The view from my window

The view from my window
The view from my window

Friday 15 March 2024

And the next day ...!

I've been home five days now and I'm finding it a bit weird that I'm still waking up around 5 a.m. and getting up around 6 a.m. (although long may it last). I go to bed around midnight as usual but surely jet lag should have worn off by now? Who knows, but in any case I'm quite enjoying it! After yoga on Monday I went grocery shopping and when I came back I decided to check my engine again. And wouldn't you know it but the bloody weasels had been back visiting my car while I was away - or at least that's what I'm gathering from the chunk of baguette I found where the two slices of brown bread were last time. I think I might make an appointment to get my snow tyres taken off soon (which would seem to be an absolute guarantee of more snow) and ask Ford what I can do about my visitors. I also ordered 1,300 litres of heating fuel and the guy said he'd be here sometime between 10 a.m and mid-day today - and crikey, didn't he show up at 10.01 a.m.!!!! Talk about efficient! Then today I met Jen and Charlie in Bonneville as I wanted to buy Charlie some new shoes for his birthday (he'll be in the States for his birthday) and afterwards we had a wander round the market and then stopped off in a restaurant to eat. Well just as we'd finished eating the power in the entire street went out so it must have been hell for the owners/waiters trying to keep up with heavy demand and no electricity. That being said, everyone starting singing "happy birthday to you" when everything went dark, so it was all taken in good part!

Anyhoo, I think I left off my last post where we'd just arrived in Koh Hai, apparently the least inhabited of the islands. The bungalows on the beach looked really nice, but in truth they needed a good bit of TLC as they were pretty run down. Kelly left a comment on my previous post and as I said to her, while the hotels are all perfectly fine (and often better than fine), on occasion they can be a bit shabby, and this was one of them. That being said, it was spotlessly clean and the shower was hot so beyond that I don't really care. I travelled with Explore.co.uk and like them very much - small groups and good service - but given how reasonably priced they are I think it would be foolish to expect 5-star hotels too. Also, as the name would suggest, these holidays move and so would not be suitable for anyone who didn't have a degree of stamina/mobility. Of course we always had young men to help us with our luggage but on occasion we'd have to drag it down the beach to the boat or down a bunch of steps so (a) it's essential to be somewhat mobile and (b) you learn pretty quick not to pack too much stuff (I'm getting better but it's still a work in progress)!

Our first afternoon on Koh Hai was free so a few of us went down to the beautiful beach (about 100 metres from our bungalows) and either swam or lazed around reading. As a side note here I am sooooo glad I took my kindle and have recently signed up for Audible as it was a great way to pass a few hours. I loaded up on sun screen and insect repellent and parked myself under a tree thinking I'd covered all bases, but apparently not, as I still managed to get somewhat sunburnt, although not terribly so! Still, lesson learned yet again - that sun is fierce!


There were a couple of small resorts along the beach and a few of us decided to eat at a local bar which seemed to be family run. The food was good, their kids were adorable and the barman fascinated me as I thought he looked just like Confucius with his long straggly beard!

Confucius!

I guess the reason for staying on this island was to be able to visit the Emerald Cave, which is located (I think) on the island of Koh Muk. The tiny beach you discover at the end of the cave was apparently discovered by locals who were out bird-nesting and was then used by smugglers to hide their ill gotten gains. In order to get to the beach you had to swim through an 80 metre long cave in the dark so I was having serious misgivings about this. Apparently we would need to snorkel (not gonna happen, I hate snorkelling) but there would be a rope through the cave that we could hang on to. Well neither of those proved to be true in that there was no rope (yikes) but it was possible to simply swim through the cave following our young guide with his head lamp. I wouldn't know the logistics of it, but several of us agreed it must surely be possible to put some form of lighting in there, but who knows. I almost chickened out but then I got mad and gave myself a stiff talking to. You know, "what the hell did you come all this way for if you're gonna wimp out?" kinda thing. Anyway, I did it and it really wasn't too bad, although I have to say that there being only 10 of us it must have been easier to manage everyone. About 10 minutes after we got to the beach groups of maybe 30 were coming in and I honestly don't know how they managed to keep track of everyone - maybe they were tied together - who knows. You know, one drowns they all drown kinda thing (a horrible thought I know, but it did cross my mind)!


Our group!

Looking straight up!

