Well we’re finally back online , although I can’t for the life of me work out what it was I thought I was missing…except for the shopping obviously. As we haven’t two euros to rub together it hardly matters, although there are people who are still expecting Christmas presents - in that selfish way they have. Every year it’s the same.
Since being thrust back onto the interweb Matt has been making merry with the Birmingham City Web site and meteos agogo ( with their ever conflicting weather reports) , Etienne is back on Guitar Pro 5 and Louis is asking to watch Youtube and ‘Funny Starwars’. I can report that apart from Chad Vader the shop manager (or whatever he’s called) ‘Funny Starwars’ doesn’t actually exist. That basically sums up what the 21st century advance in global communication has brought to our house. Pathetique n’est ce pas.
The thing that has most rocked Matt’s boat about having the internet back is that he can now listen to English radio again and people talking about football and fresh legs rather than to my melange of musical melancholia.
No luck, so far, in getting the WIFI radio to work so no ‘Book at bedtime’ in the offing, although evenings of that and ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ before it would be too good to be true and no one deserves to have that much good fortune in these troubled days .

As the days all seem to have been full since our lives went offline I guess that stuff must have happened but I can’t immediately think of anything even remotely interesting.
Did I mention the Gibson Les Paul Goldtop competition that we were entering to try and win Etienne a guitar? I can’t remember if that was before or after ‘crisis point’ but anyway it so happens that the competition closed some time ago, whilst we were incommunicado and ‘Going for the gold’ is not now an option, which is a huge shame as I have the story board right here for the winning video – bizarrely! I am fully intending to go ahead with filming and to send it in all the same – although the only email address I can find is that of the service department in Nashville or wherever they have their HQ. I’m trying to think of something suitably arresting for the subject of the email to ensure that it gets a late viewing. The dress rehearsal took place on Sunday evening and didn’t go smoothly. Matt’s diamond skull mask presented the biggest problem in so far as it doesn’t have any eye holes so he couldn’t see what he was doing or react fast enough when the dog ran away with a vital prop – the letter written in blood. I found it the following morning lying dew sodden and illegible on the grass. One step forward: two steps back.
Actually that was the least of the problems, which included Louis ( the lighting technician to give him his proper title) storming off on atleast three occassions and we eventually had to call a stop to proceedings due to a smell of burning roast chicken from the oven… but you have to take advantage of the muse when it appears. I’m hoping to get everyone on board for the final filming tomorrow evening but have a feeling that it isn’t going to be that easy to rally the troops. Interest seems to have waned…..

Five past two in the morning and Tess has just woken me up so she can go outside and growl at some leaves and I am now wide awake. What better way to pass a small hour than write the blog. Predictably, Tess is now back in front of the still glowing embers of the fire, fast asleep in her basket. She must have spent all of three minutes outside and I doubt I will get back to sleep until I have mentally rewired and plumbed the entire house.

Both those projects are nearer to reality now and pipes and cables are beginning to emerge from walls and ceilings where they will probably dangle for a few more months before connection, It will be a relief to renew the wiring in this old house as there are a number of idiosyncrasies with the existing system, none more worrying that the plug point which melted and began to smoke when last year’s xmas lights were plugged in. There are miles ( well metres anyway) of thick, heavy duty looking cable zig zagging the house but they don’t seem to result in much. We have five lights and nine power points, of which six work, and one of those is below the leaking sink…..(I must fix that!) so it is definitely in need of an overhaul at chez nous.

Martin is coming over this morning to help me install the second of the velux windows and once that is in we will be able to motor on with the insulation of the second quarter of the “liveable” house. Judging by the weather forecast for the end of November that will be a welcome development. It has been pretty mild of late and we have been luxuriating in the warmth thrown off by the woodburner but it will be interesting to see how we cope when the outside temperature does its arctic impression. I remember last year being depressingly cold so roll out the SF19 Superfoil.

