After Nat, Andy and
Eilidh returned to Scotland life has returned to normal with
raoifity, which leaves me with many happy memories but little to
write about. I have, however, included here my current favourite
photo of Eilidh with me.
October has been a beautiful month
weatherwise for which we have paid over the last four days with
solid rain. Tonight (Wednesday) there is a storm which, I hope,
will change the weather pattern. We needed rain but it has been too
much of a good thing. I've bought cyclamen and bulbs for planting
out the front but had no opportunity to get out and do anything with
them. I suppose that I should be grateful that this area is not
suffering the floods that are cauing chaos in other parts of
France.For floods to reach my house would require a veritable tidal
wave. There was a cold snap on Monday however that brought the first
snowfall on Mt Ventoux, more than a month earlier than usual, and
indeed coated the hillsides down to under 1000ft.
I've been playing
boules, cooking for friends and generally doing what I usually do.
Steve and Jo arranged a birthday lunch for me in mid-October, with
many fruends present but now the last of the summer visitor friends,
Claudine and Jacques, have departed, in their case back To St Malo.
Steve and I
restarted our Englsih conversation classes at the beginning of
October and have been pleased to find 9-10 people attending since
then. I got some new ideas from Claudine, who goes to English
classes in St Malo, pne of which was to read a book together.
Claudine is reading Animal Farm and both Steve and I thought this was
a good choice as the novel is fairly short, the vocabulary not too
difficult and the theme universal. Also I get Connexion, the weekly
English langage newspaper that covers the news in France particularly
in its relevance to Btitish residents.
It was Halloween
tonight but I wasn't trick or treated as I usually am, probably
because of the wet weather. It's just as well as I was watching the
Chelsea vs Derby game and probably wouldn't have answered the door
anyway. Tomorrow is Toussaint so the shops have been full of large
pots of chrysanthemums for the past week. I quite like the brown and
deep red ones but never buy any because they have been forced and
never last more than a week. One year I did buy a pot and tried to
separate the individual plants and grow them on but that didn't work.
During October I had
the pre-scheduled phone call to Immigration, which was auite
straightforward and now have a date for my interview re
naturalisation; it is the 27th of March next year, two days before
Brexit day if Brexit happens. I have yet to establish whether I need
a carte de séjour or whether my naturalisation submission will
suffice. Brexit seems as chaotic as ever. I caught a video clip of
a middle-aged man, quite well-spoken, saying in all earnestness that
«we need to get back to the British Empire». I wonder how India,
Pakistan et al feel about that;.where do these people come from? How
stupid (or rich, they've all got EU passports or resident permits) do
you have to be to realise that Brexit would be an awful mistake?
