a new year, new hopes, new adventures....

After a most marvellous soirée chez C and A to ring in the new year and say farewell the 2016,  we await with impatience to see what 2017 will bring.  Hopefully it will be better than 2016 which has been pretty bloody crap – well at least the end of it has been.  We are still endlessly, sometimes hopefully, mostly hopelessly, and always desperately waiting for the money from the sale of Coquelicot-ex-Papillon to come to us…we have been waiting since July 2016 and our finances are now in shreds, we live from one pay cheque to the next…and we are teetering on the brink of financial ruin.

So fingers crossed, we have gathered all of our positive thoughts and optimism and are now just waiting, waiting…..This year will also be the year that Scarlet heads off to university –either Cardiff or in Canterbury from the look of things….so will this also be the year that G and I decide to shake up our lives a little?  Until we are financially stable this might prove tricky ..so everything is a little bit of a waiting game right now….

So happy new year one and all, may 2017 be bright, light and full of good surprises…

Normandy landings

Christmas Eve was a strange one this year. After 11 hours of motorway numbness we arrived safe and sound in La Haute Fermerie.  The fire had been lit and the living room was snug as a bug...G made himself at home in the kitchen whilst I organised bedrooms and hey presto - dinner was served.  Not oysters and champagne and king prawns this year...but chili con carne!  Still, most excellent it was too.  A quick change and we hotfooted it down the hill to our friends N&S, where Fabrouk met their cat who just outstared him boldly and renewed his friendship with their Dalmatian. Thus passed our Christmas Eve.

Christmas day we awoke to frost and sunshine and blue sky, jumped in the car and off we drove to Caen to spend the day with G's sister.  A scrumptious lunch of scallops and guinea fowl was prepared then we went to the beach and walked and ran and enjoyed the stretches of sand.  Back to hers for prosecco and foie gras, and off to bed we went.

Boxing day it was back in the Duster for a drive to Evreux to see G's now-aged parents. A short and not too tiring (for them) lunch, then back in the car and back we went to La Haute F.

Then followed 2 more days of visiting friends, seeing cows, tractors and farms,  and remembering times past. 

The weather was cold, we kept the fire roaring, and though the house was a little damp it was lovely to just disconnect a little.

Once more into the car for the long drive south.... could this be the last time we do this drive south? What does the future hold....?

Christmas is coming.....

...and is not not the goose that will be getting fat ...I swear that 2017 will be the year I get fit. Well fit-ish.  Well, maybe.  We will see.

This year will see us heading Normandywards to do a round robin trip of one part of la famille francaise and catch up with village life.

Will be strange to be going back...more of that afterwards.

For now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-OF7KGyDis

and I will be back after the eve of all things festive has passed ....