First the walk and then...

Instructions for a pleasant way to spend a day (yesterday)

Park the car at Aytre, walk along the cliff top to Les Minimes, take the water navette  to the Old Port, walk to the market (buy Barry's Tea). return to the old port, and thence to Minimes and back along the cliff top to the car. Just short of nine miles!
Reward dinner at the "new"restaurant

and indeed it was pretty good.

Les bicyclettes de Marsilly

First ride of summer

The garage door creaked opened and out came the bikes for our inaugural summer ride. Our mission was to locate an advertised specialist beer shop in Lagord. It is always goo. to have a mission. The route was a straight forward combination of cycle tracks and roads out of Nantilly, skirting Neuilly and tracking round the edge of Lagord to the Centre Commercial known as Le Fief Rose.
The shp was a bit disappointing but a few shops away was a very handsome looking wine shop. We bought a Picpoul de Pinent and a Bourgogne Aligote for which we hold high hopes of being adopted as the house white for the holiday.
We made a slight diversion on the return to Le Batleur in Neuilly where we stopped for a just about passable lunch. The round trip  was just under 12 miles and we spent a comfortable hour and forty-one minutes riding, not including the stop for lunch, so not Tour de France pace.

Les Gnomes de Marsilly

The first thing to be noticed in the backyard was the overgrown vines, swamping the fuchsia bushes - all a bit of a mess really. The second thing to notice, or rather not notice, was that there was no sign of the gnomes. Cutting back the vines and tidying up the fuchsias revealed that they had clearly gone to ground in May under the vines, and lived a "sheltered" life. let's hope the are not in the mood for rebellion.

You turn your back for ten weeks...

 Reflecting on a small moment at Easter

We were cycling around by the church and approached the Relais de la Poste, our trusty, lunchtime only, local resto. We decided to stop for a breather and a local passed us telling us "Il est ferme" We thought that we could see that for ourselves and shrugged our shoulders. We thought we recognised the local as the patron but thought nothing of it.
We now realise he was telling us that "it is closed" as in gone, kaput, no more and not just shut for the day.

Juin 8th jour de la foire de greniers

Even when I read something in the local newsletter about Le Ancien Relais and a reference to Restaurant Aux Savours De Marsilly did it occur to me that the Relais was gone and replaced by the said ASdM in the same premises and it opened on June 8th. And here's the thing - a close inspection of the opening times shows that, while it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, for the rest of the week the bar is open from 10.00am to 9.30pm the resto is also open in the evenings 7.00pm to 9.30pm. A new dawn.

However not everything has changed as the third snap shows - this past weekend was a Fermenture Exceptionnelle and it was close on Saturday and Sunday. Quelle surprise.

Peter
And now for something from yer one.
Sunday morning and as normal we are listening to Brian Matthews,that's because we are often busy on a Saturday morning when he is on live. So it's a delight to see that the british licence fee for the beeb ensure that even in the depths of France one can hear decent musich. The very first song up is from Cliff Richard which yer man can sing along to every word and in time. Bet not a lot of people knew that he was a CR fan including me. There was him saying he was a soul man. Now I know why he was sad when they put the roof on Wimbledon.

Journeying to France - a view from Ms O'Reilly

Saturday July 26th

5.00am and the alarm beeps to wake us to get up and get ready for our 5.45amish departure. I say ish here regarding our departure time because it had been the subject of conversation throughout the proceeding days. It went like this me: “we only need to be there 45 minutes before the boat sails and sure if we miss it there is another one” yer man: “anything could happen on the way, you never know”.  There’s no denying that statement.

So you can visualise the scene as we pulled out of the drive at 5.57am! We decided it would be best if I drove as once we hit the major traffic jams, that one gets at 6.00am on a Saturday morning,  yer man could navigate us around them.  The reason for the delay being that the coffee machine (a Nespresso no less) had broken down the previous day, and so making coffee was a bit long winded.  This in a home with a premier account with Nespresso which means that if we don’t order 500 capsules every 4 weeks from them, they call us up.

We have Satnav in case you didn’t know, Nellie is its name and she was called into action as we left Beckenham, just in case. An upside or a downside, depending on which side of the car you were sitting in, is that it shows the estimated arrival time. In our case 7.40! So that would leave us 10 minute late of the ideal arrival time, but still 35 minutes before the boat actually left Portsmouth.  Not a beep was said, many a marriage has survived with this strategy.

