Where has this year gone?

I don't know about you but I can't believe it's almost October already. I mean, where on earth has 2024 gone?? Maybe I should make an effort to do more one-off things during the year as just maintaining the same routine day in, day out, seems to make time just fly by, don't you think!

Anyhoo, since I wasn't particularly busy the other day I decided to sit down and apply for my French passport. In reality it wasn't too difficult but it is a real faff having to set up an account for this (to get my appointment at the Mairie in La Roche to hand in my application) and make an account for that (to obtain an administrative number for .... goodness know what, I can't remember now). Then I had to buy what they call a timbre fiscal in the amount of €86, which I guess is just a way of paying the cost of the passport directly to the State. So I'm online filling out the form for a first time applicant and when I get to the end they ask me for my credit card number to pay the €120 fee! Say what, it costs €86 and I'd already paid it! But when I looked into it I realized the site, while looking like an official government site, was in fact just one of those promotional sites that "will do the work for you for a fee". But I'd already done all the work hadn't I! It's a bit like when you apply for a visa to visit a foreign country and up pops the "for profit" sites rather than the official government site. I'm pretty sure they're mostly legit, but I was damned if I was going to pay them €40 to just forward my paperwork for me! That being said, I'm so glad I got my citizenship before they see my photo - oh my word, it wouldn't look out of place on a wanted poster! Anyway, when I fetched the mail the other day I see that I have also received an invitation to a "citizenship ceremony" at the local Préfecture for 12 October. I don't have to go but feel I should anyway as it's the right thing to do!

September 24th was my birthday and I got a FB message from Karon, who I met in St. Lucia eight years ago. Honestly we chatted like it was just yesterday First thing she mentioned was the bloody hair nets that we had to wear when we went ziplining (she signed me up without my knowledge). Honestly we looked like a bunch of dinner ladies but we had to wear them in order to prevent us being scalped in the event of an accident(!!!)! 

Then we got on to the older lady who sampled every one of the 19 varieties of rum when we visited the rum factory. To be honest, the tasters were really tiny, but 19??? And then of course she mentioned the four of us sitting in the sea with our rum punches in our hand and going wheeeeee every time a wave came in and threatened to spill our drinks!!! The locals got a real kick out of us apparently. Happy days indeed, and it's so nice to think that after all these years we can still have a laugh together!

On Wednesday this week we set off for our latest, overnight trip to the Fortress of Guédelon. The fort has been built using the methods used in the 13th century and is very impressive. Stick me in an art gallery and I'll be nodding off at the coffee shop within 10 minutes, but anything like this I absolutely adore! The very big down side was the bloody awful weather but since we were expecting it everyone was well equipped. I'd bought a sturdy poncho to take with me to Thailand (I forgot it), but it certainly came in handy this week. At one point my friend was trying to take a photo of a bunch of geese wandering round the village when one of the males took umbrage and started running towards her. My first thought was to start flapping my poncho at him but thankfully it didn't come to that 'cos as soon as he'd scared her off he went back to his lady friends.

In the internal courtyard there was a little kid of about four years old having an absolute blast jumping in the puddles. Thankfully he was totally dressed for it and he was an absolute joy to watch. Then at lunch when one of the older men in our party heard us speaking English he started telling us that the only time he had ever visited England was many years ago when his school won a free trip to London and as he was one of he younger teachers he was asked to accompany them. Problem was, when they went to board the bus back to the airport they were six kids short!!! Turns out they'd started chatting up a young English girl and she ended up giving them a lift to the airport. Of course in those days there were no cell phones so I can't even begin to imagine the panic they must have been in trying to find them!

While we were wandering round my friend was telling me about a former colleague of ours (who went back to England many years ago). She might just be 60 at this point and as my friend was due to meet up with her and her husband the next day, the husband had sent her a message to say that P (the former colleague) was not doing well at all and would seem to be suffering from pretty fast developing Alzheimers/dementia (I don't know the difference). So they all met up for lunch and my friend was telling me that P was quite obviously not well, very unsure of herself and stressed out just at the idea of having to find the ladies' bathrooms. I know 60 might not be considered "early onset", but I am totally shocked and saddened to hear of her decline at what, after all, is still a pretty young age!

A google picture of the fortress (the
weather was too bad for me to get a
decent picture of the whole fort)!

The archers would shoot through
these gaps at the invading hordes!

On the way back we went "through" the most stunning rainbow I have ever seen. It was a complete arch (double arch actually) and the colours were spectacular. I couldn't do it justice but I have honestly never seen such a beautiful rainbow in my life!

