Good morning world, well here we are back in sunny old France. We have been here for almost 2 weeks and have another two weeks to go, bliss. This is the first chance I've had to post as the large computer which I am used to has now been shipped off back to Blighty ready for their move in 6 weeks time, boo hoo!!! Trying to do this on my iphone is just too much like hard work and I get rather frustrated with it all and it is liable to result in a floating iphone, not good. 
We set off from mil's house to walk to the staion to catch our train to the airport and it was coming down in stair rods. I did consider calling for a taxi but the man of the house decided against it as it was only a short walk so I got myself securely togged up in rain proof gear and looked rather like on of those brave doctors who are trying to control ebola in Africa. Off we squelched and by the time we got to the train station 10 minutes later we resembled a pair of well drowned rats. We were soaked to the skin. In spite of our anti-ebola disguise, the rain managed to penetrate parts that other weather phenomena could not reach. When I unpacked later that night it looked as though I had been taking part in a wet t-shirt contest, and lost! Everything got hung out to dry including him indoors for refusing to take a taxi.
M. Crapaud ( French for toad! ) came down to greet us on the terrace on our first night here so all was well, a portent of a peacful and happy holiday.
I am now a rather boring shade of brown and him indoors is various, yet interesting, shades of red through to the sort of pink which one finds on rather underdone lamb. As he got out of the pool the other day I had cause to wonder what had happened to his back, it looked, well, not just red but sort of blood red, crickey, it was blood, the real deal, fresh flowing blood and none of it was my fault which in itself is nothing short of miraculous after the soaking we got in Manchester. It turned out that some sort of southern French flying monster had dive bombed him and stabbed him in the back of his neck, hence all the gore. I have to say that I'm impressed that something so small and fast can inflict such injuries, could teach me a thing or two I can tell you.
Talking of injuries, we were on our way to the local boulangerie the other morning and for some reason unbeknown to me I managed to walk into a stationary 40 ton trailer which was parked quite innocently on the side of the road minding it's own business, not bothering anyone including daft tourists. Amazingly, the trailer did not flinch in the slightest, not even a token wobble, nope, solid as a rock. I on the other hand almost hit the deck with the force of the head blow which I managed to inflict on myself. How I managed not to knock myself out with force of the meeting of brain and brawn I'll never know. Mr. H heard the anguished howl from behind him, I do quite a good anguished howl, turned round to see me almost on the ground and clutching my poor head. 'What happened?'....'I walked into the trailer'......'Why?'..........'Seemed like a fun thing to do'...........'You've always had a strange notion of what constitues fun'.....'You've never complained before'....'Anyway have you cut your head, is there any blood?'..... I think he was worried that if I was shedding blood we would now be a matching pair after his unproved attack in the pool, you know the sort of couple, they wear matching cable knit jumpers only in our case it would be matching head injuries and plasters. He moved my hair out of the way to assess the minor damage he was expecting to see and I could tell from the expression on his face that this was not good, I also knew from the feeling in my head that this was not good as my skin was stretching at a furious rate to accommodate the large swelling which had taken nano seconds to occur almost like pulling the toggle on a life jacket and the thing suddenly takes on a shape and size which is shocking, never really thought of myself as a shape shifter before but the proof was before my very eyes, actually it was before his very eyes and they were now popping out of his head with alarm.....'Oh my God, are you O.K?'.........Goodness, this was worrying, him worrying about me....... 'Do you feel sick, do you need to sit down, shall I go home and get the car?'....... This was now very serious worrying and for some unknown reason I thought about poor Jolie Richardson, the actress married to Liam Neeson, or what ever they are called, anyway, she banged her head, said she was fine and was dead in no time, poor lass. All the things that I had not done and now I never may get the chance to do ....like?......Erm......bungie jumping....goodness no, I would rather die of a self inflicted head injury than bungie jump. What else.....let me think,......swim across the Atlantic? It was around this time thatI was tempted to hit my head again to save me from all these ghastly, once in a lifetime experiences, no thank you I will stick with my rapidly swelling head which was generating enough excitement for me. By the time we got home, with the bagguettes, croissants, gateaux des nuits etc, I was feeling rather wobbly, my legs had turned to jelly, sugar free obviously, and I was now feeling slightly nauseous due to shock so I was made to lie down in a quiet place with a pack of frozen vegetables clamped to my ever swelling head. I'm glad it was not steak which he stuck on my bump as I'd rather have vegetables any day, not too keen on red meat. I braved a look in the mirror expecting to see a lump at least the size of an ostrich's egg but to be honest it was more between a hen's egg and a duck's egg, a sort of huck size, or perhaps more a den size, or a dun size. I decided it was heck sized as it certainly was a heck of a sized lump. I am now know as 'egg head' 'tough nut' or his favourite misnomer 'scrambled brain'...Men, tsk!