The doors are now all assembled and glued and dowelled together and the glass is ordered. It’s generally a long and unnecessarily laborious process when I undertake to do something but I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Fitting those doors will be a big moment for me and Rozzy as it certainly acts as a progress marker. The amount of times we have looked at the rotting, hole ridden, moulding and puttyless old doors that currently do nothing of great value in either aspect of security or insulation and sighed…“one day” …that day is nigh

We are preparing for winter by doing important things such as making toffee, pickling onions and chestnut soup. I have to say the latter was truly delicious and the former too if a bit crumbly and not very toffee like. We will have to give that another go. We have found some medlars behind the stables so we should try and do something with those too. They are peculiar looking crab apple sized fruits with a strange crowned top and a rough brown skin that are only good to eat at the early stage of decay. We didn’t have a clue what they were let alone that they were edible until Hugh Fernley whatisface started raving about them on the telly. Apparently they make a rather nice jelly that goes well with pork and as that is what we are having for Christmas dinner this year it seems appropriate to make some, if we can find the time.

After another tough week in Corporate UK, I’ve had the pleasure of a weekend at Mels parents this weekend in Hartlepool. We mistakenly took George, so the journey up  was a bit of a nightmare as he barked at every shadow and shaft of light, which during a winter evening journey, are in abundance.

We’ve spent the weekend, eating fantastically fresh seafood, beautifully home cooked game pie and to top it all a superb Sunday Roast Pork dinner, so a week of abstinence awaits us when we get back to Manchester. Some serious sessions at the gym and some punishing games of squash may help to get Mel and I back on track.

We promised ourselves we would shift some weight before christmas so that we enjoy a decadent week in France. The problem is not shifting the weight – I lost four pounds in the first week – the problem is I reward myself at the end of the week with copious quantities of not so healthy food.  With just six weeks to go, its time to knuckle down and shed some pounds.

George has been in his element in Hartlepool, chasing seabirds along the beach and scaring the living daylights out of the pheasants in their back garden. But a lot of his old problems have re-surfaced as the later autumn sun is low in the sky and casts reflections through every pane of glass in the house, causing him to chase non-existent demons. It reminds us that whilst he has made lots of progress this year, his insanity still lurks behind every sunny day. Fortunately this is not such a big problem living in Manchester.

We went yesterday to choose our new internal doors that Pat and Fred are taking over to France with them. Last week we had the news that our central heating was now fixed too so a cosy Christmas is now almost guaranteed. If we could just track down some of the elusive wood suppliers…………..

The pound slipped to its lowest level ever against the euro to 1.16 euros to the pound. When you consider that just over a year ago when we completed the purchase of Gouhaut, the exchange rate was 1.51 then you get a sense of how much more expensive our renovation project has become. So we have a few small jobs that we will get done in the next few months but we will then wait until something changes, it could be a while.

Mel has started writing her list of things that we need to take over to France with us. Reading the list she seems to assume that we own a Tardis rather than a Land Rover. Inevitably we’ll end up with a kind of reverse of the Generation Game conveyer belt where we line everything up and then decide what we don’t want. Each time we drive over to France we take more and more stuff with us, if we’re not careful we’ll end up living like students over here whilst all of our luxuries remain untouched for 46 weeks next year.

I was reading this week that France considers itself recession proof due to the “Chernobyl effect” on the economy. At the time of the Chernobyl disaster, to much subsequent public mirth, the government back then announced that - though there was indeed a toxic cloud floating over Europe - the French need not worry because the Chernobyl fall-out had miraculously stopped at their borders. Something to do with “Unique winds”

It seems that as the rest of the world tail spins into the abyss, the same thing is occurring. The Sarkozy government announced that France was so far avoiding the problems that were affecting the globe.

French citizens, businesses and banks have a different attitude to risk and borrowing and whilst this may have felt frustrating to some during boom times, it is to some extent at least, protecting France during the global downturn. It now has the only European economy that is still currently growing albeit at a modest 0.14%.

I’m looking forward to further stimulating that economy with my Cider and Red Wine purchases in six weeks time.

I started listening this week to the new David Byrne / Brian Eno album, ‘Everything That Happens Will Happen Today’, this is quite an exciting thing at Chateau Andrews as the last album they released together, ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’, in 1981 pretty much acted as the soundtrack to the first few years I spent living in London in a huge draughty house on the Walworth Road in the Elephant and Castle working as a manager of the Mecca bookmakers on Electric Avenue in Brixton – the glamour of the big city.
Thankfully (as you will see from the new album to the right above) they, like me, seem to have mellowed a little in their old age. The track (above left) from the original album, ‘The Jezebel Spirit’, contains a rather sinister sample from an American excorcist, hence the lyrics;

Jezebel,
Spirit of destruction,
Spirit of grief,
I bind you with chains of iron
I bind you out of that bounded heaven.
Loosen your hold and come out of her now.

