols CD had been taken to someone else's workplace). Ian said he chaired their business meeting yesterday with them all wearing party hats as one of his colleagues is Portuguese and had never seen Christmas crackers before!

Turkey Tales

The turkeys arrived on time. I had warned all the office staff of their possible arrival as I thought if someone turned up with a turkey they would think it was a joke, but as it turned out I walked out of my office to go upstairs and saw a DHL man arrive with a parcel.

"You wouldn't be the man with my turkeys would you?"

"Well, only if your name is Lovely"

"Well, it is as it happens; lucky I caught you"

"Well, when you said have you got my turkeys I thought you were joking! I didn't know that's what was in the box! Have a good Christmas!"

and with that he handed me the box and left!

The turkeys spent the night in the industrial fridge at work and now they are unpacked and in my fridge and waiting to be moved down to London for the next stage of the journey.

Tomorrow we have another Christmas dinner with Ian's mum, sister and niece and then our family duties are over and on Sunday we hit the road with the turkeys!

Tale of two turkeys

We are off for our holidays soon and unlike last year we are not spending Christmas running up and down the country but are driving down to France to ski in Le Grand Bornand with my brother and family. We are looking forward to it. As Ian said in an email to my sister -in-law, "there has been too much grey here! "

Tomorrow two turkey crowns are being delivered to my workplace. I must find a way to keep them fresh on their various journeys from work to home, home to Ian's and then in the car all the way under the Channel, down through France until they finally arrive at their Alpine destination three days before Christmas Day. If we all get food poisoning I will know why!

Christmas is coming

Christmas is on its way and much to Ian's annoyance I put up my Christmas tree this weekend. It is a pretty poor specimen of a plastic tree and a few lights but I couldn't cope with the idea of pine needles all over the floor and it was easier to go up into the loft than to go out and buy and tree.

I also iced my Christmas cake. I mentioned before that I am cultivating the art of mad and eccentric cakes and this counts as one of them!

A typical Christmas break

Well, the Christmas and New Year celebrations are over for another year! Mostly it is a bit of a relief as what it really means is 10 days of driving here, there and everywhere, picking up various relatives and dropping them off at others, trying to make sure you remember your presents and give them to the right people and trying not too spend too much money! We drove my mother (and her knees) over to Ian's sister on Christmas day and then in the evening we drove her and Ian's mother back to London, where we spent Boxing day. I then drove my mother back to her house the following day and then drove back to Ian's! The day after that we both went down to Eastbourne and then on Sunday we drove up to Tunbridge Wells to do a bike ride and then back to London. On New Years Eve we drove over to my brothers where we met up with him, his family and my sister and then we went out (and I got very drunk!). Yesterday my brother drove up to pick up my mum and brought her back for dinner and in the evening my sister drove her back and we both drove back to Ian's house! (I was still hung over!)

Our carbon footprint for the period was considerable!