After that adventure, it was back to base camp for a couple of days of doing not much before catching the speedboat over to Koh Lanta to continue our trip!


Tuesday 12 March 2024

The tuk tuk from hell!

After our trip down the canal, our guide spent some time explaining more about Thai customs - the do's and don'ts if you like - and then setting out the programme for the rest of our trip. She also collected a smallish amount of baht from all of us in order to tip various people along the way. This actually made life easier for us because who knows what is or isn't an appropriate amount to tip the guy who carries your suitcase for you in a foreign country? The plan for the afternoon was to visit the Grand Palace so on the way there we got to know each other a little better. As I've mentioned before, there is always "The One" on these trips - you know, The One who whinges constantly and is a misery to be around (see my description of Miserable Pete in Sri Lanka), but this time I was proved wrong because everyone was so very, very nice, and we all ended up getting along really well. The youngest in our group was just 23 (on a trip with her mom as a graduation present) and the oldest was a widower of almost 80 years of age and by golly have they travelled!!! I honestly consider myself to be rather tame after talking with them! I probably got along the best with C, a retired nurse who now works part-time in a care home for dementia patients. As she says, her nurse's pension pays the bills and the care home salary pays for the fun stuff, and man has she been to places I probably would never even consider. Siberia, Pakistan, Nagaland (I'd never heard of it either. It's a mountainous state in northeast India on the border of Myanmar), Borneo and goodness knows where else. On top of that, she's taking her son away for his 30th birthday and as he chose Georgia (the country in eastern Europe, not the US state) she's off there in September, but looking for somewhere else to go between now and then. In fact she even mentioned to me that perhaps we could go to Namibia together sometime since it's somewhere we'd both like to visit! Maybe I really am a bit tame because at sewing club last night I realized Cynthia (another club member) is currently in Mongolia (-25°C), hopefully enjoying the 60th birthday present from her partner! Not exactly Blackpool, is it!

There was also a French lady in the group with her English husband. She has lived in England for the past 50 years and when we got talking it turns out she was born and raised just north of Lake Geneva in a place called Gex. What a small world we live in!

Anyway, we made it to the Grand Palace in sweltering heat, the temperatures at this time of year apparently ranging anywhere from 35°C to 45°C (95°F to 113°F) and boy did we feel it!

It's probably the only photo I got to take
as the crowds were just toooooo much!

After that we visited the Emerald Buddha and the Reclining Buddha, all of it being spectacular - but the heat was just relentless! In fact we'd decided between us that we didn't want to visit the Reclining Buddha because we wanted to get out of the heat, but since our guide had already booked our tuk tuks, in we jumped for the tuk tuk ride from hell. Now I know they all drive like lunatics but usually there is so much traffic they can't really do much damage. But not this time! For some weird reason the traffic on the way to the Reclining Buddha was very light so we got to screech across Bangkok in what was basically a motorized baked bean can, all the while hanging on for dear life!

After we'd recovered somewhat, it was off to the train station to catch the overnight sleeper train to Trang, from where we'd get the speed boat to Koh Hai, the least developed of the islands in the Andaman Sea. While we were sweating it out at the train station, all of a sudden a certain music was played and everyone stood up. Assuming it was the national anthem, we all also stood, so if it wasn't the national anthem I bet we looked like a right bunch of wallies! The overnight train wasn't exactly the Orient Express - more like that train in the movie Some Like It Hot - but we made it to Trang on not very much sleep in time to catch the speed boat to the island. And despite being absolutely knackered by this point, our first view of the island made all that effort worthwhile - but I'll save that for another day!

The sleeper train in Some Like It Hot!




Koh Hai!





Monday 11 March 2024

Home again!

After two rather hectic and exhausting weeks I'm finally back home, arriving last night around 9 p.m. - tired but happy! I reckon jet lag was at play this morning, though, because I was up at 5 a.m., paid some bills, did my washing and put stuff away before heading out to yoga, grocery shopping and then sewing club. I suppose I'll pay for it later but right now I'm still going strong!

