New Years Eve

New Years Eve and we had been invited to a party with Graham, Eve, Stuart and Jenny and our new friend the immobilier and her business partner. The party was to be held at the Mothers house of the immobilier, we did not know what to expect, it turned out to be a really great evening. Everyone made us really welcome and we got to meet a group of new friends.

One of them is English and works in our local supermarket, and appears to be a fountain of knowledge so I am sure she will be useful to know.

Then, a very large French man who did not speak any English indicated to Dennis that he would like to dance with me. I was rather daunted by this as I had seen him dancing with his wife earlier and her feet hardly touched the ground, as he was spinning and twirling her all over the dance floor. Dennis had also seen this and thought it might be very amusing to see him do the same with me!!!

I was then submitted to very loud instructions shouted to me in French which I can only assume to be Spin, Twirl, In, Out, Faster, Slower, as he was doing the opposite actions to these. I think he thought by shouting them louder they would be clearer to me. We must have looked a treat on the dance floor. It sort of resembled me ending up turning around on the spot as I did not know which direction I was supposed to be heading. Still it made Dennis laugh. Needless to say he never asked for another dance.

We returned home exhausted at 4.30am the next morning.

Two Days To Visit IKEA !

With excitement we learned for a friend that Ikea had opened in Montpellier, we decided to take a trip there and purchase a few things for our new abode.

As always the trip took much longer than expected and we found ourselves with a car full of furniture and it had now become very dark and cold. We set off for Cazilhac and encountered upon a very slow car on the road, we both looked at each other and said typical, Den decided to pass it while he had the opportunity, we drove past at a reasonable rate only to be met by another very slow moving car on the roundabout. As we followed it around the roundabout we joined the end of a very long traffic jam. We sat in it for about 40 mins and could not make out what the problem was, we decided to turn around as a lot of other cars had done. As we turned the car around Den discovered what the problem was the road was a sheet of black ice. We decided it was too dangerous to try to make our way back on a minor road. We turned the car around again and joined the queue.

I glanced up and looked in my mirror at the car behind and someone was getting out of it and approaching our car, I said to Den “the man behind is coming over to talk to us. Fat chance if he wants to do it in French” as you can gather by that statement our French still leaves a lot to be desired. As he got closer amazingly enough it was our friend Graham returning from England after a Christmas visit with his family. He was on his way back from Montpellier Airport with his new French girlfriend and her 8 year old daughter.

We sat in the queue for a further hour and discovered that there had been a 30 car pile up and the queue was 15 KM long. The Gendarmerie came along and turned everyone around and said the road was closed. Luckily we had Graham and his girlfriend with us to translate. She quickly got on the phone to her friends and got them to hunt down a hotel for us, the first was full but the second which luckily was not too far away. We booked in and went to our rooms, we had booked adjoining rooms, we only had the clothes we stood up in, Graham and Eve were a little better off they had a Christmas pudding (which Eve called Pudding Christmas) and a tin of Heinz beans they had bought back from England. That is a trip to Ikea we will never forget.

We’ve only gone and done it!

As you can tell by the title, we have arrived in France, at times we both thought it was never going to happen.

We arranged to meet our immobilier in Ganges at 3pm, she eagerly greeted us with the keys and we followed her at an alarming rate up the hill to our apartment. (I am sure we will get used to the speed the French drive eventually!!) She showed us all the facilities, electric, water etc. The apartment was freezing cold as the place had been empty for over a month with no heating on.

We spent a very cold night with only a mattress and a sofa bed. Our furniture was due to arrive on Thursday afternoon. So after a very restless night we went down to the local Super U supermarket for a few provisions.

That afternoon the removal van arrived and began to unload our furniture, I can highly recommend the company we used Channel Moving they were very professional and handled our belongings with the utmost care, they even accommodated our wish to have our furniture delivered before the New Year and stored our furniture in England for us over Christmas.

On French Soil

When we arrived in France the weather was no better we set of on the autoroute in heavy snow. It was not long before we realised that the snow was in for some time. A large part of the days travel was spent behind 3 snow ploughs side by side on the road with a big queue of traffic behind them.

We had planned a stop at Nuits St Georges, we had a very nice evening meal and very welcome warm bath and bed.
Le Saint Georges The next morning we awoke to find our car covered again in snow.

Goodbye England !

Well we finally managed to make our escape to France on the 26th of December after a very tearful good bye to all our family we left a family Boxing Day tea to stay in a hotel in Folkestone as snow had been forecast and did not want to miss the train by getting stuck on the motorway.

So early on Tuesday morning we set off in our trusty banger for the Eurotunnel. We had sold our Kangoo earlier on in the year and had bought a Proton Persona for £600 in a garage near to where we live, we thought it would do us to get us down to the South and will be good as a run around until we managed to buy our left hand drive car.

We were able to catch an earlier train as we had left our hotel early due to excitement and the weather, by now it had been snowing quite heavily.

The Leaving Party

A couple of important events took place this month, our farewell party and leaving for France.

It was like planning a military operation organising this party. We have a large family, so getting everyone in the same place at the same time coupled with the fact that it was Christmas and all the venues we had chosen for our party were fully booked and had been so for months. We just happened to mention to one of our friends that we were having problems and she suggested we tried some of the local pubs as some had function rooms. We managed to book, The Rising Sun Pub who had a suitable function room situated behind the pub, complete with its own bar and bar staff provided for the evening.

Managed to find a good DJ and as a special bit of fun we decided to book a close up magician, Chris Nicholson. Chris proved to be a big hit with our guests and can highly recommend him for your event, he left our guests speechless.