Then the other day when I picked André up from the Ford garage he was telling me how stressed he was because one of their computer systems had screwed up and they had a massive job to complete for their upcoming conference. He told me that they use Teams to communicate and he has a colleague who is very nice, but who can never "just send a message". It goes something like this: "ping, hi André", so André says hi. Then "ping, all ok?" - André yep! "Ping, can I ask you a favour?" and so it goes on and on. He doesn't seem to get the idea that he can put his entire message into one "ping" and they would get a lot more done a lot faster! The ping is driving him mad! That made me laugh because I remember reading one time that a man (in the US I think) came home from work one evening and, as ever, called out "hi honey, I'm home" - and she shot him!!! My ex used to walk in every night (when he wasn't at the bar) and say "so, what's the game plan?", but luckily for him I don't own a gun!

And finally André has been telling me for some time now that when he goes to the local pub in Geneva he has become friendly with a man from my work called Juan. Well I went through all the Juans I could think of but we could never figure out who it was. Eventually he sent me a photo of Juan and another former colleague, Carlos (who I remember very well), so now it turns out we're all going out for a drink and to a concert together at some date to be arranged by André. Just hope nobody uses Teams (ping)!

This and that!

It's been a fairly quiet few days again, although with the weather being glorious it has allowed me to get outside on a few walks and/or work in the garden and then try to find something half way decent to watch on either Amazon or Netflix in the evenings. I had noticed on a few occasions that when I maybe spotted a film on Netflix I might like to watch at some point, the next time I logged on I'd find out that said film had now become "for payment only". Okay once or twice I might have made a mistake, but by the third time, I realized that if I earmarked a relatively well known film to watch later, it would very often change status from free to "for rent" when I went back. Sneaky buggers! And then this morning I got an email from Netflix to say that my bog standard contract with them for €5.99 per month had been cancelled and would be going up to €13.99 per month as from end October!!!! I don't think so! I've been starting series and not finishing them because they just don't hold my interest, so I've put a note in my diary to cancel it before the new contract kicks in! Maybe if they didn't pay out ridiculous sums of money for some of the less than stellar productions they wouldn't need to more than double their contract price without warning! Mind you, I probably need to start cutting back because apparently I've yet again been hacked and "caught looking at porn sites which could seriously damage my reputation but if I just pay $1,300 into the following bitcoin account they will delete all their evidence"! Jeez, and I thought I was being so discreet!

Then the other day I went to pick up André from the Ford garage and when he saw that I had my ear buds in listening to a book on Audible he told me that his friend just got done the other day for the same "crime"! Huh? How can that be a crime? I get that they don't want you having your phone in your hands, but surely listening to a book is no more dangerous than listening to the radio? Well apparently that's not so because it would seem that the ear buds can "diminish my awareness of what's going on around me while driving". Again, huh? I still don't see how it is any different from listening to the radio but it is, apparently, and his friend got fined €90!!!! So what with that and my porn habit, I guess I'd better be more careful!

Earlier this week my Nigerian friend's wife, M, stopped by for a chat as she's going to be around more now that she's been made redundant. It wasn't how she had planned to retire but she realizes she is lucky because she actually can retire, whereas many of the younger journalists are struggling to find new jobs. When I asked after her husband she told me that he had had to come back from Nigeria (his happy place) as he had been taken ill with blood clots on the lungs and diagnosed with stage three prostate cancer. When I asked if it was possible to get good medical care in Nigeria she said it was - but only if you had money as there is no medical insurance!! I guess I've always taken good medical coverage for granted but when you realize that many people don't have that it's pretty humbling!

On Saturday we had our latest board game evening at Jordan and Jen's place so everyone got to meet Elynn, then the following day we had our latest "clean up the neighbourhood" get together, which allowed us to meet two new sets of neighbours who have recently moved in. Honestly if everyone pitches in for just an hour we can have the place looking pretty nice and after that - well, it's party time. Everyone cooks and brings a bottle and as the weather was nice we were able to stay out until it got dark and cold. One of the young kids is called Loris and while I don't know him very well, he is a very polite, well brought up young lad. He was excitedly telling me that in a year's time he is hoping to be going to New York for four years to study dance. When I asked him what kind of dance (with me thinking classical dance/ballet) he said hip hop! I was stunned because having been responsible for the education grant at work I have seen people whose kids studied in New York and it ain't cheap, but to spend four years studying hip hop??? I'm not sure how that's even possible but then maybe I'm just an old lady. I hope he gets to achieve his pipe dream, even if I somehow doubt it!