We reach the M25 in 25 minutes, which did prompt Nellie into estimating our arrival at 7.34am, so we were heading in the right direction in more ways than one. On to the top of the A3 and within another 15 minutes we are whizzing past Guildford nicely. It was a super morning to be on road, conversation was a tad light though.

As we pulled into the Brittany Ferries port, the tailback was out the gate, literally. They had more staff then you could shake a fist at and oh yes we arrived at 7.25am… 5 minutes before the expected time. I said nought you will be pleased and surprised to learn. However yer man did comment that the journey was all a little stressful. “Was it?” I said putting on a slightly surprised tone?

We did however (interesting use of the collective pronoun here. Ed) manage to manoeuvre ourselves into the slowest checking-in queue, and when we finally got to checked in, I asked did he have a problem with his computer? He smiled and said oh no, it is all fine. “Then why? may I ask are you processing cars at such a slow pace compared to your colleagues…”

Boarded and sailing it was lovely to sit down with the weekend newspapers and upon reading an article in The Guardian announcing that 10 million children had broken up from school that week, I thought you don’t need to tell us that, as far as I could see around me, they are all on this boat.

Thankfully we have the foresight to book ourselves a cabin and mega zzzzzz where had. It had been quite  while since we took a day time crossing to France and an even longer time since we did the Portsmouth to Caen route. Our early start led us to go to the restaurant and have a leisurely breakfast. The late departure, and therefore late arrival gave us the chance for another visit o the restaurant for a light lunch – well we are on holiday!

One benefit of arriving on time (hahaha.Ed) at the port in Portsmouth, i.e. not so early that they bung you and your little car up on the top deck away from the zillions of 4WD’s and their trailers, roof racks and bike racks, is that you are more likely to be on a normal level car deck. This meant we disembarked within minutes of docking and were tootling down the motorways of France and arrived nicely at Chez Marsilly at 7.53pm – Nellie kept us informed.

Fuchia and Vine abound

We unpacked and tucked into our M&S picnic (brought in case of an emergency!) and yer man says "I am off out for a walk". I felt it was best to stay and mind the house but within 3 minutes he is back with the amazing news that the Bar - Tabac - Presse at the end of our road is not only open at this god forsaken hour (9.15pm) but has live music. So we trotted down and yes there they were. We were speechless, well until the wife came and asked us if we’d like a drink.

I say speechless because this is a business that when we arrived in Marsilly choose the hours it opened based on, well not on any obvious plan we could work out. 8am – 10am and maybe 4pm – 6pm if you were lucky. Every so often a sign would appear on the door “ferme expectionalle”.  So to be open on a Saturday night and with music was surprising but fun. We stayed about ½ hour, the local were playing music and singing. It was nice in a French sort of way. 

Home and an early night after a long day and I sleep soundly with the realization that I will probably never arrive bang on time for a ferry crossing again!

Sheila (what is the speed limit around here?) O’Reilly

Les Flots at Chatelaillon-Plage

On our way to play golf at La Jarne (just extended from six to nine holes and renamed Golf La Rochelle du Sud) we visited Chatelaillon-Plage the other day for a walk along the front and to have lunch at Les Flots.

This picture is from last summer and shows the "conservatory - extension" that seemed to indicate it was thriving. Well now its is gone and in its place is a building site on which a major expansion of the hotel side of the business is being built. The new building is way bigger than the current one and it will be interesting see it when it is finished.
Cheers P

More O'Reilly musings

Well what’s been happening in Marsilly for the past few days, I know you are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear so here goes.

My first thoughts are spinach, I know how you might ask does spinach appear so definitely in my thoughts. Suffice to say that this is quickly becoming the spinach holiday. I have had it three times with meals over the past week that equates to about the same number of times I have eaten it so far in my lifetime. Somehow yer man has got it onto his shopping list and clearly forgets to cross it out when he has purchased it so it appears again and again.

Who took out the plug?

Monday was a lovely day out as we tootled around the coast and little towns that make up the extreme south of the Vendee area. Driving cross country to Jard Sur Mer we never got above sea level and when there has been as much rain as the past 6 months many of the drainage channels and ditches are full. After a long, well ok longish, walk along the harbour wall yer man needed a wee (age) and we headed to the only place in town open, which also happen to be serving up the classic French dish of, hold your horses, guess, yup, pizza. So how could we resist.The restaurant also had further evidence that French children don’t know how to behave in restaurants. They cried, they screamed, they ran up and down the place, they wouldn’t eat their food – all good stuff for my first book “French Why Can’t We Be More Like Them”

We also spotted an amazing job being done both in Jard and later in La Tranche Sur Mer in that we saw a man, or in some cases two men sweeping sand off the roads. Now you might at first sight think, oh wow how industrious - a real social service. However, visualise the job, it is taking place on a pathways which runs alongside a beach, on a very windy day. Correct me if I am wrong but sand is not actually going to stay stuck on a beach when it’s windy, so the upside of securing this job you know you’ll be employed for life; the downside is that you just might never move from that same spot.