My flight to Dubai with Emirates was delayed by 90 minutes, but that notwithstanding, I can't begin to describe how good the experience was flying with them. Of course, I'd decided to spoil myself by flying business class, but to be honest economy also looked really good. The food and service were excellent, and then to have a handsome young steward ask if he could make up my bed was just sublime! On the down side, being delayed by 90 minutes meant I had to run when I got to Dubai in order to make my connecting flight to Bangkok. You can't imagine what I (and a few others) looked like dashing through Dubai airport to get to our ongoing flights. On top of that, Dubai is a "silent airport" in that there are no tannoy annoucements so you end up crashing around trying to find which gate you should be heading for and all this in the searing heat! But make it we did, with the flight from Dubai being just as good as the first one, although by the time I finally made it to Bangkok I was pretty wired!

At the hotel I met up with the rest of our group (there were 10 of us) and our guide, who took us to a little out of the way restaurant overlooking the Chao Phraya River where we all made our introductions and got to know each other a little. I woke early the next morning (still jet lagged I guess) so sat on the terrace watching the boats go by until the others came down for breakfast. While I was sitting there a young French man sat down with his breakfast plate and then went to get coffee. Big mistake, apparently, because in his absence a crow swooped down and stole most of his breakfast before he made it back to the table! You live and learn I guess!

Later that morning we took a boat ride down one of the canals that branch off the river. It was already 35°C (95°F) so it was quite a shock to the system, but everywhere we went people made sure we always had cold water on hand as I guess they know how serious it can be if you get dehydrated!

I'm guessing my next few posts will be pretty picture heavy, so feel free to skip if you like. I'm just reliving my trip while it's fresh in my mind - and saving it to enjoy later!

Flying over Bangkok!

The view from our hotel by night!



Feeding fish on the canal trip!

Along the canal!

I wouldn't want to meet him
in the breakfast area!

And I couldn't resist this one - it's Gary Larsen I think, but I'm not sure!




Saturday 17 February 2024

More this and that!

Well the world's slowest renovation project is still ongoing and I'm starting to get really fed up of it, to be honest. I had thought that at least the big bathroom would have been finished last week but unfortunately the plumber couldn't install the shower door pane as he needs the tiler to come back in and build him "an exact vertical" on which to attach it (I'd guess none of my walls are particularly straight). Unfortunately (for me) the tiler had to dash home to Kosovo for a few days so that's where I'm stuck at - so close and yet so far! On a positive note, I now trust both these men enough that if I have to dash out I know I can leave them in the house alone. I was telling the tiler that I'd just gotten back from the charity shop and he asked me if I always took stuff there, rather than dumping it. When I said of course, we were poor when I was growing up, he smiled and said "good, because that's the way we live in my country"! I guess if people want to try to sell stuff that's fine too, but the thought of putting perfectly good items in the trash horrifies me!

In the family next door to ours in England there were 10 children, and not long after I'd come to Geneva one of their older daughters came out to Geneva to work as an au pair for two physicists working at CERN (the European Nuclear Research Centre - think Hadron Collider). When I met up with her one time she was telling me that when the children grew out of their clothes they just dumped them in the trash (!!!!) so she spent half her time climbing in the trash to get them back out again and take them home for her brothers and sisters! She also said that they would buy a whole, large salmon, take what they wanted from it - and then dump the rest! While they obviously made good money, I will never understand that mentality, and nor do I want to!

Anyway, I know my tiler would like to buy a house and he was asking me about next door's place and another neighbour's place - the Jehovah's Witness couple who are having to move out because of old age/frailty. He'd done some work for next door and liked the house and they keep their garden nice too, but the other neighbour (who introduced me to the tiler) had also told him about the problems with the basement flooding, so I don't think he would want to take that on. One thing I also mentioned to him though is that living in Annecy, his three kids would probably hate it out here - too rural and you can't just pop into town and go shopping when you feel like it. Absolutely beautiful of course (but then so is Annecy) but no public transport and I felt that his teenage daughters, at least, would hate it. We were lucky because AndrĂ© was just two when we moved here and Jordan was born here, so they never knew anything else, but tweens would probably hate it. I would be happy to have him move in next door as he seems very nice, but (a) I honestly don't see next door ever selling and (b) you have to take into account all the inconveniences too. I think I gave him food for thought, at least!

On another note, I follow a FB group who post on burglaries/break-ins in the local area, and I don't know if they are actually increasing or if I'm just more aware of it, but in any case I called back a company who had come round in the summer and within 24 hours I had a complete security system installed and with a monthly payment will have a 24 hour emergency contact too. They installed five sensors downstairs (doors and windows), an internal camera, two external cameras (front and back) and even a "smoke" alarm - you know, a bit like the artifical fog you get at a pop concert. It's very easy to use (once I got the hang of it) and so far I've only set it off briefly twice. I also gave my neighbour a disc that will cancel the alarm if it goes off when I'm not here, and will give the kids one each when I see them. So job done then!