Not a track to listen to if you’re feeling in any way afeared of the existential nightmare of life or indeed if you’re off your tits on some pharmacological adventure. I cite as an example one of the comments from the YouTube page showing this video;

“This shit is as dense, fractured and ahead of the great curve as it gets, predicting, for example, the dark voo-doo of Sarah Palin, the white bread Al Queda snow machine vixen, and the pale horse she rode in on.”

Indeedy…..

My new all time favourite song ever (this week) is ‘I Sing, I Swim’ by Seabear, acoustic loveliness straight out of Reykjavik, which I present to you here by way of uplifting antidote.

The financial debacle of our trip to London coupled with the imminent collapse of all of the world’s economies has induced a state of extreme belt tightening this week. Lunches have been courtesy of huge tureen of turnip and bacon soup (nicer than it sounds) and dinners have been mostly experimental affairs utilizing whatever I can find in the freezer made into a stew and served with cous cous, which for some reason, seems to be in plentiful supply in the store cupboard.

The collapse of sterling against the dollar has wiped out a huge chunk of DrawBox’s profit margins, which is a bore, but we are in negotiations with our Chinese suppliers about a redrafting of price. Apart from that we have started preparations for the biggest furniture show in the UK in January at which we are exhibiting.

Last year we managed to inadvertently rent an apartment in the gay part of Birmingham – only in Birmingham could the gay part of town be quite so ineffably dull. If anyone has any recommendations for a good night out in Birmingham, please send them here.

As it says on ‘Birmingham, It’s Not Shit’

Where else would you see Dave Hill in a Little Chef?”

Where else indeed….

Next Monday it is Tess the pups’ first birthday. We were supposed to be inviting Dantae, Trixie, Lana, Zola and all her other buddies (and their owners) over for a bit of a party but quite honestly I don’t think I can be bothered . That is what this dull drizzly autumnal weather does for you. I think she will have to settle for a fun walk with Dantae somewhere and with opening the card and present that her Nannie has already sent through the post for her. Tess is the closest she is going to get to a grandchild on this side of the channel.

The rest of the menagerie are doing well, unlike one of Judiths hens, Thelma, who appears to be in severe respiratory distress and is wheezing away like a 60 a day smoker. I checked out my chicken encyclopaedia and the internet for her yesterday and the advice seemed to be to separate the chicken, keep her out of draughts and give her an oral antibiotic.
Judith went along to the vets this morning for some more expert advice and the local vet just told her to slash her throat, pluck and eat her. Apparently the receptionist cracked up at Judiths look of absolute horror so we are not sure if they were serious or not.  Twenty euros later she came out with antibiotic, wormer and left behind a bemused vet.

Neil is continuing making the doors for the patio and bedroom. He currently has his head down in textbooks from college as he is about to glue them up and having spent a fortune in oak and man hours making them a mistake at this stage would be catastrophic. (catastrophe is my middle name….Neil)

This weekend in Chalus there will be a sale of trees. I would really like a large Christmas tree to put out the back of the house so that I can hang lots of festive lights at Christmas time but everyone seems to think the thing to do is to go into the forest and ‘acquire’ one. I suppose if Judith and I go out ‘off roading’ with the land rover it wouldn’t look too suspicious if we take the dogs and a large shovel - purely for dog training purposes you understand - after all, until Monday she is still a pup isn’t she?

Im glad Roz has chosen this method of tree acquisition as by Christmas we will be so broke we wont be able to light a candle let alone fork out for a tree. She is just reminding me that she goes back to do some work in early Dec so it looks like the tree is back on…I’ll shut my face shall I?

So said the Spanish photographer at last week’s wedding….this from a nation whose national sport is throwing donkeys off churches.

That being said he was a very nice chap - the baldicoot next to him turned out to be a trumpeter I met on a plumbing for incompetents course five years ago, before we came to France - he progressed to installing central heating in his house and I….er….didn’t.

