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A century of posts!
Hello again I can’t believe that my last post was my 100th post for the blog Coffee and Chocolatines. The blog set out to portray our life in South West France, our renovation project and introduce you to the area we live in now. So much has changed since we arrived here in 2019. A pandemic took us all by surprise, our renovation plans stalled, we acquired 4 cats and seemed to have been through a series of unexpected adventures that were not on our to-do list at all (nor in our contingency plans)! As I write this, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing again. It has…
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Places to visit: Mazamet
This post should have appeared last week, but an important birthday took precedence. Max has now enjoyed a week long birthday celebration! On his birthday we decided to go out for the day and picked a town called Mazamet – about an hour and a half from us. We had viewed a house near this town when we were house hunting, but given that it had a tiny garden overlooking the local cemetery, it was not for us. At the time we had another appointment so couldn’t visit Mazamet, but were curious to see what it is like. The day we visited was grey but dry. On our drive through…
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Big cupboards and a big birthday
Hello to you all from a very windy SW France I wasn’t sure if this blog would get written. I joined Max in the séjour for a cup of tea and another slice of his delicious birthday cake (more on that in a moment), and he suggested I wrote my blog from the sofa! A change from the kitchen table where I have taken up residence until we sort out the top floor for my son to move to and we get our office back. This sounded like a great idea, especially if the fire was about to be lit (the wind is making the house very breezy to say…
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Caterpillars and Carpenter Bees
Bonjour à tous I hope you are all well? I am late again with this blog. The weeks just seem to whizz by, always with new challenges and jobs to do. It would be lovely to press pause on day-to-day life, catch up and then press play again. C’est la vie I guess! The news continues to be grim from Ukraine but the people there have shown themselves to be a force to be reckoned with. I am sure you, like me, feel a little helpless, but we have occupied ourselves sorting out rooms, should our accommodation be needed. I mentioned last week (see post: What’s in an address) that…
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Cooking with the Seasons: March
Nettles and Blood Oranges! With the arrival of daffodils and primulas in the garden and wild plum blossom, Spring is in the air. At the market, winter fare is still with us but there are signs of change. Although it was -3°C at night during the week, more salads are beginning to appear. One of our lovely local stalls has its salade composée back again, scattered with tiny pretty flowers. They prepare this from the different types of salad leaves they grow, along with edible flowers that change according to availability. This salad disappears in the summer and comes back during the winter depending on the weather, and their time!…
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What’s in an address?
Hello again everyone, I hope you are all well in a week where the news continues to be dominated by the awful invasion of Ukraine. What a terrible situation, which just seems to get worse each day. I can’t imagine the terror and anger people in Ukraine must be feeling. Like many countries, France is keen to welcome Ukrainian refugees. The Mairies (town halls) up and down the country are co-ordinating help. Our Mairie has been contacted by the Préfecture in Albi, our departmental administrative centre, to see if anyone could offer accommodation. Given that we have quite a bit of space here, we have put ourselves on the list.…
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Getting some perspective
Bonjour à tous, I hope you are all well? In a week where sensible precautions against Covid were scrapped in the UK along with free tests, where another person died as a result of being shot by a hunter here in France and we woke up on Thursday morning to the news that Putin had invaded the Ukraine, I have stopped feeling sorry for myself and changed what I was going to write about. I am going a little off-piste this week and not writing about the minutiae of our life here in France. I had also thought to give you an insight into changing rural addresses in France. However…
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A Goat and a Geyser
Hello All I hope you are all OK, especially those of you reading this in the UK where I understand the weather is atrocious? I hate to say it but after torrential rain here, a lot of which managed to get into the house, we had a couple of warm sunny days – almost spring-like! The rain then returned, but hopefully not for long so the wet floor gets a chance to dry out a bit. Last week was a week of disruptions, nothing new there. In between work and helping our neighbour with trips to the vet as her cat was unwell, and collecting some friends who have returned…
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Places to Visit: Rodez
This month, after a short break, the Places to Visit series is back! We took a day off earlier this month, to escape from DIY (not that we should be doing that but sometimes you just need a break) and work and headed out to visit Rodez, a hilltop medieval city just over an hour away from us. We drove past Rodez in 2018 on our way to view a property in the Aveyron and at the time said we must visit. So, fast forward 3 ½ years and finally we were on our way. Fortune smiled on us and the day was partly sunny, a little chilly but nothing…
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Notre Petit Château
Bonjour à tous I hope you have all had a lovely week. My week has been challenging for various reasons, including a battle with Instagram and some family issues. For that reason not much has progressed renovation-wise, although I have done my first kitchen job in between work meetings, clearing off the old shelves above the sink so Max could remove them. Now they are down, the next job is Max’s – filling the many cracks in the wall! I did also finally paint the last in the set of 3 wicker boxes that will act as storage places for socks, etc in our bedroom, and also made the latest…