In other news, there seems to be an awful lot of product recall going on in France right now due to the "detection of pesticides". Hmmmm!!! Several such products that also hit the news, although only in a "small" way, were various bottled waters produced by Nestlé. It seems that they have been treating their bottled waters in the same way as regular tap water is treated, and while this doesn't necessarily make the water "bad" (for want of a better word), having the label spring water means it shouldn't be treated at all! Thankfully when this was discovered Nestlé's reps dashed off to Paris and managed to get a derogation before too much harm was done. Oddly enough the executive working at Rothschild Bank who was put in charge of the sale of Pfizer's infant nutrition division to Nestlé was none other than ...

... so I'm sure they had good contacts!

The other day I was in town and spotted the most beautiful baeckeoffe dish (earthenware dish), and despite my decluttering efforts I knew I just had to have it (I know, I know)! I promptly bought it home and cooked a large chicken with tons of garlic and potatoes. Of course I couldn't eat it all so stripped the chicken and threw the gravy, garlic and potatoes into a soup I made yesterday. While it was lovely, somehow I think if I'd realized I'd used that much garlic I would have eaten it on Friday night - that way I probably wouldn't have had to pay for a business class seat to Thailand on Saturday as I'm sure no-one would have wanted to sit next to me!

My baeckeoffe dish! I love it!

And finally, I brought my suitcase upstairs to start packing and pulled out a nice shoulder bag that I only use when travelling. While I was rummaging around in the pockets I found a lottery ticket I bought for 24 December and when I checked it I had won €50!!!! I have no idea why I dropped it in that bag and as it was almost expired I went into town today and cashed it! All good stuff then, as I'm off to Thailand on Saturday and it would have expired by the time I get back. I doubt I'll be able to keep in contact much on my phone, so if not, take care and "speak" when I get back!


Saturday 3 February 2024

A brain like cottage cheese!

So the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is finally over, having accommodated up to 150 private jets per day in order for a group of unelected billionaires to tell the rest of us how we need to cut our carbon footprint. Yes I'm talking to you, little old lady at the back there - how dare you expect to be able to heat your home and eat. The nerve of some people, eh Klaus!

In other news, I'm not really sure what's going on with next door's divorce, although it is apparently common knowledge now as the husband has seemingly told everyone. As for him moving into his daughter's empty apartment, well that seems to be the world's slowest move out I've ever seen. I saw him putting one chair into his car this week so now I'm assuming he has one knife, one fork, a cup and a chair to be going on with. He's obviously still living here so I'm thinking life is just as miserable for both sides, but to be honest, I don't actually see this divorce ever happening, no more than I see the house going up for sale in spring. I could be wrong of course, but I just don't see it happening somehow!

My poor friend from sewing group is not having the best start to 2024. Her husband managed to injure her foot by driving off before she'd gotten out of the car completely, he got covid, she got covid and then 10 days ago she fell while putting some dishes away and broke her arm!!!!! She's already been operated on and is slowly on the mend, but I bet she wishes 2024 would just hurry up and bugger off already, the poor thing!

The weather has picked up again so much that you would think it was spring - which of course it isn't, but I'll take it while it lasts. To that end, my friend and I managed to get our act together and took several bags of stuff to the charity shop on Friday, and followed it up with a celebratory lunch in what turned out to be a very good Indian restaurant in town. To be honest I don't eat out very often, so that ended up being a real treat! I follow several walking groups on FB of people who go hiking in "74" (which is this area of France) and with the gorgeous weather the photos they are posting are just stunning. I know for the most part I couldn't do many of the hikes (if any) but this one tickled me - can you imagine if I'd just tagged along thinking I was going on a "little hike"! They're obviously not all anywhere near as hard as this but .....!

His tagline was "and the guide
said it was an easy one!"