Obviously I didn’t remember him, way too much Côtes du Rhône under the bridge for that. Frankly, I don’t think I can be expected to remember every bald trumpeter I meet - what am I Mr Memory Man…

There is only one thing worse than having a mortgage and a load of utility bills that are spiralling in cost and that’s having two mortgages and two sets of utility bills. Therefore interest rate cuts and news of falling inflation on both sides of the channel came as extremely welcome news even if the greedy, useless, irresponsible bankers haven’t passed on all the good news.

There is a strong feeling in the UK that whilst we are still a long way from the end of the credit crunch, we may just be at the beginning of the end.  

When we set out on our French adventure we anticipated moving over full time within a year. Due to the credit crunch and the fact that our house in Manchester is for the moment unsaleable and decreasing in value by the day, it will now be at least two more years before we can even think about making the move permanent.  However, that harsh reality also means that we have longer to properly learn the language, longer to earn a living that will hopefully ensure we have a small financial cushion when we move and longer to think about exactly how we will make a living in France.

(Following Neils post on Friday) I too have read the statistic that 1 in 2 people that ‘emigrate’ to France return within five years. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons why this happens, not thinking it through properly, not being able to learn the language, not being able to earn money and there are plenty of salutory tales of people who have come back with their tails between their legs.

Mel and I are however more determined than ever, more determined to learn French, more committed to integrating and resolved to making a happy and successful life in France together. In the meantime, we just have to carry on with our current life.

This week our home in Manchester has become the house of the unwell. My man-cold morphed into sinusitis and conjunctivitis and I have ensured that everybody has got to hear about it in the vain hope that I might get some sympathy.

George has been in the wars too. He sprained his paw earlier in the week and has been walking around the house with his leg held aloft in a kind of “Hello Sailor” style. Therefore he hasn’t been able to go out for walks which means that his behavioural problems have been amplified as it is exercise (and prozac) that keeps his ‘foibles’ in check. Mel has looked genuinely relieved to go to work in the mornings and leave her boys to wallow in self sympathy.

There are just seven weeks to go until our next trip to France. Hopefully this bout of illness will mean that I am bug free when we get there. Mel has already started to sniffle and is blaming me for transmitting diseases. George is just about walking normally again, if a little gingerly and the decrease in fireworks being set off in the evenings means he can get on with the serious business of squirrel monitoring again.

Lynne, one of the readers of this blog sent me a link to www.thesquirelloversclub.com which informed me that there are in fact 267 species of squirrel. George was interested to hear this news and wonders whether he would have more luck with the other 266 because he cant catch grey ones. He did look rather miffed at the photo of the water-skiing squirrel on the web page as in his book that is just show boating and he has vowed to track it down and tear it a new backside.  He was also interested to hear that the position of their eyes means they can see behind them as well as in front. He is therefore hatching plans for some form of aerial assault but said he cant say too much at this stage as if Squirrels can have their own web page then they can probably read blogs as well. Fair enough.

Far too much cheerful music from me of late I feel. As Autumn continues to crowd in on us and the rains come again, herewith miserable Matt Sweet from Southampton (I’d be miserable if I came from Southampton) aka Boduf Songs - I doubt very much that he has, at any stage, been ‘fired up, ready to go’. A packed week this week (by my own minimal standards) we went to London last weekend for the wedding of my business partner in DrawDwarfBox which was an an entertaining do and blissfully short. The happy couple got married on Sunday in Richmond Park and had a civil ceremony that lasted all of ten minutes (they entered the church to Nick Cave and left to an indie-hindi Bhangra version of the Coronation Street theme tune), followed by champagne on the terrace in the late evening sun looking out over London with a delicious buffet to follow and finally poor poor dancing (I was accused by my good lady wife of incorporating the ‘gay head bob’ into my dance routines, specifically, it seems to annoy her).
All went well on the Monday, we had a whole day to pootle around London (which, I had forgotten, was a really fantastically expensive thing to do - without an Oyster card, the cheapest tube fare from zone 1 to zone 1 is now £4….yes, £4) , pootling which took the form of lunch at Meson Don Felipe (including a quite delicious dish of chicken livers in brandy - why can’t you buy chicken livers in France, he asked no-one in particular), our favourite Spanish restaurant in London followed by the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern (£12.50 each, total rip off - do not attend) and back to Kingston and our friend’s house for vast quantities of pizza and ridiculously strong New World Shiraz.
Whilst the Rothko was disappointing I did like the piece shown above called ‘Thirty Pieces of Silver’ by Cornelia Parker. It was made by steamrollering (see below) all the pieces of silver she had bought from various junk shops and jumble sales before hanging them up in circles - don’t ask me what it means (something to do with ‘cartoon violence’ I believe) but it looked nice.
We left for the station the following lunchtime for the three o’clock back to Paris and thence to Limoges. It was as we checked in for the London - Paris leg that the fun and games commenced.

