Friday 14 December 2007

Marché de Noël

Yes, the season is upon us and like all the other Mum's I will be in the market place come Monday. We may even have some snow according to the Meteo, just to add that festive touch. All the school children have been working hard creating gold painted angels from pasta, hand-made Christmas cards and dough baked tree decorations.

My son has been going around singing Petit Papa Noël for the last 3 weeks ,(see below for lyrics), and the man himself is due to put in an appearance on the last day of school. Apparently, one quick witted little chap last year noticed that Petit Papa Noël sported the same shoes as the headmaster! That was explained away as both gentlemen having extremely good taste.

Well all that remains is for me to wish everyone, everywhere a Very Merry Christmas or as we say round here Joyeux Noël.

Petit Papa Noël

C'est la belle nuit de Noël
La neige étend son manteau blanc
Et les yeux levés vers le ciel
À genoux, les petits enfants
Avant de fermer les paupières
Font une dernière prière.

Translation

It's a beautiful Christmas night
Snow spreads its white coat
And eyes lift toward the sky
On their knees, small children
Before closing their eyes
Say a last prayer.


Petit papa Noël
Quand tu descendras du ciel
Avec des jouets par milliers
N'oublie pas mon petit soulier.
Mais avant de partir
Il faudra bien te couvrir
Dehors tu vas avoir si froid
C'est un peu à cause de moi.

Translation

Little Santa Claus
When you come down from the sky
With thousands of toys
Don't forget my little stocking.
But before you leave
You should dress well
Outside you will be so cold
And it's kind of my fault.


Le marchand de sable est passé
Les enfants vont faire dodo
Et tu vas pouvoir commencer
Avec ta hotte sur le dos
Au son des cloches des églises
Ta distribution de surprises.

Translation

The sandman has passed
The children are going to sleep
And you will be able to begin,
With your sack on your back,
To the sound of church bells,
Your distribution of surprises.

Refrain

Il me tarde que le jour se lève
Pour voir si tu m'as apporté
Tous les beaux joujoux que je vois en rêve
Et que je t'ai commandés.

Translation

I can't wait for sunrise
To see if you brought me
All the lovely toys that I see in my dreams
And that I ordered from you.


Refrain

Et quand tu seras sur ton beau nuage
Viens d'abord sur notre maison
Je n'ai pas été tous les jours très sage
Mais j'en demande pardon.

Refrain

Translation

And when you are on your beautiful cloud
Come first to our house
I wasn't always very good
But I ask for your forgiveness.


Refrain

Tuesday 11 September 2007

La Rentrée - (with junk mail)

Back in May I put the finishing touches to my school dossier,(yes another one!), to ensure that my son was enrolled for maternelle.

In our village La Rentrée actually takes place during the last week of August as the children here do not go to school on Saturday mornings.

So far, all has gone well - although why shouldn't it when according to my son all he does is play velo! I am sure there must be slightly more to his day than that.

Whilst I expect the normal school notices of after school activities what I can't believe is the amount of publicity that goes into all the pigeon holes. All sorts of leaflets about childrens reading books, language courses, back packs, bedding. I get enough junk mail in my normal boîtes aux lettres at home.

I am thinking of putting a huge notice up, alongside the rather cute painting of a lapin that marks out Théo's place, saying Pas de Pub - NO JUNK MAIL.

Sunday 19 August 2007

La fin de l'été

Ok here come the excuses : people staying, fête after fête after fête, devising 1000 ways to entertain a 3 yr old during the school hols etc etc. But finally, I have some "me" time to devote to my blog.

I once read that at one American school the teachers returning for the 1st day after the Summer hols were met by Mums holding a banner saying "welcome back - we have missed you!". I know how they feel ....

Not only am I looking forward to the new school term I am also looking forward to only seeing the number plate 30 around the town, getting a seat in my local cafe, my favourites breads, quiches and patisseries not having sold out by 9.45am, no queues in our local supermarket, managing to walk around the local farmers market once more. Oh the list is endless. I am turning into a moaning minnie!

The season of "mists and mellow fruitfulness" will soon be here and I for one cannot wait. New wines to be sampled, chasse au sanglier, scouring the woods for cepes and other members of the fungi family.

Celebrations for la fin de l'été start tomorrow with a blackberry picking session followed by the making of a very big blackberry and apple crumble. Miam, miam.