I stopped in at the local exhibition centre this afternoon to visit the annual creative arts fair and while everything was indeed lovely, all I bought was a pair of electric scissors for sewing club. I also spotted a poster announcing what I would call a freebie exchange mart where people can bring whatever they want to get rid of and take anything that takes their fancy, the only proviso being that everything is free. I think it's a great idea and am hoping it will really motivate me to get working on decluttering to take stuff over there!

And finally, I got a phone call from our local Mairie on Friday to say that they had received my paperwork back from Grenoble and guess what? After goodness knows how many years/attempts, it would seem that I'm now French! So Vive la France (finally)!

Gonna send off for my new passport when I 
get back from Guédelon next week!

Feel the burn!

The last few days following our visit to the Parc de Merlet have been somewhat telling as to just how long it's been since I did any exercise (a couple of months probably)! Oh I've done a couple of walks on the flat round the lake at Passy and also into Cluses but actually doing something even slightly strenous? Nope, I've been avoiding that like the plague, so the climb from the parking lot to the park entrance the other day was a struggle, even though, being perfectly honest, it shouldn't have been difficult at all. Anyway. all that to say that for the past couple of days I've been falling out of bed and hobbling around as my poor old muscles try to figure out what on earth just happened! As things calmed down a bit I decided that I didn't want to keep going through that every time I made any effort so the best thing to do - apparently - is to keep at it!

I mentioned before that I follow a few hiking groups on FB and when I see anything that looks relatively easy and somewhat local I've been making a note of it with a view to "getting round to it someday"! To be honest, if I don't do it in the autumn with the cooler weather I'm probably not going to do it when the snow comes am I, so my friend and I decided that since today was supposed to be nice we'd take a trip out to a place called the Gorges de Diosaz, which turned out to be only about 20 minutes from the Parc de Merlet, so not far at all. Then this morning my friend let me know that she had had a bad night and hadn't slept so I decided to head off on my own because I knew I'd soon be getting cabin fever again if I didn't get out and walk!

At the entrance to the park there was a signpost to a small cave which I'm presuming had indeed started off as a cave but which had later been hollowed out further and used to store dynamite for mining purposes!

According to the signs posted outside, it appears that some poor family had actually lived in this cave for three years (????) in the late1800s and a pitiful young (unmarried) woman had been forced to give birth there - a child which was promptly proclaimed an orphan and adopted into what I'm presuming was a noble family (given the name) and raised alongside their nine other children!

Cralin, the little boy born in the cave, I believe!

After visiting the cave I couldn't find any valid excuse to delay the hike up to the end of the gorge - all 600 steps of it! Now to be honest it wasn't actually that bad because there were "landing areas" every so many steps so it wasn't as though you had to keep going non-stop. As I set off I bumped into an older English couple and when we got chatting the man asked if I was "a scouser" (i.e. from Liverpool), which wasn't a bad shot I suppose as I'm actually from Birmingham and some people think the accents are alike. They were actually living in a smallish village in Herefordshire right near the village where I got married!! It's a small world isn't it! They were only over here for a few days for their niece's wedding, which was going to be taking place the next day at 2,000 metres, so I told them to pack something warm (I'm thinking cable car ride up) and wished them luck. What a lovely place to get married!

After that it was simply a question of trudging my way up which, as I say, really wasn't that bad if you managed to avoid the ice cold water dripping off some of the overhanging rocks. All in all it took me about an hour to get to the top and since tomorrow is also scheduled to be nice, I might see if I can get another walk in before the bad weather hits on Sunday!

So what's new?

For the past couple of months life has been pretty much "samey" in that the heat is hard to bear and very lethargy-inducing. I've been getting round it by trying to get stuff sorted in the house in the mornings (downstairs is quite cool and the basement is wonderful) and then working a little in the garden in the evenings but I must admit I'm starting to get cabin fever right around now - so it's a good thing the weather is cooling and my various classes start up again next week!

Charlie started school (or is it pre-school at age three?) on Monday and I suppose one of the great advantages of having been in day care from a young age is that he skipped off quite happily to his new class without looking back. The only person that got a kiss was Elynn so I guess that let's everyone know where they stand in the pecking order!

I woke up Monday morning to see that I'd missed a video call at 2.30 a.m. from Jordan - not a good feeling at all. Turns out everything was fine though as he reckoned he must have sat on his phone and bum-dialled me. Logically too, if anything serious happened in the middle of the night they would either wake up one of the neighbours or take both kids with them to the hospital because it would take me around 45 minutes to get there anyway. Still, all's well that ends well!