I was planning on checking my car over yesterday (oil and windscreen fluid) but when I opened up the hood I found two slices of brown bread sitting on the engine! No joke - and since it's not the first time this has happened, I looked and the bloody fouines are back in the engine nibbling away at any rubber tubing - to go with the brown bread, it would seem! Fouine translates as "weasel" but I always thought weasels were much bigger than these little buggers. Either way, they're back to doing as much damage as they can while keeping warm on the inside of my engine. I gave it a good spraying with the anti-weasel stuff I bought ages ago, but now I think I'll just keep a can in my car and spray it every couple of days until/if I can find a more permanent solution!

Our friendly neighbourhood fouine!

My first reaction to finding the brown bread was that I must be losing my mind, or my brain is turning to mush, until I realized that I'd seen it before. That was kinda reassuring about my mental state but when I popped into my local supermarket for a couple of things later that day I found people wandering around like something out of a zombie movie. Not quite bumping into each other but nobody knowing what the heck they were doing and shooting off in all directions. You see, they suddenly decided to tear the whole place apart, change the entire layout and nobody could find anything they wanted so in the end I just gave up and left. Maybe there's some intelligent reason why they do this - make people wander round more so they end up having to look more closely at what's on the shelves - but I'm not sure how many sales they made that day because people were just giving up and leaving!

So I ended up stopping off at another supermarket, the one where I drop my books off at the book exchange, but much to my shame I ended up picking up a rather lovely Jamie Oliver cookbook so it was a case of drop off five and pick up one. After that I stopped off at the cash machine, withdrew the cash I wanted and when it asked if I wanted a receipt I pressed "yes", only to find out when I got home that I'd not only forgotten the receipt but had left the Jamie Oliver book on the little shelf there at the bank. Then when I got home I couldn't find my house keys. I mean, how hard can it be to find your keys in your handbag, but I searched and searched, panicked a bit and then searched some more. In the end I had to give up and was just wandering down to my neighbour's to ask for my spare key, when I reached into my jeans pocket for a hankie and there were my keys. I don't think I've ever been absent-minded so many times in any one day so I really was beginning to worry if my brain had started turning into cottage cheese!

When I finally got in the house I decided to assemble a simple towelling rack that I'd bought for my almost-finished bathroom. It was really easy to assemble, just four small screws at the top and four larger screw at the bottom. But when I opened the packet of larger screws I searched and searched - but nope, there were only three of them. They were of a very specific size and I didn't have anything equivalent in my somewhat extensive screw collection. So off I trotted back into town to the hardware store to buy one bloody screw!!!! Still it was a relief to find my brain hadn't actually turned to mush - I just have a screw missing!


Thursday 18 January 2024

This and that!

Well after feeling all gung ho and getting so much junk out of the house last week, I kinda ran out of steam somewhere mid-week and took a few days off. Mind you, the bloody awful weather - constant rain - is enough to make anyone pull their hair out, I reckon. I've never really minded rain and positively love the cold, but this non-stop drizzle is bloody awful. As I've mentioned before, both my neighbours have problems with water coming into their basements so I hear their pumps working constantly. And then of course we have the downed trees and landslides, as the water obviously has nowhere to go!

I did get a walk in last week at the lake in Passy (one of my favourite places) which was just as well I went when I did because the next day we got about eight inches of snow! I've learned my lesson well however in that I never let it sit anymore as it's just so hard trying to shift ice the next day. I needn't have worried though because the temperatures went right back up the next day and it all melted - just adding to the dank and misery!

I had a nice time last Saturday as rather than holding our board game evening at someone's home, Jen asked if we would like to join in a game evening at the ludothèque (toy library) in their little town and we were all up for it. This was how I had originally tried out board game evenings in my local town, but to be honest the groups were already so well established that I felt like a spare part and only went back one other time with my neighbour, Valérie, where we got the same result. This time though it was much better and the organizers took time to show us new games and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Everyone made finger food (and took wine, of course) and after about 90 minutes the organizers basically just raided everyone's bags and put all the food and drinks on the table for everyone to help themselves. We even adopted a new young man who sat and played with us, so I'd say the evening was a big success!

Oh and remember I wrote in my last post about a possible scam email telling me I'd won gift vouchers, well it turns out it was legit. I was invited to show up at the Mairie in town and about 60 of us were presented with vouchers averaging around €150 each as a thank you from businesses for shopping locally. Now I honestly can't remember filling in any form for this but it was a nice surprise all the same. There are two vouchers for €50 each for a local optician's so I've told the kids they can have them if they can make use of them - if not, I guess I'll just get new glasses sooner than I planned, although it actually must be about four years since I got my last pair, so maybe it was a sign!