Wednesday 30 May 2007

Out of the mouths of babes!!!

My adorable 3 year old son Théo jumped into our bed this morning and started giving me a cuddle. What a nice way to start the day I thought as he started stroking my hair and face.

"Mummy, what's that?" he asked as one of his chubby little fingers came to rest upon my cheek. Before I could answer he said, "I know - it's a crack". That woke me from my revery. I would love to say I cracked up (ha ha), but I didn't.

Well out of the mouths of babes.....

Thursday 26 April 2007

Election Fever

Quel différence between the election apathy in the UK and election fever over here in France. Whatever your politics, you can only be impressed and swept along by all the fervour. There are 236 people in our village eligible to vote and during the first round 216 of them had ticked a box.

This election is an extremely important one for the French - the country is at a crossroads. Which road will they choose to go down?

Below is an extremely interesting article titled "Unlike us, the French do it all wrong but still get life so right " published in The Times on April 22, 2007 by Simon Jenkins.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Both France and Britain are about to change their leaders. The French will do so by ballot, the British by bistro.

The French are staging a raucous two-ring circus to elect their new president, involving a first vote today and another in two weeks’ time. The British have already been told who is to lead them. It was ordained 13 years ago by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the Granita restaurant in Islington, north London. Blair would be prime minister first provided he ensured Brown would follow him.

In never moving Brown from the security of the Treasury and packing the cabinet with wimps and half-wits, Blair has been as good as his word, despite regarding Brown as unworthy of the office. The voters can get stuffed. While France practises the politics of Wilkes, Paine and Mill, Britain borrows from Louis XIV.

Modern elections are festivals of indecent exposure. They display politicians in all their nakedness and in doing so reveal much about the countries they purport to lead. The French election has been no exception. It has not been a pleasant spectacle for Brussels oligarchs or Americans who like to lump all Europeans together as homogeneous. It has peeled away the skin and shown France worried, vulnerable, proud, vital, stylish and unlike anywhere else — in other words, French.

Two years ago the French (and the Dutch) did Europe a signal service by voting against a new European constitution. They thereby relieved Britain of the necessity of doing the same. We forget how those referendums shattered Labour’s establishment. Peter Hain, now running for Labour’s deputy leadership, deceitfully called the new constitution merely “a tidying up operation”. Peter Mandelson, Neil Kinnock and Jack Straw sat around after the French vote like Roman cardinals contemplating Luther’s Reformation, glumly demanding a “period of sober reflection”. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, declared a “risk of contagion” across Europe if the referendums continued. The French and Dutch should vote again and do so “until they get it right”. Only in Brussels is democracy considered a disease.

The French vote was, of course, peculiar. The vote against the new constitution was not (as it would have been in Britain) because it was too centralist and corporatist. The French “no” lobby’s case was that Europe was becoming too liberal, too open-market and thus threatening France’s cartelised public sector and restrictive labour laws. Worse, an expanded Europe would put French jobs at the mercy of east Europeans. France, co-founder of the new Europe, now rejected its pan-Europeanism. It was a reactionary vote but it worked. Indeed it may be called in aid again if the Anglo-German plan to revive the constitution as “just a treaty” goes ahead. Blair, eager for some European credentials before he retires, will argue that a treaty would need no referendums and can be slipped through before Brown takes over. Of course Europe needs a new constitution/ treaty, but not this one and not without a vote.

A similar chauvinism has been reflected in the election campaign. The contest between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolãne Royal has only superficially displayed the new politics, where personality and vision are all and policy programmes unimportant. The right-wing Sarkozy’s desire to “get France back to work” is closest to Britain’s Thatcherite consensus, but Thatcherism is not something he would dare advocate. The left-wing Royal is corporatist, conservative and protectionist. She is pledged to maintain the 35-hour week, state benefits and guarantee employment and housing tenure, despite their contribution to a devastating 22% youth unemployment rate.

Both these candidates, along with the centrist François Bayrou, share a nationalism which, to outsiders, seems old-fashioned and Gaullist. Nervous about immigration, passionate for the public sector and defensive of the state, they could not be farther from the reform programmes being sought in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain.

None of them would suggest opening French agriculture to world competition. None would hint at multiculturalism in a country whose southern shores are besieged by Muslim and north African migrants. None would attack the scale of the public sector, which still owns or controls all public utilities and has half of all adults dependent on it. One of Sarkozy’s final rallies was in a boiler-making plant where he pledged to protect French manufacturing against foreign competition.

