torn betwixt facebook and blogging. Facebook has become the home of silly stuff, dipping in and out of friends, acquaintances and family members lives, kinda like a cross between email and webcam and a giant virtual games room, whereas mon petit blog has become a serious introspective affair. Strange as it started out to be light-hearted. Hmmmm...maybe I am just getting too intimate with my very own Dell-boy le Poota and have forgotten about the general public sitting out there reading this. Like the people who have viewer boxes in their living rooms. You forget the general public have access too, and strip down to bare your soul. Scary stuff.

la crise, the recession - whatever

blimey - so much doom and gloom in the papers, on the telly, on the radio. Depression is probably a better word as it seems to describe the general mood settling across the world. What a load of miseryguts the bloody politicians and medimongers are. Let's rock the boat I say. The only way to fight this flippin' recession is to get out there and do stuff - ignore the bad vibes coming over the airwaves and carry on living as best you can. After all, petrol is now cheaper at the pump, and if the general slowdown continues, think how much better it will be for the environment as factories stop pumping out so much toxic waste. Maybe there is an upside after all, and maybe, just maybe, we will all learn to temper the raging consumerism that has overaken our lives.

go barack go

so Obie won. Phewwwww. That's a big sigh of relief from the rest of the so-called free world then. Raining and drizzlin' here in Normandy and being generally very November. Dark evenings and damp mornings make for quiet days in the restaurant, but hey, we're keeping cheerful. All the work in the kitchen and the addition of daylight lighting makes a massive difference - we could almost forget the fact there are no customers, cos we just keep admiring everything and smiling Cheshire cat grins.

prepare for chaos

The US goes to the polls - Obama v McCain - expect chaos, cheating and much recounting. The latest perfumes say they will make you slimmer, sexier and brainier. Women with a high body mass index are more likely to have sex than those with a normal weight. In large parts of Britain it's now as easy to open a lap dancing club as it is a coffee shop. And according to the The Living Planet Report (by conservation groups the WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network) the planet is headed for an ecological "credit crunch. The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.

So there you have it. We are indeed doomed.

Monster Mash...

And off Scarlet and I flew into the sunset, leaving Gregoire behind to re-do the kitchen and tart up the bar. We invaded the Farrells for a week, and had a lovely time. Just fantastic. Scarlet and Oscar and Felix became firm buddies (again) and have a sort of semi-cousin relationship that is lovely to see, I spent a very relaxing week just hanging out with Sophie, helping Tim unpack and generally being on holiday. Did some fab mountain walks, a cool bit of exploring, investigated trashy shops in Grasse (always good for fancy dress parties etc) and finished the week with the best Halloween of all. Kids dressed up (Scarlet was a green dragon, Foo was the monster of death, Oscar was a wizard every now and then, and Louis was the cutest little red devil - but he is such a gorgeous boy that he actually looked like a poinsettia flower fairy) and Sophie and I were witches ...I was the tarty one though, with high heel boots, a slinky little velvet dress and a rather fetching witches hat. Tim poo-poo-ed all of this nonsense until the marshmallows came out, at which point he cracked and started munching away :) Sophie made the best bat cake in the world, Felix totally scalded himself with a piping-hot-straight-out-of-the-fire-sizzling shmallow, and the wee ones ate far too any sweeties and fell into bed exhausted and halloween happy. Scarlet and I flew back Saturday morning and came back to a fabulously superb kitchen and bar. Gregoire worked like a trooper (ably assisted by Steve B and Ian) and the place looks feckin' brilliant. What a change. It is like having a new place all over again. Hit the Mont St Michel for oysters today - tomorrow our hols are over, though Scarlet aint back at school until Thursday. Lucky beggar.

a load of all tripe....

and so the tripe day happened. The choice of boiled tripe and potatoes, or tepid gelatinous calves head pate with a fresh parsley sauce was on the menu. And guess what? They loved it. Flocked in droves in fact. Gregoire does a mean bowl of tripe or calves head apparently. Wash it down with a gallon of Muscadet (at 10am) and it is even more popular. Amazingly enough we had about 35 bookings prior to the day, and it only increased as time went on, so we must be doing something right. Pass the bucket. On offer throughout this strange and truly mysterious day that is the St Denis was the "guess the name of the sheep" (first prize - the sheep - alive, with butchering an option), "guess the weight of the goodies basket" and finally - but absolutely not least - "guess the circumference and length of the big black sausage". A day to be relished I kid ye not. A children's merry go round was set up on the square, but this received little attention from the locals - I mean, when you are competing with sausage-measuring and sheep-naming how can you possibly win? I ask you....