Welcome back, or welcome to the blog if this is your first read. How has everyone’s week been? We have had a marmalade filled week – more on that shortly. The weather has warmed up a bit outside but with it we have discovered a new characteristic of our French home. It is so cold inside that the windows steam up from the outside! Quite funny really. What with that and experiencing chilblains for the first time in my life – we are truly living the dream! I did, however, find our first hellebores and primulas have flowered – a lovely sign that Spring is on its way. This week…

Hello from a very rainy Tarn today. I hope you have all had a lovely week and enjoyed the introduction to our local town Cordes sur Ciel on Wednesday? Yesterday was my eldest son’s birthday. He is staying with us at the moment, studying for his degree online due to the ongoing pandemic. As a surprise we had a Zoom meal with his younger brother Alex and his grandmother. Alex cooked the exact same food at his flat in Manchester – great fun. We also realised it was the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century – quite a day! The house is still really cold, but…

Bonjour everyone What a week of contrasts weather-wise – hard frost, snow, rain, mist and sunshine and so cold. Winter in the Tarn, so many beautiful and differing views each day whether out on walks or from the kitchen windows. I have it on good authority from locals that it hasn’t been this cold here since 2014! A good time to have no central heating. We are racing through all those logs we neatly stacked for the winter. It will be a miracle if they last this month! More wood stacking to come I suspect – at least it keeps you warm. We have been treated this week to lots…

Hello Everyone I am posting a little later than usual, as last week there were a few unexpected events that slightly overtook us. Sadly a lovely local lady died very suddenly and unexpectedly. Such a huge sadness and loss for her husband and family, and for our little community. Of much less importance, the weather was and is so cold it is hard not to just sit as close to the woodburner as possible all the time. Even the pool froze over, so we had to install a flotteur – a string of floats that prevent the pool from icing over completely and thus potentially damaging the liner – a…

Happy New year to you all 2020 has been a challenging and unexpected year for us all. Let’s hope 2021 allows us to once again visit and hug loved ones and find a way forward through the pandemic. In our corner of rural France, the weather has been and is very cold – the house even colder! Great excitement this week, our new post box finally arrived. We inherited a tiny post box with the house and have long promised our lovely post lady a decent sized post box so she doesn’t have to trek down our drive every time something larger than a pin arrives! It will also be…

Happy Christmas Eve everyone – rather late in the day but hope you have had an enjoyable day? I have had a busy day, lots of cooking, but I am now relaxing after a lovely meal with a very nice glass of wine and finishing this post. We have gone a little French/European this year and enjoyed a celebratory meal this evening, with our capon, some roasted vegetables, my Grandmother’s bread sauce and stuffing. It felt wrong to follow all our usual traditions this year as so many people are not together, so we are doing things a little differently. It is particularly awful to hear of those who cannot…

Bonjour from the Tarn I hope you have all had a lovely week and your Christmas plans are taking shape? Is time going extra fast at the moment? The weeks seem to whizz by. We’ve had some beautiful sunrises and sunsets here this week – quite stunning and really makes me appreciate the beauty of nature, but also very inspiring. We have finally bought the Christmas tree and started putting up decorations and lights. Lots more for the kittens to play with, all very exciting for them. Every now and again they get tired and if I sit down with them, suddenly all 4 are on my lap purring away…

Bonjour. I hope everyone has had a great week? We have been enjoying walks with the dog a bit further afield this week, since the 1km lockdown rule was relaxed. (This restricted us to walking only within a km of the house for a maximum of one hour each day.) Bear has loved it too. Lockdown ends in France on 15th December, to be replaced with an 8pm to 6am curfew, apart from Christmas Eve. We have decided this is not the year to rush to be with family. Covid19 is still too prevalent and won’t be taking time off for Christmas I suspect. It has been so cold here…

Hello again I hope you are all well? I can’t believe it is December. What a year and how quickly it has gone. Christmas is around the corner – a little different this year. I am sad that we won’t be seeing family and neither Alex, my younger son, nor my mother will be coming over this year. A difficult time for everyone but sensible to be cautious during the festive season. This has not been our most positive week. I’m an eternal optimist but sometimes….! Don’t get me wrong, we love it here but some weeks we look at the mountain of jobs to do, the impact the pandemic…

This week the focus is on food, a subject close to my heart. Whether home grown or locally produced we have been trying out all sorts of things over the last year.   Can you believe it is almost December? What a strange year we are all living through. During the week we were looking back to this time last year when my niece got married and my younger son graduated. Who would have thought where we would be a year on from those fun occasions? I have been thinking about making my Christmas cake, a bit later than usual as plans for the festive season are very much on…