This conservatism evokes the derision of Britons eager to repay the smugness that France hurled at us during the horrors of the 1970s. They point to the 30,000 French who pour into Britain looking for work each year, drawn by a more open and dynamic economy. It takes two days to set up a company in Britain, three months in France. From the Huguenots and the Orléanists to the Communards and the resistance, Britain has long been accustomed to accepting refugees from France’s political and military disasters. Today critics cite French businessmen building factories in Kent. They see Paris declining into a sort of Venice on dry land, industries awash in subsidies and stuck in the doldrums, French culture perpetually “en crise”.

Yet such derision rarely turns over the coin. It does not mention that more Britons now migrate to France than vice-versa (42,000 in 2005). They are drawn by the quality of life that attracts 7.3m British holidaymakers a year and 50,000 British second-home owners. There are few French pleasure seekers pouring the other way. France takes seriously the protection of its urban and rural environment. It values civic life: witness the cleanliness, security and confidence of municipalities there compared with Britain’s. Public services work. France’s trains run far and fast. Towns and cities, parks and museums are beautiful — as are even motorway service stations. The public realm in France has taste and bravura. In Britain it is grotty, largely because it is under the aegis of Whitehall and Westminster.

Europeans used to fight to get into Britain’s NHS hospitals. Not any more. Today the flight from these demoralised, MRSA-ridden places to France’s immaculate hospitals is becoming a flood. When last year Jacques Chirac warned that to pursue British policies risked having to accept Britain’s quality of life, his audience laughed. The risk was unthinkable.

A recent study of Anglo-French relations, That Sweet Enemy by Robert and Isabelle Tombs, delighted in the implacable polarity of these two cultures. It stretches back and forward through centuries of conflict to such piquant contrasts as the British official complaining that something “might work in theory but not in practice” while a French counterpart complains that “it might work in practice but not in theory”. Did not Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister inform the baffled Jim Hacker that Britain’s nuclear missiles were targeted not on Moscow but on Paris? Have not the Royal Navy’s bases always faced the French coast and not Germany or the Atlantic?

This is all good clean fun. Where it becomes less attractive is when British comment on other countries takes as its basic premise that they would be better off if only they were run like Britain (or America). The depiction of Chirac as an absurd Bourbon prince may have had a grain of truth in it, but Chirac ran France as the French desired, as did François Mitterrand and other presidents before him. Hence his constant capitulation to pressure from the unions and farm lobbies, irrespective of France’s hypocritical claim to be “a good European”.

Protectionism is, in every sense of the word, part of the French character. It is the privilege of a sovereign state, as it is the right of its citizens to choose and pay for it.

A casualty of globalisation has been a growing intolerance of political diversity, diversity not just of national personality but also of ideology, political priority and system of government. I may not share France’s view of the world and may believe it wrong to deny the Thatcherite reformation, as in varying degrees do all today’s candidates. But as Voltaire, the greatest of Frenchmen, insisted, the right that most needs defending is the right to be wrong.

On this day of the French election, long live difference.

simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk

Thursday 12 April 2007

Un Veritable Cauchemar

What is going on with the universe? Everyone I know seems to be having an extremely bad week. Our run of bad luck started with the combi microwave/oven breaking down, the clutch then went on the jeep, the loo stopped flushing and poor Théo has just come down with a "maux de gorge"!

What fun and frolicks I am going to have tomorrow. If you happen to be in a Mr Briciolage or Darty and see a woman babbling mauvais francais with accompanying mime routines - it's me.
So hope a security camera does not capture mime titled "replacement flushing system for loo required". A sure entry for Video Gag on TF1

Quelle cauchemar!

Friday 6 April 2007

Happy Easter

Well as it is Easter this week my Postman has been kept very busy delivering parcels from the UK. All of which have happily fitted into my boites aux lettres that has been deemed “regulariser” (see previous blog – “boites aux letttres”). One parcel came with a sticker on it that stated “Import France A Flasher”. Cant’ wait to open that one!

Théo has been busy at créche drawing eggs, making Easter chicks and cutting out bell and rabbit shapes. The house is looking very Eastery at the moment and we are on the count down to the “chasse aux oeufs” on Sunday.