Tuesday has seen a highlight of our holiday, yer man has achieved fame in the local boulangerie - Yup that’s right - somehow they spotted he was English, no idea how but there you go. And he was asked “comment dites-vous 'et vous ceci' en angalis” At first he kept saying "non merci c'est tous" until his poor brain heard the comment dites-vous bit. This all means that the checkout time for him going through the till has increased to the extent that he is now managing to build up quite a tidy little queue behind him as he coppers up, speaks his French, the girls ask him to say a phrase in English and then with smiles and au revoir and bon journee all round, everyone is happy.

Let's get this sand swept up before the next blow of the wind

O'Reilly réflexions du dimanche matin

It’s hard to appreciate it but we’ve been here over a week and I wonder what have we actually done?

Yeah ok, I have hovered downstairs and upstairs as well as dusting around and we’ve cleaned the bathroom, oh what exciting lives we live. I brought very little actual work with me as I was lucky enough to action most of it before I left as well as leaving a number of tasks to the team – they made the mistake of saying “no” when I asked if had they much on their plate to work on!

However I do “have to read” the 10 books that are on the Independent Bookshop Book of the Year as the judging lunch is the day after I get back. Lunch; yup we make the decision of the best book over lunch, that’s what really swung it for me when asked.

So the piles of books are placed on the shelf above the fire and off I read. A week in with seven down and now I have just three left. So far it has been immensely enjoyable which is just as well as I have said yes to being a judge for another award and that involves 40/50 books. I felt the need to repeat the 5 weeks in the summer we did last year as time is needed to read that many books.

It’s now Sunday morning and there’s a storm brewing, weather wise I mean. The wind and rain is very strong so I am proposing to yer man that it’s soup (which I am making) and then an afternoon by the fire. However, the most exciting thing that’s happened this morning, is that someone else has parked outside our house… yes I know outside OUR HOUSE. This is just like being at work when I leave to do school deliveries and someone else parks outside the bookshop in my parking space. At the bookshop we put up signs saying no parking, and though it makes no difference, but I am not sure we can actually do that on a public road in France… I’ll put it to yer man and see what he says. Himself was off buying food for dinner, firelighters and a pain au raisin as a treat for us this morning and had to take the car because it was raining.

I did text him to say someone had parked OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE but he had his phone on silent so he didn’t know until he swung back around to park! 

The phone was on silent because, I think, he was out of the house and thought to himself phew a break from yer one and her requests of “let’s move this” or “let’s clean that”.

WHY US?

The most exciting thing of yesterday was that we bought a new pole to open our new Velux windows and a new toilet seat – how good does it get, I ask?We needed a new toilet seat because the guy who was fitting the Velux windows either stood on the seat to reach the window, or else he thought he’d piss from a height. Whatever it is not the toilet seat we left here in August and dos not fit properly. Now that’s a mystery that we’ve been unable to get to the bottom of (excuse the pun) but there you are and currently the gnomes are taking the blame.

The new Velux windows look good, there’s no more rain dripping into the third bedroom however, say if I am wrong here; you ask for the job to be done, it’s spec-ed up and all looks good. We turn up and what do we find, he didn’t think it was worth including a pole to open the bloody things! What did he think we were, 10 foot giants, I mean did it not cross his mind that one of the thing we just might want to do is open the windows. So whilst we were shopping for the toilet seat in our favourite shop in the whole world (Leroy Merlin  cf B&Q), we spotted they also sold Velux windows and thought, would they, would they just maybe, sell the poles to reach up and open them. They did and because we knew the price of what they were in England (doesn’t everyone) we thought we’d check the price before buying, just in case there’s the slimmest chance that they are more expensive in France – as if.  We wanted to know the price in particular  since we’d only found the telescopic version, whereas we wanted the normal version, we are not the smallest people in the world. A simple task you’d have thought but took three members of staff and you’ve got to ask how come there’s 15% unemployment here?
First up it took two guys to scan the bar code and read it, or not in this case, on the computer. After a couple of attempts and blank faces one of the guys took us to another till point where a third guy got involved. In the middle of all this I helped a small woman lift a huge plank of MDF from the top of an enormous pile of wood – all without exchanging a word (that’s female solidarity for you)

Whilst my back was turned helping the little woman, himself managed to somehow ditch the telescopic pole and have in his hands a normal pole. I only had my back turned for a minute and I say wow how did that happen and he said he didn’t know, they third guy just gave him the smaller version. So it might take three of them to sort us out but they are telepathic – whose says French workers are not the real deal. So as the tale goes, all’s well that ends well though we still didn’t know the price.

