Monthly Archive

So, just like that it’s April.

Time in France is sort of like lunchtime. As in, not merely an illusion, but doubly so. Today, left to go to the market at 10am, got invited to lunch and suddenly it was 3pm. I’m sure this disappearing day syndrome is far better in summer – and for people without work to be done.

But nevermind. Today’s lunch introduced us to the French variety of April Fool’s Day. Our favourite french kiddies drew fish and stuck the pictures on our backs. Bruce wasn’t at all surprised, but I found myself faced with a kid looking sneaky and holding something behind her back, innocently saying “Quoi?” (never a good sign). Anyway, when I finally realised they were trying to stick something to my back (and let them) there was much screaming of “Poisson d’Avril!” and giggling. I have to say, it sure beats glad-wrapping the toilet bowl.

Well, March then. It’s hard to say what happened in March since it passed in a haze of lunchtime. Well, except the first bit. March began on a hectic note for me as I was handing in the final assignments for my degree. Done now. Mostly marked. One can only assume I am allowed to apply for my degree soon – then it’s all just admin.

Minutes after handing my last assignment in we lost internet access (I’m not kidding here. Half an hour later I couldn’t access net banking and it never came back). Since it’s our landlord’s account we kind of had to sit tight until they sorted it out. They’re not very geeky, so it took some effort to sort it out. Two weeks later, internet was returned.

In the meantime, I did a lot of resting and a little sightseeing. I was stuck at home for days waiting for the shipping to arrive as it kept getting delayed. It was a bit of a drama, but it’s all here now.

Bruce was away most of the time we had no internet. In fact, he’s away on trips once a week, really. He’s seeing quite a bit of the countryside by car and train, plus the occasional plane trip. The theory is that I’ll go with him on occasion, but convenient occasions are more difficult to come by than we’d hoped. Tomorrow he’s leaving on a train at 5am for some place in the far north. I was invited, but to join him would mean paying 120 € for trains just to spend one night in a hotel and not have much time to spend sight-seeing anyway. Maybe next time.

We did manage one daytrip drive together, which gained us a nice collection of photos. In other photos, there was a trip into town where I was taking a photo every hour. Another big photo day was when we had friends around for a lunch. All the pics from March are here.

We’ve had a few people recently tell us they want to visit in the next few months, so I wrote a page for this blog dedicated to helping people plan the trip to Agen. So, if you’re thinking of visiting, take a look.

For those of you who are wanting news from us more often, take a look at my flickr as pictures do tend to make it there occasionally. Or click on all the links in these posts (they all lead somewhere). For the more adventurous, here is an rss feed which pulls selected posts, pictures and video from things both Bruce and I write around the internet (well, it will have Bruce’s stuff when he writes something).

Also, if you want us to call you, please give us your landline number. Better still, if you’re on Skype then add me (smange) and we can do video chats.

Finally, we have a video hello to show you. A lot of Facebook people have already seen this. But just for those of you who haven’t, here is a video hello from us.