In France they have the traditional Easter bunny and also a "Cloche volant" , Flying Bells. French Catholics believe that on Good Friday all the church bells in France fly to the Vatican in Rome carrying the misery and grief of those who mourn Jesus' crucifixion on that day. These flying bells then return on the morning of Easter Sunday bringing with them loads of chocolate and eggs.

So whether you believe in a flying bells or the Easter rabbit a Happy Easter and Joyeuses Pâcques to you all.

Saturday 31 March 2007

Does my "boites aux lettres" measure up?

As mentioned in a previous blog entry of mine, I am always occupied with some type of paperwork for a dossier. If you move here, be warned, dossiers are part and parcel of everyday life. Paperwork can be required for the most suprising items.

This week a visit from my Postman left me speechless. He arrived with a 2 page form, drawings included! to check if my “boite aux lettres” was “regulariser”. Well was it, apparently the answer was yes by a centimetre.

As the measuring of the box, two page form and the cup of coffee had already taken up the best part of the morning, I did not dare to enquire what would have happened if my post box had not measured up to standards! Any idea anyone and why is it important?

Friday 23 March 2007

Does licked cutlery count?

Calling all mothers of 3 year old boys, “Au Secour”!! My 3 year old, (well 3 in May), has driven me to distraction today and had the tantrum of all tantrums whilst we were visiting friends for an alfresco dejeuner. A very windy alfresco dejeuner.

Trying to get a snarling, toddler mid-tantrum into a car seat whilst doing the obligatory 3 kiss goodbye to all the guests is no easy feat. Yes, it is 3 kisses in the Cevennes so hello and goodbyes tend to go on………….

All the way home I kept thinking, “just wait till Daddy phones tonight mister man”.

Well they say timing is everything and just before Daddy rang, upon finishing his dinner, Théo came up to me and whilst giving me a huge hug said "me sorry Mummy, Théo happy, good boy now”. He then proudly handed me his licked cutlery and whilst opening the cutlery drawer said with pride, “Théo clean it Mummy”!

Does licked cutlery count as a heartfelt apology?

Tuesday 20 March 2007

Playboy Bunny vs Dorothée

This morning, comme d’habitude, I popped into our local Café for a cafe-crème and noted with interest and irony the 2 new pinball machines sat side by side.

Being in true hunting country here, the most popular being chasse au sanglier, the first machine had 2 generously proportioned guns that invited you to hunt a range of game. The chasse started with fairly large sized bunnies popping up everywhere and then as your aim and testosterone levels rose along came the bears, sangliers etc.

My three year old son, Théo, was fascinated and as he attends the local Crèche started making bunnies ears and singing that French favourite, Ce matin un lapin by Dorothée (Click here to watch original Ce Matin ....)

Everyone found this most amusing and a kind gentlemen bought him a sirop de fraise for his efforts.

His eyes then alighted upon the 2nd pinball machine with its ever famous Playboy bunny logo, “what’s that mummy”?

Ah I said, “I don’t think you will be ready to play that bunny game for another 15 years or so” …………………….!

Monday 19 March 2007

Parlez vous Francais?

When I arrived here the sum total of my spoken French was the ability to count up to 20, say please and thank you and …… well that was about it.

So I unpacked my new set of language CD’s and started ………….. rien! I quickly grew bored so I decided to start listening to one of my local radio stations.

Well I can only say that it was set circa The Jimmy Young show in the UK. It had hilarious phone-ins with “Recette du Jour” being the most popular amongst them. Caller after caller suggesting another thing you could do with asparagus or whatever legume happened to be in season. Hmmm, very useful you thought until about the fifth caller. Then you frankly felt like stuffing your asparagus where the sun doesn’t shine.

However, my French was getting better as I became addicted. What exactly was a “Femme au Foyer” – housewife as it turns out. The presenter was also likely to ask every other caller if they were going to “profite du soleil” that day.

Finally, I had to remove this station from my play list when a female caller upon answering the football quiz question correctly, was asked in all seriousness if her husband or another male relative was in the house helping her! When the presenter had ascertained that she did not live with a man he asked if she actually wanted her prize, a pair of sought after match tickets.

Shame as I really enjoyed my “hairbrush” moments when they played the hits of Cloclo, (Claude François). Alexendrie – Alexandra , oh don’t get me started.

Saturday 17 March 2007

You’ve Got Comments

I logged on, opened my blog and there it was – my first comment. Okay, not comments in the plural but still…….