And we did more, yup once you are on a roll why stop. We decided we head out for lunch, over to l’Aubrecay which is a little enclave about a mile away so we cycled. There are lots of pluses to cycling there including the fact that you can have a glass of wine. The restaurant is on a roundabout with about 30 houses backing onto it, we have already had reports from Michael and Ann that it was great and so thought we’d check it out and are delighted to confirm that it lived up to all our expectations. By not being in London this Saturday morning himself missed his French class so it was great to get a bit of chat with the Madame of l’Aubrecay which included her telling him that it is a long time since she spoke English. I was in such relaxed and chill form that I choose not to have anything vegetarian but went for the fish stew, the daredevil that I am. Once I’d passed over the langoustines and scallops to himself, I was grand.

After all that stress and exertion we thought we’d take a rest and watch Pointless Celebrity, no wonder no one wants to come on holidays with us.

Parfois, je pense qu'il est tout totalement inutile

Excusez-moi, avez-vous vu ma balle?

The Easter weekend has flown by and everyone in Marsilly is settling back to their normal work routines, except us! We have thirteen days ahead of us before we set off back to the UK and whilst we both have things we need to attend to, workwise, we aim to switch off the metronome of regular life and have a good break.

Golf clubs at rest

Sunday was a lovely day and the afternoon saw us on the golf course for our first game this year. Not just the first game of the year but also the first since we were here in August last year, so the first game in eight months. We had picked up from the various local newsletters delivered to the house in our absence that that the management of the club was undergoing change and it was clear that things were beginning to change but only superficially. We learned for a member of staff that the new management had taken over in January so it will be interesting to see how things develop.

We were both decidedly rusty and this was a bit awkward since we were joined up into a foursome on the first tee with two blokes. One was on holiday from Bordeaux, visiting his brother who lives in La Rochelle. The second was a local, a club member, who was delighted to be able to play with a fellow Frenchman who could clearly play golf. By the third hole we had all relaxed a little and something resembling a conversation (in Franglais) was struck up and the whole thing was very amiable.

The “local” only played the first nine holes and left the three of us to continue. At the tenth tee we met our fellow golfer’s wife, brother, sister in law and a third women whose relationship was beyond our French to comprehend. They formed a mini gallery and followed around the rest of the course, this did not do very much for my golf but had the added bonus that they were keen to join in the search for any ball lost in the long grass – as mine was on several occasions. This also helped them realise we are not native French speakers and that we were actually quite friendly just a bit short language skills. We developed a  series of friendly exchanges around “Le golf est tres difficle” – a bad shot and “Le golf est tres facile” – a good shot. Interspersed with a bit of “pas mal” and the odd “pas problem”

We arrived back from the course about 7.30pm and knew that the four hours we had spent chasing little white balls along 6km of uneven ground would ensure a good night’s sleep.

Monday was mostly sunny but cooler and with more of a breeze – not really warm enough to lounge in the backyard and read. Our trip out was to La Rochelle in the afternoon. WE parked in a near deserted Place de Verdun and strolled down towards the Vieux Port past the market place and the main shopping streets. Much to our surprise lots of the shops were open, but everything was very quiet. With the sun shining it was no surprise to find that all the activity was at the pavement cafes and market stalls overlooking the harbour.

After a rather indulgent sit-down ice-cream we decide to take a “cruise” – or rather take the ferry over to Minimes and enjoy the sea air and have a gander at how the marina extension work was progressing. I is clear that they are near completion and the work of commissioning the new has pontoons already begun and will be complete by the summer. When complete there will be moorings for 4,500 boats, up from 3,500.

A quiet evening in – reading and snoozing to prepare for the rest of the holiday.

