Digressing for a time
Well, today I was up late due to laying in bed last night engrossed in The Da Vinci Code, after seeing the film felt I just had to read the book.
I should have started this journal many months ago, but if you have read my previous blogs then you will no doubt appreciate that it was absolutely impossible to take the time to do that.
So the next episode starts, the main house downstairs is complete, lounge, dining room, 2 beds, kitchen and bathroom. All new and looks great, it was a long time coming.
Now to the upstairs… electrics, plumbing, etc is all taken up ready. Four velux windows have now been put in, floor is complete, insulation delivered and ready to be fixed, we just need to partition for 2 double bedrooms with en suite and a small room which we were going to use as a study. First we will have a rest which was much needed !
Iain and myself had been talking – wish we could get some Fish and Chips…or a Chinese take-a-way, ohh… an Indian take-a-way, strange really what you miss when you cannot get these things. To buy the ingredients over here and make them yourself, well, it’s just not the same as strolling around Tescos, Morrisons, Asda….any English supermarket !
In France, it’s very difficult, sometimes impossible to get certain items. The meat being extremely expensive in the shops. No Meat Pies, Pork Pies, Scotch Eggs, Cornish Pasties, Suet Puddings, Cream Cakes, Sugared doughnuts to name but a few. No custard creams, bourbons, chocolate digestives, rich tea… no gravy granules, oxo’s, brown sauce, salad cream, decent baked beans. No English, Irish, Scottish cheese at all in the stores. No Bacon. No fresh Milk or fresh cream and in fact no fresh cream cakes of any description. Whoever said the French cuisine was the best in the world? (Of course, if one lived I suppose in one of the huge towns with a large English population, one may be able to buy this sort of thing at a reasonable price). The nearest we have been to seeing English food was the smallest jar of marmite… 4 euros… and a tin of Heinz Tomato Soup for 2 euros.. who thought of those prices?
Anyhow, these discussions continued and brought about other discussions, did we like France ? certainly didn’t like the food, found shopping very difficult. The weather was not as good as we had hoped, too much rain, and the winters were very cold, minus 10 is just too cold for us in the Winter.
We actually live in a beautiful village, where one can still leave your doors unlocked and open. It’s a lovely region of France, with honest, pleasant people and the area is very well looked after with no litter and with plants and flowers on every quiet roundabout and road, but I suppose we just felt we were not the type to live so isolated and were not cut out for the quiet life.
So we talked about selling and moving to a warmer climate, but we also missed our families and friends in England too, so it would have to be somewhere easy to travel back and forward. Would the food be more to our liking…we thought it would be. So we wondered about Spain, and set about doing some research, seemed we could afford somewhere inland Andalusia – near to Granada airport, the air fares are very cheap to England from there. So we had a French immobilier around who valued our property, we placed it on the market, and we booked 9 days in Spain, to look around.
Hence our journey to Spain began….
I should have started this journal many months ago, but if you have read my previous blogs then you will no doubt appreciate that it was absolutely impossible to take the time to do that.
So the next episode starts, the main house downstairs is complete, lounge, dining room, 2 beds, kitchen and bathroom. All new and looks great, it was a long time coming.
Now to the upstairs… electrics, plumbing, etc is all taken up ready. Four velux windows have now been put in, floor is complete, insulation delivered and ready to be fixed, we just need to partition for 2 double bedrooms with en suite and a small room which we were going to use as a study. First we will have a rest which was much needed !
Iain and myself had been talking – wish we could get some Fish and Chips…or a Chinese take-a-way, ohh… an Indian take-a-way, strange really what you miss when you cannot get these things. To buy the ingredients over here and make them yourself, well, it’s just not the same as strolling around Tescos, Morrisons, Asda….any English supermarket !
In France, it’s very difficult, sometimes impossible to get certain items. The meat being extremely expensive in the shops. No Meat Pies, Pork Pies, Scotch Eggs, Cornish Pasties, Suet Puddings, Cream Cakes, Sugared doughnuts to name but a few. No custard creams, bourbons, chocolate digestives, rich tea… no gravy granules, oxo’s, brown sauce, salad cream, decent baked beans. No English, Irish, Scottish cheese at all in the stores. No Bacon. No fresh Milk or fresh cream and in fact no fresh cream cakes of any description. Whoever said the French cuisine was the best in the world? (Of course, if one lived I suppose in one of the huge towns with a large English population, one may be able to buy this sort of thing at a reasonable price). The nearest we have been to seeing English food was the smallest jar of marmite… 4 euros… and a tin of Heinz Tomato Soup for 2 euros.. who thought of those prices?
Anyhow, these discussions continued and brought about other discussions, did we like France ? certainly didn’t like the food, found shopping very difficult. The weather was not as good as we had hoped, too much rain, and the winters were very cold, minus 10 is just too cold for us in the Winter.
We actually live in a beautiful village, where one can still leave your doors unlocked and open. It’s a lovely region of France, with honest, pleasant people and the area is very well looked after with no litter and with plants and flowers on every quiet roundabout and road, but I suppose we just felt we were not the type to live so isolated and were not cut out for the quiet life.
So we talked about selling and moving to a warmer climate, but we also missed our families and friends in England too, so it would have to be somewhere easy to travel back and forward. Would the food be more to our liking…we thought it would be. So we wondered about Spain, and set about doing some research, seemed we could afford somewhere inland Andalusia – near to Granada airport, the air fares are very cheap to England from there. So we had a French immobilier around who valued our property, we placed it on the market, and we booked 9 days in Spain, to look around.
Hence our journey to Spain began….
No comments:
Post a Comment