Hello Everyone Finally I’m back. May was a challenging month, with little spare time. We have had exams (my son’s finals), tooth dramas, pool dramas and, for me, confirmation of an eye problem. Perhaps this post should be No Blog May! Exam time is over at le petit château. Now the anxious wait for results but in the meantime a small celebration to mark the achievement that getting to the end of the degree is for my son. For him really against the odds. After the stress of the exam period I was counting on catching up with jobs both in and out of the house, as well as some…

Hello Everyone A beautiful morning here in the Tarn, the birds are singing, the air is warming up and the lake is glistening in the sunshine. Coffee and chocolatines on the terrace – how lovely. There is a promise of warmer days ahead, so once again we are behind with our pool opening. Each year has been the same. Chilly days and nights do not encourage thoughts of swimming, we forget that we need time to ready the pool for this. Suddenly the weather changes and oops, we are not ready. Ah well – there are definitely worse problems and this is truly not a real problem! We have reached…

Hello everyone Apologies, Coffee and Chocolatines has gone a little AWOL recently, not helped by a massive malfunction of the site, now partially fixed. Promised posts have not appeared, all underway I assure you, but none completed. This was my end of April post, now beginning of May. Happy May to you all. Don’t you love the colour of these tulips, always the last to show in the garden. The white flowers are called Boules de neige (snowballs), part of the Viburnum family and utterly gorgeous. They bring a smile to my face. We were given them by our neighbour to thank Max for fixing her lawnmower. Another one for…

Bonjour à tous We have warm weather! I am finally out of my thermals! Today I am even sock free! Too many exclamation marks but oh my goodness, you can’t imagine the joy. It is tempting to rush and open the pool, but I think the warm days are not yet here to stay! Max and I have taken up residence in the garden, trying to get on top of the myriad jobs that now await us. As you can see, we are being overtaken by dandelions – the flowers are great early nectar for bees, and the puffs are so beautiful – apart from when you realise that each…

Hello everyone I hope you are all keeping well? Well the cold snap was as bad as predicted! What a weekend and early part of the week. The night-time temperatures got down to -5, we had snow, frost, sunshine and more snow. The snow settled a few times but in snow terms was no more than a light dusting. We had to smile on Saturday morning as our neighbour rang to see if we should go to the market. The car had about an inch of snow on it and the roads were clear! I don’t think that they are that used to snow here. At the market, much reduced…

Hello Everyone and Happy April March has flown by and suddenly it is 1st April. April Fools’ Day is known as Poisson d’avril in France where the custom is to play jokes on each other, as in the UK. This dates back to 1564 when King Charles XI moved the start of the year from around 1st April to 1st January. The traditional day of giving gifts at New Year also had to move to 1st January. Old habits, however, die hard and people continued to give gifts at the beginning of April. This gradually changed to fun gifts, mainly food focussed. The fish originates from the fact that 1st…

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…

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…

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…

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.…