Visitors and locals stroll by the pavement cafes

Thinks "perhaps ride on the ferris wheel"

Boats at rest in the Old Port

The embarkation point for the ferry to Minimes

A view from the ferry arriving at Minimes

The first 24 hours – it’s magic

Just about 24 hours ago we cruised along the “minor” roads of south east England to Portsmouth for the St Malo, overnight ferry and now we are settled in Nantilly, its 20c and we have 18 days of R&R to look forward to.

It is seven and a half months since we were last here and there is lots to catch up with: the new paint of the outside shutters, the new Velux windows in two of the upstairs rooms, what’s been happening in the Commune, how the olive tree fared over the winter, are the vines still alive, would my 12 weeks of French lessons at the Alliance Francaise make any difference to my competence when talking to people, and what sort of welcome would we get from the caretakers?

Well it seems that the lads have been applying themselves to language studies and a bit of pottery. They have been hanging around by the vines, that clearly produced fruit as there are signs of shrivelled bunches of grapes left on them. A bit of pruning needed.

The exterior paint work is not a 100% success. The colour works well when everything is shut up but when the shutters are open and the wood finish of the windows and doors are visible it clashes quite badly with the colour of the paint….

The journey here was fine but not with its own niggles. We were the 54^th car checked in at the port, one of the last cars to board and one of the last cars to disembark. We stayed too long in the cocktail bar of the restaurant to actually get a table in the restaurant and ending having a late supper in the self-service – the food was pretty good but the ambiance of the dining room is definitely more transport café than fine dining.

This morning on hearing that the deck of the ferry on which were parked was going to be last off and discovering that we couldn’t actually get into the car as the cars around us were packed in tight, we went and waited in the (closed) bar. And this is where the “magic” came in – two young French lads, probably 12 years old, came over to us and asked if we wanted to see a magic show. We said yes and one of them produced a pack of cards and proceeded to go through half a dozen brilliant card tricks. We applauded them warmly and they wandered off with big smiles on their faces. And what is more once they had decided that our French wasn’t good enough, they did all the patter in English. Good for them but it doesn’t auger well for the benefits of 12 week at the Alliance!

Ruminations from yer one

We take Dulwich Books with us wherever we go

As may be clear, the principal author of Nantilly Notes is Peter - what follows is exculsively authored by Sheila.

Five weeks, seems such a long time at the beginning and such a short time at the end. When we thought we’d try for a five week holiday many months back it was a little tester for the long term. As for the test the great news is that we are still speaking to one another if nobody else, at the end of the five weeks which is good

Highlights of the holiday are strange and varied and one began even before we left. I devour, in great detail, articles and information in a monthly magazine we get called French Living. Four days before le departure I spotted a news story announcing that Sanofi were now offering their “telepeage” automatic toll charger to UK residents. Yippee I thought we could get that, attach it to the car and zip through the toll gates on our journey down through France.

The challenge of negotiating the toll booths when you drive on the right is not so bad when there are two of you because the person on the left will keep you close to the payment machine, though not too close of course. (Shouts of “left, left” or “woo right, right” can be heard from British cars at most toll booths.) If you are unlucky enough to be driving alone, well no one will be shouting at you and you’ll just have to pull up, hop out of the car, put in your payment and get back in the car. You try to do this elegantly and with a smile however when there is a Frenchie queueing behind you that’s not so easy. After many trips to France you learn that non, non, non the French don’t queue or for that matter have a huge amount of patience on the road.

Therefore when I spotted the Sanofi story you can imagine my excitement and fired up my PC and ordered one for us. They offer a 48 hour service and before we knew it one had arrived and all by myself I registered us and installed it onto the car windscreen. The excitement of the first toll booth was palpable in the car as we approached the gate, we had the credit card ready to pay the €8 toll, just in case the remote did not connect, don’t want the French getting impatient behind us. We were like two little children when the barrier rose and we sailed through, how simple our pleasures are these days. So that was it, €8 paid just like that. It was therefore a slight surprise to me 14 days later to receive an email from Sanofi together with our first invoice which was for €53! Oops I thought I better check into this further before I mentioned it to yer man. Now I would have to bring up the subject because for reasons that are really too boring to mention, that’s if you are not bored already the charge was going to be taken from his bank account.

When I had a spare 15 minutes I logged onto my Sanofi account and read the small print. Now I don’t have a feel for whether the lack of ability to read small print is solely a female talent or just me, but it’s not the first time I’ve come unstuck by not reading the small print. In fact in the case of Sanofi it is not really small print, it is in fact in very large letters on their website outlining the set up charge, the monthly fee when the remote is used and the security fee for the remote which as you’ll have guessed all add up to €53.

