Much to-doing

WE’VE BEEN HOME for a week now, and a long week it has been.

First, I’m anxious to plant out my potatoes – they are chitting-up nicely during our absence - and I need to visit to a local garden centre for some extra compost and more vegetable plants, to assemble our raised garden and prepare it for our tomatoes and onions… My fingers are growing quite green.

Nor is that all: we have an invitation to a financial presentation and a free lunch at a posh hotel in Grange-over-Sands in Cumbria, which we feel obligated to go to.

Then we have some major shopping to do to top up on all those run-down essentials we used up prior to going off on our travels.

All this, of course, is on top of trying to get the house shipshape and back to normal running order.

Meanwhile, too, most of our friends here want to see us and hear all about our holiday, which entails going along to the Pub most days.

Little wonder, then, that My Good Lady and I still haven’t fully recovered from our trip – MGL in particular has been having some really early nights, and even my sleeping pattern has been more broken than usual.

At least, now, we should have the chance to catch our breath a bit; we’re making no further plans for the moment.

The holiday, and all the to-do it entails, has left us exhausted!

Problems

EVERY NIGHT this week, just as I crank up the computer, I get a message to say I’m suffering from a Server failure.

What on earth goes on?

Losing my internet connection is a nuisance to say the least of it.

I’ve not even caught up with my email backlog after our holidays.

I can’t do my internet banking, I can’t post my blogs or read other people’s, I can’t listen to the radio on the BBC’s iPlayer.

I’m writing this offline, on Word, and if the connection gets restored – as it sometimes rather arbitrarily does - I shall try to sneak it on.

Meanwhile, I have to apologise to readers and assure them that normal service, I hope, gets restored soon.

Back again, back again

YUP, WE'RE back!

We survived the French union bureaucracy of Nice airport and even got our flight home more or less on time. (People have been known to miss their flights on account of it - but that's another story and I don't want to be negative.)

It was a good holiday.

Expensive, but good.

But I don't want to talk about our hols - Gordon Bennett, what's happened to the country since we left?

Tories in power, Lib-Dems in second place, Labour nowhere - we leave leave the country for a couple of weeks and it all goes to pot!

Sorry, you want to know about our holiday...

Okay, well, really, it was rain, rain, rain.

We had a lot of rain. Wind and rain.

You probably had it better here.

We still enjoyed it, though - in fact it was one of the best villas we have ever rented. We love Provence - the mountainous area just behind the Riviera - and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Highlights: Nice itself of course - the Cotes d'Azur - the blue coast - is well named; it really is beautiful and glamorous and all that.

Personally, I prefer the area behind it: the ancient Romans called it Provincia Romana, from which we get our word "province", and which, in French pronunciation, we get the wonderful region of Provence.

I swear, when I retire, I would love to live here. It's the Englishman's dream of France - villas perched on impossible mountain slopes, a sea so blue it dazzles the eyes, olive oil flavoured - everything...

Oh yes, this is an area to which we shall be returning.

But it's great to be home.

On the move again

IT’S ALMOST TIME for us to be off on our travels again – this time to the fabled French Riviera.

Almost all my life I’ve dreamed of going there – even before I saw Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

The very names ring with glamour and sophistication: Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo… Soon we’ll be rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of the likes of Grace Kelly, Scott Fitzgerald, Simone Weil amongst many, many others.

We’ve got our little list of things to see and do – actually, it runs to nearly a page and a half of My Good Lady’s tiny, spidery handwriting.

If we see a quarter of them we’ll be doing well.

Anyhow, since I’m not proposing to take a computer with us, it means we shall be out of touch with this blogsite for at least a couple of weeks.

Fear not, though, we shall be boring you with the tales of our adventures when we get back.

Till then, from us both, au revoir and à bientôt.

Or in the words of the immortal Bertie Wooster, “Pip pip!”

Interesting week

IT’S BEEN AN interesting week, this, even aside from my passing my 60th milestone.

I’ve pleased our gardener, Al, by announcing that I’m going to have a bash at growing some more vegetables, and the containers for them have arrived this week.

One raised bed and liner for crops like green beans, carrots, peas and maybe some mixed salad and courgettes – if indeed the seeds I’ve ordered from the BBC arrive in time.

I’ve also got three potato patio planters for the spuds I’m hoping to grow; we go along to a local garden centre to buy the actual seed potatoes.

(Unfortunately, the instruction about planting these seem to be somewhat contradictory: you must chit them first in the dark or in the light, you must cut the larger ones in half or not cut them at all, you must then plant them out in two weeks or three weeks – or even five weeks…)

Talking of food, I have to say I’m rather chuffed about my experimental meal this week – another Raymond Blanc recipe, this one for fricassee of wild mushrooms. (I actually can’t find any wild ones in the shops, so I choose a selection of cultivated exotic ones instead.) The recipe is a bit involved, but the results, I have to say, are well worth it – My Good Lady and I thoroughly enjoy them.

But I suppose the highlight of my week has been my birthday. People have been ever so kind and considerate in their expressions of best wishes and to all of them I’d like to offer my sincerest thanks.

It really is great to have friends.