News from France...

[Alice Abbott]

I know, it's been nearly a year since I last logged in. I can't possibly cram what we have been up to into one post so suffice it to say...

House
Done, all three floors. We have showers, baths, electricity and water. Bliss! It took some doing and of course we are broke. We are still managing to live on the most basic of drawings from our fast-dwindling savings but all the utility bills we avoided for nearly two years are now covered by the French government's very generous family allowance now we have French born twins.

Barns
Not done! We have two floors in each of them and they are roofed, have windows and external doors but nothing else so far. The gites are planned, so is the little bistro, and I have lots of lovely mismatched pottery, glasses and so on picked up from vide greniers or bartered then stored for when we can eventually open for business. But it seems a long way off...

Garden
Chaotic - nothing more to be said there.

Kids
Luca is now at school, which he seems to enjoy although I suspect he hasn't actually learned a lot yet as we did so much stuff with him beforehand. He reads well in French & English, can write clearly and does basic math so all seems OK there. Pia is terribly put out that she can't go yet. Her solution is to teach Aristide (her new best friend, 80 if he's a day and probably never strayed far from the village in his life) English with the aid of nursery rhymes. To see & hear an 80 year old French guy doing "Incy Wincy Spider" with all the hand actions is a sight to behold but he humours her beautifully.

Twins
Are now nearly 13 months old and walking. They are still almost totally identical (we can tell them apart but it's mainly a personality thing - Vivi is noisy whereas Geneva is placid and smiling). There are a couple of physical things - Vivi has the hint of a dimple when she deigns to smile and Geneva has a tiny scar on her eyebrow thanks to a dose of chickenpox earlier this year. We all had it. Fun!! They still permanently wear identity bracelets and they still tend to be dressed in certain colours so we can identify them, green for Geneva and voilet for Vivi.

Survival
We grew so much last year that I ended up selling produce at a couple of vide greniers. We have all sorts of root crops, garlic, onions, cabbages, leeks and mushrooms in the freezer and rabbits & chickens I have swapped or earned from various little jobs. We have walnut oil from walnuts picked from our own tree (pressed by a neighbour we did a deal with), wine, jam and chutneys. We spent €250 on basics in June (flour, yeast, red beans, sugar, salt, tuna, TVP, coffee and so on) and I think we will survive easily until next spring now. We have logs from trees we have felled plus the remains of the original log pile too.

Otherwise
I'm still involved in the cat neutering experiment and we now have FOUR who seemed to have enjoyed the experience and moved in. We didn't see any kittens in the village this spring so I think we are winning. Our old car died a horrible and spectacular death on the N10 this summer so we now have a newer Renault Espace which we can all fit in comfortably. Big hole in the budget there! We have four goats, 10 ducks (eleven if we include the black Indian runner which spends most of his time with us but lives about three miles away), two geese, six hens, our lovely lurcher and a baby Vietnamese piglet (long story...) My mother is still crazy, my siblings ditto, we are still the holiday stopping off point for all friends heading out of the UK too. Oh yes, and the mayor is still convinced he has a bunch of lunatics on his hands - I will never live down the Hiawatha/geisha girl incident...

OK, so perhaps I can expand on a few of those stories later but right now I'm off to see what news there is on here and see if I can find what I started looking online for anyway, ie where to look for some basic knitting patterns to make this brood some winter sweaters.

[spider8]

Ditto from me too and are you writing that book? Do you have time!

[Green Aura]

Hey Alice, welcome

Life still sounds fab, apart from chickenpox and dying cars (which I initially read as cat and couldn't work out how that resulted in an Espace ).

[boboff]

Great Post, Best of luck to you.

[Alice Abbott]

The book is a "work in progress" - about half done. Knowing at what point to stop is going to be a problem! I have lots of time to work on it though. In the early days when I had to wash everything by hand and haul water in with buckets etc I seemed to be running to keep in one place. I've not yet gotten over the pure pleasure of seeing those little "on" lights on various appliances.

We still don't have a phone or internet and rely on the cable coming in from our neighbours barn for our connection. I have a Skype phone and if people aren't on Skype I don't call them so that's free. We have no TV and the kids enjoy watching DVDs on the laptop in the evenings so our pleasures are still very much simple ones.

The car met its maker with the aid of a Spanish fruit lorry. The driver apparently fell asleep and veered across the road into us. It was only a glancing blow but spun the car around and managed to wreck it completely and reduce the front end by about two feet once it had run the length of a stone wall face on. We were very fortunate. All very exciting in its way - we are still waiting for the court case but it was so quick that none of us knew what happened so we probably can't contribute much.

I've been reading the various posts about people suddenly thrown into our situation and I came to realise that in many ways we were lucky. Early on we had never found ourselves in the position to actually have any outgoings here (no electricity, water, phone, internet etc) so we were never put in the position of not being able to pay or worrying about how to pay. On that basis I find it hard to offer any ideas - even though we have now spent well over two years literally surviving on the bare minimum (and doing well I must add).

It's been great reading everyone's news - I will make sure I come back more often now. I will have to tell the tale of Pia wanting the sides of her head shaved and resorting to DIY when I refused...

[elisabeth]

Loved your survival column, I cannot match your "depenses", and am full of admiration. We try to do similar down here on the la route de la noix! if want more walnuts I can give you a few sackfulls gratuit!!

[Thomzo]

Hi
So good to see you back. I often wondered how you were getting on. I can't believe how much you've achieved in such a short space of time and it sounds like the little ones are thriving.

The accident sounds awful. I'm so glad you're all fine and that you can be so strong about it. Good luck with the court case.

Zoe

[Millymollymandy]

Hi Alice , lovely to hear from you and I'm so pleased you are writing your book! Don't be such a stranger and do please keep us updated at least once every 6 months.....