As I say, reading small details or detail in general is not my forte, I have lots so I am not worried about not being good at that and I have a man who is. This means that if we are venturing into the unknown I drive and yer man navigates as I cannot read a map. Of course I can read a map however I have found that statements like “ah that was the turning back there” is not good for any marriage. One of our trips was to visit the WWII bunker that is situated right in the heart of La Rochelle harbour or at least that’s what we thought we were heading for when we saw the news stories about Le Bunker museum now open to the public.

The bunker at La Rochelle was used to house German and Italian submarines during the second world war and as you’d expect is a building you can spot from a number of locations around the port. After our coffee one morning we thought we’d pop in and take a look and though we broadly knew where it was we were unsure of the actual road. So yer man is directing and I am driving as we head up and down the roads around the post. La Rochelle might be a large port but there are not that many roads and for the life of us we could not find the right road. After an hour and apart from suffering from the usual female need of “eh I wouldn’t mind going to the toilet soon” we took a right turn at a set of traffic lights for me to momentarily forget that we were in France and smoothly moved into the left hand lane. It’s hard to say who was more shocked, yer man who immediately came face to face with a French man, or the French man who saw the whites in our eyes. “Drive on the right shouts yer man” as I swerve the car over to the right and proceed on our way. We gave up looking for the  bunker and headed for a café for coffee and a toilet.

We drove a little less for a few days, with our new found hobby of cycling and the development of the centre commercial in Marsilly, we found we don’t need to drive as much. On an early visit to the supermarket we were asked if we have a loyalty card, now I don’t want you to think that we understood her exactly, however there are only a few lines of conversation one can have at a supermarket checkout and we gleaned one key word and I said non. It always surprises us how the French can use so many words to say so little and ten minutes later and a long line behind us at the checkout we left with a form to complete and a new loyalty card. We felt we’d been accepted into the Marsilly community and on every visit we proudly take out our card and get our points - an activity we ignore in Britain! We did learn that you need to show it at the beginning of your transactions rather than the end and you might ask how did we find this out.

So that’s €15.44 said the checkout girl, or rather we saw the display on the till and handed over our money and then oops we forgot our loyalty card so handed that to her. Ah she said or words to that effect and then proceeded to inform us of what she was about to do. Before this there was 3 people in the queue, there are always people queueing at the checkout in the supermarket. She heads to the next till, gets under the counter and disappears from view for what seemed like minutes. The shortest time always feel very long when you are holding up a queue due to your request and we stood and look along the line which was now building quicker than if they’d been giving away Euros.  

After what does seem like hours she pops up from underneath the counter, engages us again in conversation and hands us back our loyalty card with our points on it. I say points, sometimes we only get 1 point and we have no idea how it works. What we do know is that after five weeks it is going to come to an abrupt halt and expect Le Clerc to be writing to us to find out why we’ve stopped shopping.

I go less and less on the trips to the supermarket because yer man has become the M&S shopper in disguise. He has taken to “coppering up” at the checkout which is of course an endeavour to run down our two bags of Euros 1/2/5 cents coins. However there is a reason why we have two full bags of Euros coppers because a bit like the rest of Europe we’ve never fully got comfortable with what the bronze ones are. A week in yer man announces that he challenge for the holiday is to work through these two bags and the best way to do that is at the checkout so I have discovered that if I thought 3 people behind us is a lot that’s nothing compared to the numbers that are left behind after we have handed over 44cents in copper.

There is a belief in the Anglo world that French children are the darlings everyone would like their children to be and in fact Pamela Druckerman has made a writing career out of it by having bestselling books in the UK called “French Children Don’t Talk Back” and “Why French Children Don’t Throw Food”. Clearly her research is based on French children in another part of France or else it looks like La Rochelle has been allocated a higher percentage of children that do talk back to their parents. You might be encouraged to hear me say this and think oh our French has improved so much that they can now understand conversations between French families; oh no, there is a universal expression on both a parent and child’s face when the conversation is not going the way that either would want.  A sentence that has a number of ‘non’ in it followed shortly afterwards by tears will lead anyone to the view that French parents face the same challenges as any parents and are as equally competent / inept as the rest.

In the end there are a huge amount of similarities and an amazing amount of differences for a country that is so close physically to the UK. However it will be good to go back to a land where I can have a conversation with someone other than yer man nice and all as that is.

I wonder when we will sees them again?