“Monsieur, there ees a probleme with your tickets,” said our check in guru.
“Oh yes,” I said nochalantly “what’s that”
“You were supposed to ‘ave travelled yesterday”
It transpired we didn’t have quite as much time for arsing about in London as we thought, to be precise, 24 hours less arsing time. We hied pronto to the ticket booth to buy new tickets - the three o’clock was full, we could catch the four thirty but then we couldn’t get to Limoges that same night.

After about forty minutes of discusisons with (the very helpful) ticketing guru, concerning options via Angouleme or trains to Brussels - plane to Limoges - taxi to the station to pick up the car, we worked out that the only option available to us if we wanted to get back before midday the next day (which we had to because of Pilates classes comitments and imminent departure of our dog sitter) was to get to Paris, stay the night and catch the 7.30am to Limoges the next morning.

All in all, the new tickets, hotel room and very pleasing curry in Paris came to the thick end of £400. We had been thinking of renting a little studio flat in Barcelona for a week and spending Xmas there this year - we are no longer thinking about his.

I was watching the John Prescott documentary on ‘class’ the other day. It made interesting viewing and got me to thinking about the sort (ok class) of people that move out here and how we all ‘fit’ in .

We couldn’t quite understand what any of them gained from their friendship other than the ability to converse without difficulty. I’m sure that had these people met whilst living in England they would never have remained in contact. It was like a little British club, and although I’m sure they all felt more comfortable for it, it just seemed really pointless.

You meet several ‘types’ of people here, the ones who have lived here for years before the ‘change your life - live in a hovel’ programmes and introduce themselves by carefully including the amount of time they have habited here, thereby implying that however you may feel, you will never attain their standing, and also the people who haven’t lived here as long as they would have liked to but certainly don’t want any other Brits arriving - how awful!!

The retired, many of whom wish they could have got here earlier but have been forced to wait until their pensions kicked in, but would have so loved to have done it earlier so that they too had the health necessary to lug massive pieces of oak into position and knock up tons of concrete for that outbuilding or patio.

The people, formally of decent job and income who, having satisfied their ‘back to nature’ curiosity and renovated their little piece of France are now scratching around for what to do next and frankly missing Marks and Spencer.

You don’t meet many upper classes here - at least not where we frequent - I can only imagine that the Limousin doesn’t tick all the boxes that the south of France or other areas of the globe do if you have a large disposable income.

People like us who have come here with a wish to be mortgage free and to live in the countryside simply. Apparently 50% of those who come here return for one reason or another.

We cringe at the British who don’t even attempt to speak in French in the local shops, and the ones who gather together in bars taking over and not wanting to integrate at all. Time after time we meet French people who are having to learn English because of the influx of Brits with no intention of speaking French and who somehow feel it is their right to be spoken to in their own tongue.

Learning French is a slow process, and difficult when there are a million and one other things to do. Paperwork and phone calls can be a nightmare, but isn’t it all part of the experience of living in a foreign country that we came for?

There is a sort of snobbery with some people that you meet here, proving that the class system is still alive and kicking amongst us, albeit hidden vaguely underneath the surface, and you can see it in their faces when you meet people and they ask you what you did in your former life - but I have to say that on the whole and for the most part we have been lucky to meet a wonderful collection of people.

After our experience in the Loire we always said that should we move here we would never be friends with people just because they are British and we are happy to say that we never have.

This has to be the scariest thing ever……Chucky schmucky - what kind of bizarre weird parent or child would consider buying that thing…….that is all.

This below, however, would make an extraordinary gift