Was it as memorable for you as it was for me, I am referring of course to all you bloggers out there. You never forget your first!! So a big thank you to my first – Peter.

Peter runs a local community website for anglophones in this part of the world. Please visit their forum at:
http://www.the-languedoc-page.com/forum.

Thursday 15 March 2007

It's a Whole New world

Wow this is addictive and I am not just talking about the wine that accompanies these blogging sessions.

In my first 24 hours as a blogger I have managed to post some background articles, work my way around changing the template and gather some photos.

Has anyone ever watched the film with Meg Ryan called "You've got Mail" well I am now logging onto my computer and waiting for "You've got Comments"!

Whilst not essential I really want to experience the power of the web personally. It fascinates me that anyone - literally anyone from anywhere - could stumble across my Blog and learn about my life. I am sure others want to be read for far more nobler causes but I am just very curious.

As I am new to the world of blogging I have no idea how long that generally takes so I guess I will just have to keep logging on like an addict.

Is blogging the new therapy, my mind was buzzing last night with all the things I want to write. Gone were the normal worries of my ever smelly fosse septique, my child coping with having to be bi-lingual, collating paper for a dossier required by some French organisation (I always seem to have one on the go)!

I am finding it all fascinating and can see that the light from my PC will be burning into the small hours.

That reminds me, better stock up on the old vino!!!

Bienvenue Théo

Why was I appearing in an episode of M.A.S.H? Why was I lying on a hospital trolley in a medical supplies room? What was going on?

Just then a doctor swept in and apparently there was a 4.7kg bundle of joy awaiting me, carefully cradled in my husbands arms up on the main ward. After 14hours of labour I had undergone an emergency caesarian and the result was a lovely bouncing baby boy called Théo.

The next 48 hours passed in a blur, I was getting used to being a Mum and my poor husband spent much of his time on the road between the clinic at Ganges and our house.

Pretty soon I raised the question about when I would be allowed to discharge myself. Mais non, as I was a 39yr old that had never changed a nappy it was baby school for me. I could not but help wonder if our local NHS hospital in North London would have provided this excellent and much needed service. Each morning, under a nurses supervision, I had to “top and tail” Théo and never was I more grateful for tuition. I did wince for the poor little boy when it was made clear that the start of his morning routine would begin with a thermometer up his petit derriere! What a way to start the day. (When my mother-in-law watched me put this into practice she remarked that if he should turn out to be gay I had only myself to blame!).

I looked forward to going home and showing Théo his nursery, but for a novice it was comforting to be in a safe haven. I longed for a family visit with Oliver so I decided to be brave and broach the subject with my consultant in my best Franglais. “Ah yes she said, you talked a lot about Oliver whilst going under sedation and coming round”. “Well I don’t see why a family visit would be out of the question, now you have been detached from your drip etc”. I could hardly believe my luck and I asked my husband to come en-famille the following day, après-midi of course

I was so thrilled and so sure that Oliver would take one look at Théo and fall in love with our gorgeous baby, as much as we had.

That morning baby and I were up and dressed, both having lunched nicely and awaiting the nurse to come by to let us know that our visitors had arrived. I suddenly heard a loud shout, “C’est un chien, c’est pas possible”. Suddenly my room was full of people speaking French very quickly and I could just not keep up.

Of course Ollie was a dog, my much beloved Weimaraner, yes he has had all his injections. What had they been expecting? Apparently, it turned out, an older brother for Théo – the none hairy kind!

Eventually a compromise was reached and I was allowed to walk by the beautiful river, that flows by the Polyclinic in Ganges, for half an hour with a much wrapped up Théo, my husband and Ollie. Tout la Famille - i was trés content.

Meeting our neighbours - the fleecy kind

One beautiful Spring morning as I was preparing my "wake up" coffee, I heard excited barks from Oliver and the unmistakable ringing of bells.

Just below our house are a couple of terraces and passing along the top one was a flock of sheep, in a terrible hurry. All my old townie instincts came to the fore, who should I phone, pest control, emergency services, etc . Where had they all come from?

In plein panic and heading for the phone I heard a piercing whistle and the sheep as one turned their heads, and started making their retreat.

An apologetic muscular, golden haired, young man then appeared from round the corner and told me that he had forgotten about the new people i.e us. He introduced himelf, the sheepdog and the flock. Apparently our local bergér would be passing our house regularly with his sheep during the Spring and Autumnal months. A piece of information that the previous owners had neglected to pass on! And there was I thinking that the terraces below us were merely to provide a lovely view and to act as a flood barrier should the babbling brook turn into a raging torrent during the winter.

