it is the little things that count and matter

blog 35 / December

 

 

Feeding time here in Brevands is becoming a jolly time of day and Mike and I go out together to be at one with our pets to enjoy their company. Every day the male ducks fly out of the pond area in search of ’he who chucks food about’ and  Napoleon rushes down off the field to get in on the act. Yesterday Mike was in his workshop in the courtyard when the ducks came waddling around the house and went straight to his feet ….It made me chuckle because this is now a wonderful habit, I love, and we look forward to our little reminder that it is feed time.  We have never had the time nor the inclination to observe the difference between boy and girl ducks before, but now we know that girls don’t fly and send the boys to fetch ‘he who chucks food about’ , bit like real life really…..

 

I am quite a staunch, why kill a tree for Christmas person and this gold cone is just a pretty focal point in the room.   Christmas is not the same without kids believing in the stories you need them to believe in until they can decide who they are going to be in life. We are now just two and although we love this end of year sparkle event the religious content is lost on us. But it is very poignant that on the run-up to the big day we pass through the shortest day and by the 25^th we are watching to see if we can acknowledge the days getting longer, the days feeling warmer and the summer on the way.  We hung up the button art Christmas trees from the twins in Canada and I loved Georgie’s comment that the kids were amazed we had them in our house by our tree.  They still do not fully understand what happens when you take a parcel to the post office for Nona and Grandad in France, but fully understand when we see them on skype and sing happy 5^th birthday  to them ………..cute

 

It was Carols birthday on the 19^th and we went to her party and had a jolly good time. I was however in awe of both Carol and Trev because they have French neighbours who turn up to their parties, encourage the English to speak French and have a stab at a bit of English themselves.

 

 

 

 

 I was in heaven, able to battle with the banter and managed to be understood, but I now have a reputation of being Belgian and they thought it was funny to have an English lady with a Belgian accent but it made for good conversation and although I question my abilities to speak French well enough to live here without a conscience I don’t half do OK in the right conditions. What I really need to find is like minded French folk and that is the hardest issue to resolve between us.

 

You who read these blogs often will know that we love having big Lorries on the drive. After all the houses we have owned this is the house where big Lorries fit and we relish every visit. This one is the septic tank emptying man.  There is so much smoke and mirrors around septic tanks here in France at the moment. What is legal, what is not, when to empty and when not and we are now just going on a gut feeling that we needed a visit before year end.   In 2011 we called these people in because we did not understand how our system worked and having a clean out and starting up the conversation with the driver gave us all the info we needed to know that our system was working well and that all the elements were legal.

 

 

 

 

Since that last visit we have had a very expensive quote to install a new system but having had the conversation again this time we are quite happy that it all works well and we don’t need to make any changes…….It is however a very hand-on-hip 30 minutes watching the clear out process and wondering how on earth this man does this for a living and can still be pleasant and courteous at the same time.

 

 

I finally got around to getting my little shop open on Etsy. I called my shop Maisonmamie and  I will now work at getting it stocked up and networked but I am pleased the process is now in motion so that when I see something I want to sell I have a window for people to look through.   I have not had my sewing Wednesday all through December, what with our trip to the UK and recently fighting a time scale battle to get the upstairs windows done and dusted before we needed to make beds for our visitors.  But now we are at that time to reset habits and commit to new beginnings and my sewing day will be on the to-do list once again. 

 

In the grind of  drizzle and dull days it is nice to have shiny balls hanging from twigs that we grew and the wreath is made from our family tree that our children built every year of their lives at home with us…..it is the little things that count and matter

….merry Christmas….