I see "everyone's favourite troll" (Rajani Rehana) is back doing the rounds, telling everyone that they have a "great blog"! I wonder if it's a bot trying to push more traffic to their site or if it really is just some bored little man sitting in his underpants in mommy's basement! Guess we'll never know!

In other news, British in Europe have done a sterling job in getting back our right to vote. A law had been introduced sometime ago whereby anyone who had been out of the country for 15 years lost the right to vote in UK General Elections, and this despite giving 3.5 million non-Brits in the UK the right to vote. Many European countries do have representatives in various countries looking out for the interests of their citizens abroad and affording them representation in their respective parliaments, but not the Brits! So as of 16 January I have applied for my right to vote again, since Brexit meant that I, like many others, was totally disenfranchised everywhere!

And talking of the right to vote, I watched Youtuber Andrew Gould interviewing writer Norman Baker, mainly it has to be said about Prince Andrew and what went on on Epstein's Island. I've heard many stories over the years about Andrew and his boarish behaviour - including one time when the security staff didn't open the gates to his property quickly enough so he rammed the gates with his car, causing £80,000 of damage???? So nah, I never liked him in any case, but then Mr. Baker got on to the subject of the rest of the monarchy and "why, for instance, did King Charles not pay a penny in inheritance tax on the money left to him by his mother" and on and on it went. Anyway, he's just brought out a book called "So What Do You Do" (standard royal chat to adoring members of the public) and as I was so impressed with the interview I've found the book on Audible and will be starting on that shortly. I honestly don't know what I think about the monarchy because when I was growing up they were just always there. And I think people genuinely did have tremendous respect for the Queen. However, if we were to have a vote on keeping the monarchy or getting rid of them, I honestly don't know how I'd vote - not that there's much chance of that ever happening right? As for the book, I'll reserve judgement until I've read it!


Saturday 6 January 2024

How to get things done!

So the snow line's getting closer and Christmas and new year have come and gone. I don't really make new year's resolutions and my mind goes blank when I try to think of a "word for the year", so I guess I'll pass on that too! Christmas was nice and new year was quiet, as I mentioned previously, which is just the way I like it! For some time I had been wanting to go and see either Barbie or Oppenheimer (or both) but never got around to it when they were in the cinemas in Geneva. Our local cinema probably has them playing but I really don't want to see them dubbed in French, so you can imagine how pleased I was to see that Amazon (I think - not Netflix) had them both available to rent for the grand total of €4.99 each! If you consider that driving into Geneva is a hassle and cinema tickets are around SF 25-30 each (just over $25-30) it was a no brainer to sit and watch them in the comfort of my own home with a glass of wine, right! Barbie was better than I thought it would be, but I probably only really watched it because I adore Ryan Gosling - he's such a ham. Oppenheimer was good and I thought Cillian Murphy did a sterling job, but something that made me think was when they were doing the initial test on the atom bomb at Los Alamos - how important was the music? They really built up the tension with the music and if you think about it, if they'd played something out of Mary Poppins the effect would have been totally destroyed. So yeah, I guess there really is a helluva lot more to movie-making than meets my amateur eye!

My walking tally for 2023 limped along to around 800 miles so maybe that should be one of my resolutions for this year - walk at least 1,000 miles again! Hell I clocked up way over 1,000 miles during covid lockdowns when we were only allowed out of our cages for one hour a day (unless you were a politician, of course) so I really have no excuse! I've already managed a couple of walks when the weather cooperated and really enjoyed them, all the more so since I used my air pods and listened to either podcasts or a book while walking - although admittedly I still feel a bit stupid with an antenna sticking out of each ear like some remote controlled robot! That notwithstanding, I'm getting so much more done now that I can "take my podcasts/books with me" rather than staying glued to the sofa in order to listen to them! At the moment I'm listening to Matt Haig's "The Midnight Library", and while it's pretty weird, I do like him. I read his book "The Humans" some time ago and that was also weird, so I do wonder how his mind works on occasion. A bit like J.K. Rowling I suppose - who on earth could dream up the Harry Potter books? That being said, I think I once read that Lewis Carroll was supposedly on LSD when he wrote "Alice in Wonderland" (probaby why it is so brilliant), so who knows!

