August 2006....

It's the School holidays!!! Aggghhhhhh....!!

Well, our delightful two broke up from school on the 4th of July, and a month has past, and there is just over 4 weeks to go before they return to the smiles of their teachers???



We've had some lovely days, most of which have been spent around the pool, or at friends houses, or at the beach at Biscarosse on the South West coast.

We had a week in Le Lavandou in the South which is about 30 kms from St Tropez.

The beaches were beautiful and the scenery fantastic. It was David's first visit to this part of France, and he described it as good as the Caribbean. I don't know if you'd go that far to describe it,... but it was lovely. Lots to do for the children and lovely restaurants dotted along the promenade. Not a Union Jack pair of boxer shorts in sight, nor any scary club reps with 5o lager drinking louts all on a mission to get p****** .... merry!!


Matthew made friends with a French boy called Matthieu and his sister Amandine. They live near the swiss border and were on holiday at their grandparents house. The family were charming, and Matthew has written his first post card in french to little Mathieu.

The house we rented, was the smallest house we've ever seen... but it was cheap and cosy and in an ideal location. Anyone who comes to stay with us, may like to spend a week in the South of France as well ... it will only take 9 hours in busy periods!! We are about 3 hours drive from the South Coast, i.e Beziers, from where we live now but to go to the heart of the South, like Nice, Monaco, St Raphael, etc ... it's a long way... but worth it.

Les Maisons...

The houses are well and truly started....and we can walk from one side of the house to the other via a concrete base, but that's about it!!

We now have water!!!

This is a big deal for us, as the builders kept blaming their delays on there being no water on site.

We even ended up buying 150 meters of hosepipe, various connections, and bits and bobs so that we could run the hose from the kitchen sink where we are renting. The hose ran from the sink to the cellar, through the garage, through three gardens, on to the bottom of the land. As you can imagine, the water pressure was pretty naff by this time, so it was just managing to dribble out at the other end. Eventually, France's equivilent to Severn Trent arrived in a green digger, and five days later we have Eau!!

Le Langue...

Well, we are all trying to speak the language.. often with difficulty, but getting there... je pense!! Matthew has a lesson each week with a lady called Sandrine, who is lovely and is obviously French, judging by her name, but speaks English fluently.

The accent here is really strong and sometimes you can say something three or four times before they understand. It's like a scene from Little Britain where the Fat Fighters lady can't understand the Asian women!!



Talking of Little Britain, and other programmes as such ... we see some English T.V like Casualty, The News, BBC stuff... but I haven't a clue what's happening in Coronation Street or Emmerdale!!