How very Jean Floret I thought to myself and immediately pondered upon the etiquette between the Anglais townie and the French shepherd, who would be seeing quite a lot of each other apparently. My London friends thought it all sounded too romantic and some of my girlfriends, upon receiving my description of the young bergér, wanted to know if he was single!

Well with the sheep came droppings which Oliver would gaze at longingly from the upper terrace. Then by cover of nightfall he would race down to the lower terraces and hoover up as much as he could with great delight. All the grazing in the Cevennes is rich with wild mint and other herbs and this proved to be a potent concoction whence digested by our weimaraner. About 15 minutes after eating this rural delicacy, he would race around the garden on some sort of herbal high, doing high speed circuits .

The sheep became a very enjoyable fixture in our lives, never more so than in June when in preparation for the transhumance* they were all dressed up in brightly coloured pom-poms. A true carnival of colour.

Over time we all got to know each other well and even the sheepdog tolerated Oliver’s enthusiasm as a would-be sheepdog. Oliver even saved a couple, one which had dawdled behind and got caught up in netting. My husband went to cut it free and walked the sheep home using Ollies lead, “well I didn’t know what to do with it”!!! Another sheep had fallen from the wayside during the transhumance and luckily Oliver found it 2 days later severley dehydrated and distressed but still with pom-poms intact.

One spring day a wedding invitation was dropped into our letter box, it seemed our much beloved bergér was marrying a local bergére. We were very honoured to be invited to their wedding and awaited the day with much excitement.
After the official service at the Mairie there was an open air blessing and there casually strolling amongs the other guests where several, yes you’ve guessed it – sheep, complete with pom-poms!


source Wikipedia:

Older sources use the term transhumance for vertical seasonal livestock movement, typically to higher pastures in summer and to the lower valleys in winter. The herders have a permanent home, typically in the valley. Only the herds and a subset of people necessary to tend them travel. This is termed fixed transhumance .

Some recent studies consider nomadism, where livestock move to follow grazing over considerable distances following set seasonal patterns (with the whole family of herders living in temporary shelters which move with the herds all the year round), a form of transhumance. This is termed nomadic transhumance.

Traditional or fixed transhumance, in which livestock ascend to mountain pastures in summer and descend to relatively warm areas in the valleys, foothills, plains or desert fringe in winter, occurs throughout the world, including Scandinavia, France, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, Switzerland, Georgia and Lesotho. It is also practiced amongst the more nomadic Sami people of Scandinavia. Transhumance is based on the difference of climate between the mountains (where the herds stay during the summer) and the lowlands (where they remain the winter). Its importance to pastoralist societies cannot be overstated. Milk, butter and cheese — the dairy products of transhumance — often form the basis of the local population's diet.

Wednesday 14 March 2007

Au Revoir Old Blighty. (my Blog is born)

First Blog entry, so with glass of vin rouge in hand to fortify me I will let you know how it all started .........!

But you are pregnant! This seemed to make my friends and family even more surprised at our latest news.

It made perfect sense to me to make all the major life changes in one go. So at 7 months pregnant I packed our jeep with provisions, chinchilla, dog and hubby and set off for our new life in France.

Many friends seemed to think that we should have a Channel 4 camera crew following us. With all the ‘Place in the Sun programmes’ proving so popular why not start that baby fund at the earliest possible opportunity?

Our journey was, to say the least, interesting and although the Pet Passport papers were all in order for our loopy weimarener Oliver, the papers for our chinchilla Rafiki were apparently not. I did what any pregnant woman would do in the situation – cry – oh and ask for the nearest loo. Finally, after solomnely promising that upon arrival in France Rafiki would never set paws on British soil again we were allowed to drive onto the ferry.

Two exhausting days later after leaving our North London home we finally turned off the autoroute and headed towards our new home in a small village in the picturesque Cevennes.

Now all I had to do was clean and paint the whole house from top to bottom, buy a bed to sleep in, move everything in oh and I suppose register with a midwife and Doctor.

But first, as recommended by every Living In France book I had ever read, I had to introduce my famille to the Mairie and let them know their voisins anglais had arrived!

Our Cevenol adventure had just begun.