On a totally different subject, the other day I got a text message informing me that I had won a gift voucher during the "La Roche fortnight" (huh?) and was invited to the Mairie in La Roche next Thursday evening to be presented with my voucher by the Maire! I checked on the La Roche website to make sure it wasn't a scam but it's legit, although I certainly never filled out any competition entry forms. Maybe they just picked my name out one time when I used my loyalty card somewhere - I've no idea, but I guess I'll find out soon enough!

Next week many are going back to work (if they haven't already) and yoga and sewing club start back up again, so I expect I'll fall back into something of a routine. My tiler has come over several times this past week for between four and six hours at a time and while he's making progress it's very slow going. He explained to me that it's taking so long because the wall tiles I chose are really small and are therefore so much more work, but I have to give it to him, he's a hard working young-ish man. The other day I was trying out a new cannelloni recipe so invited him to eat lunch with me. I was asking him about his country (Kosovo) and he explained that it was a pretty poor country with a population of only around two million, with maybe another million living outside the country and sending money back home. It floored me when he said that in many respects prices were similar to here, but when he said, say, a cashier working full-time would earn around €400 I was stunned. On the reverse side, he said that many people owned smallholdings and still lived off the land, although younger people were not so willing to do that anymore and wanted out! He had come here as a teenager after the Serbia/Kosovo war (as a refugee presumably) but even today still many more want out!

Anyway, while he's been here working I try to stay out of his way, so have been pulling more cupboards and drawers apart. And oh my word how on earth did it ever get that bad??? Well I suppose having once been home to five people at any one time, and of course when people move out they leave a lot of their crap behind, but still, I'm amazed at what I'm pulling out and throwing away even now! I reckon I've spent six hours on the cupboards by the front door alone (food storage, baking supplies, etc.) but when I ever thought I was going to want to cook 250 cupcakes all at the same time is beyond me! So out went the tatty old cupcake trays and other "cute" stuff I've simply never used. The unwanted good stuff I'll probably take to the charity shop next week, so I hope someone gets more pleasure out of it than I obviously did!

So trying to stay out of his hair has meant me setting my timer (repeatedly) to one hour and continuing to attack the clutter. It's weird because every time another bag of stuff goes out of the house I genuinely do feel like the air flows more freely - maybe feng shui is really a thing! Since I drink tea rather than coffee I've unearthed goodness knows how many boxes of fancy tea that people have given me over the years, so I thought hey, how about you start drinking that stuff rather than bunging it in a cupboard! In reality I like "builders' tea" (i.e. plain and simple) but some of the fancy stuff isn't too bad at all!

We call that "builder's crack",
for obvious reasons!

So, all in all the decluterring is going pretty well and I'm already thinking about what small pieces of furniture I'll want in the big bathroom when it's finished. Then I had something of a brainwave and realized I could probably take a small chest of drawers out of the third bedroom and use that in the bathroom, i.e. shop from home. I mean, it's not like if anyone was staying in that room they'd be able to use that piece of furniture - because it's full of what I call my "travel junk"! So having completed the cupboards by the front door, next on the list is the small bedroom and the "travel junk" unit! 

André sent me a "happy new year" text from Italy and when I asked him how it had gone (with the young woman he met in Thailand) he sent back a flood of photos showing him out with her and her friends watching the fireworks on new year and having dinner with her family. He hit it off really well with her dad, who kept cracking open the champagne and wine, so two sore heads later they are apparently now best buddies! She lives just south of La Spezia, which is where you catch the taxi ferries to get to Cinque Terre - so a beautiful part of the country!

Cinque Terre!

They got along well so Bekka is coming up here around 18th January so we'll all get to meet her. I'm still working on my Italian lessons (and still enjoying it) but obviously my Italian remains very limited. But hey, did anyone ever see that episode of Friends where a door-to-door salesman tries to sell Joey a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica but Joey only has enough money to buy one volume? He picks the volume covering the letter "V" and so tries to keep bringing the topic of conversation round to "Venus" (and they switch to talking about the Mars landing), and then the Vietnam war - at which point Monica starts talking about the Korean war, so he never gets to show off his knowledge. I reckon if I can keep the topic of conversation on her "big dog" (assuming she has one), whether she'd "like a new black backpack", or asking directions to the market and "is it really cheap", she'll be dead impressed! Watch this space!