I stopped over at André's place on Friday to drop off his birthday present and he was telling me that he has to go to Istanbul soon to help with setting up one of his organization's upcoming conferences there. I told him to check to see if a good friend, M, might be there as I'm sure he would love to see him. M was a Turkish colleague of my ex who organized a fabulous long weekend for us in Istanbul, his home city. It was wonderful - all the moreso for being shown around by a native, of course - and I think hearing the call to prayer when the sun was going down over the Blue Mosque is a memory that will stay with me forever! Anyhoo, that was when I realized that 31st August would have been my 39th wedding anniversary. We limped along to 26 years but for my part at least, they were mostly pretty miserable years. How sad is that?

Moving swiftly on, my friend and I are off on an overnighter to the fortress village of Guédelon on 25th September, so I'm looking forward to that. We'll get to spend the day exploring the fortress and village at our leisure and then board a boat for an overnight cruise down the river (can't remember which one) before heading back home. I don't have anything else planned for this year, except for my sister and her husband coming out at some point, but I think I might look into another "last long haul" after Christmas. We'll see how I feel in the new year, I suppose!

While I've been puttering around sorting stuff, I've taken to listening to a wonderful young woman on Youtube who goes by the name Cheere Denise! I sometimes listen to my audiobooks but if not, she is my go-to if I want to get an insight into other books. She is one of a number of Youtubers who read extracts from popular books and give their thoughts on it (they can't read the entire book for copyright reasons). So I was pleasantly surprised to hear her read the book The Housekeeper's Diaries, which was written by a woman who worked as a housekeeper at Highgrove to the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana. When I was initially looking for this book (it was written in the '80s, I think) I found out that it had been banned from sale in the UK and the only copies available from outside the UK were going for ridiculous amounts of $$$$$ and no way was I going to pay that. I think the author was fair to both Charles and Diana, but showed that Diana was absolutely not the fairytale princess she was portrayed to be, and that Charles was not a total monster either. She was nowhere near as kind to Andrew and Fergie though (which seems to be pretty much on par with what I've read about them from other sources). What really struck me though is the shocking amount of ££££ that was wasted when, for instance, Diana sent the housekeeper back to London (a journey of about 90 minutes) to get her favourite hairbrush (???) and how when truckloads of gifts were sent to Highgrove, either for C and/or D or the kids, or just from companies trying to curry favour, after taking their pick of what was on offer, the rest was burned??? Again ?????? I think anyone from a normal background would be utterly shocked by this and then maybe they had their reasons, but if so, I can't think of one!

Right now she's going through a book on the Mountbattens and the recent book by Maureen Callahan called Ask Not - about the Kennedys and "how they destroyed the lives of the women that married into the family"! That's still ongoing for me, but again, it is pretty horrific and does much to destroy the Camelot myth!

I'm also reading the book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, an investigative journalist who infliltrated the Neapolitan mafia. It's hard going, what with all the Italian names - and then of course everyone also had a nickname - but it goes into great detail about the inner workings of the various clans. The main "commodity" was, of course, cocaine, but surprisingly the next biggest venture, according to him, was arms traficking, followed oddly enough by "cement". I suppose when you think about it, if you control all the component parts of the construction industry you are powerful indeed! Another interesting facet was the "knock off" fashion sweatshops, although in many instances, again according to him, much of the fashion produced in these sweatshops also made it into the big fashion houses in Italy and around the world!

He became quite friendly with a talented tailor called Pasquale, who had such talent and such exquisite taste that he was often sent to pick out the quality fabrics to be imported "duty free" from Asia. He went on to recount how Pasquale was given the measurements of a very famous person and told to create a trouser suit for her out of the recently purchased top notch white fabric. Apparently he loved his work but was horrified to be watching television one night and saw Angelina Jolie wearing "his" trouser suit (to the Oscars? to the Vogue gala? - I can't remember which)! There was no insinuation that Angelina Jolie knew her suit's background, but when he realized that he was being paid just €600 a month to create the exquisite clothes that then went on to sell for thousands of dollars, he refused to work as a tailor anymore and took a job as a mob truck driver instead!

And finally, as I said previously, I was beginning to get cabin fever from spending so much time at home, so my friend and I decided to set off today to visit the Parc de Merlet. The weather was perfect and I can't believe I have never been to this park before when it is only one hour up the road towards Italy!!! Being completely out of shape we struggled even just walking up from the parking lot, but we made it, and apart from a pretty disappointing meal at the one and only restaurant there, we had such a good time we've decided to head out to a local gorge to go walking again on Friday, weather permitting!

Parc de Merlet!

We gave these guys a wide berth!
They can obviously run and jump
better than we can!

The Mont Blanc!

A llama enjoying the view of
the Glacier des Bossons!

And finally, I came across this old "short" the other day and it tickled me so much I just had to share it!