As the list of our injuries grow I am at least grateful that he is not encountering 'burnt sore arses' this year. For those of you who were not around last year on my 'BOLLOX DU JOUR' thread here is how he got burnt sore arses, apologies to those who lived through this at the time but it it may be of interest to any new comers.....
"So, there I was, feet dangling in the pool, water was 29 degs and pleasant thoughts about hot French waiters was wafting through my otherwwise empty brain when hubs joined me and announced that he had 'burnt sore arses '! Well, this was a new one, even for me. I've known many two faced folk in my time and I am aware that there is such a thing as muti faceted personalities but numerous anal canals was, well, bizarre. I think it was the use of the plural that caught my imagination. Now, I know young men get up to all sorts of nefarious, alcohol induced, all boys together things like 'mooning'. Perhaps he had been indulging in the geriatric version, where they need to be tucked up in bed with a horlicks by the time the sun goes down, so the window of opportunity for baring their meat and two veg to the elements is reduced to daylight hours, hence they now go 'sunning'! Dear God, he was turning into a 'Starfish Trooper' or would it be a 'Starsh*t Trooper'? I have known people who should be blessed with two, or more, rubbish disposal chutes due the amount of garbage that they spout from their entry point and Hubs does ingest enough food to warrant more than one egress but I'm not sure that is how it works either. I sneaked a quick look at the back of his head in case he'd grown a rogue one there behind my back, or to be more accurate, behind HIS back! Some folk do talk out the back of their head, others from their undergrowth but nope, all looked normal so where could the other one be, perhaps there are more than two, this is getting serious, to say nothing of silly.
'Look' he said pitifully,
'No, we are not that sort of couple, I have no desire to gaze on your burnt whatevers'
Ignoring me, he then dropped his trousers to show me the offending 'sore arses' and it looked like some sort of road kill, all raw and bloody,
'Oh, your poor leg, that psoriasis looks painful, burnt even! Best keep it covered up for a few days eh?'
Phew! The moral of all this is, when you get older, your hearing is not what it used to be but life becomes more interesting as a result. "............
The pool is calling me, not sure what it is calling me but hey ho, enjoy yourselves, more nonsense later from the front
Ballerina x
We set off from mil's house to walk to the staion to catch our train to the airport and it was coming down in stair rods. I did consider calling for a taxi but the man of the house decided against it as it was only a short walk so I got myself securely togged up in rain proof gear and looked rather like on of those brave doctors who are trying to control ebola in Africa. Off we squelched and by the time we got to the train station 10 minutes later we resembled a pair of well drowned rats. We were soaked to the skin. In spite of our anti-ebola disguise, the rain managed to penetrate parts that other weather phenomena could not reach. When I unpacked later that night it looked as though I had been taking part in a wet t-shirt contest, and lost! Everything got hung out to dry including him indoors for refusing to take a taxi.
M. Crapaud ( French for toad! ) came down to greet us on the terrace on our first night here so all was well, a portent of a peacful and happy holiday.
I am now a rather boring shade of brown and him indoors is various, yet interesting, shades of red through to the sort of pink which one finds on rather underdone lamb. As he got out of the pool the other day I had cause to wonder what had happened to his back, it looked, well, not just red but sort of blood red, crickey, it was blood, the real deal, fresh flowing blood and none of it was my fault which in itself is nothing short of miraculous after the soaking we got in Manchester. It turned out that some sort of southern French flying monster had dive bombed him and stabbed him in the back of his neck, hence all the gore. I have to say that I'm impressed that something so small and fast can inflict such injuries, could teach me a thing or two I can tell you.
Talking of injuries, we were on our way to the local boulangerie the other morning and for some reason unbeknown to me I managed to walk into a stationary 40 ton trailer which was parked quite innocently on the side of the road minding it's own business, not bothering anyone including daft tourists. Amazingly, the trailer did not flinch in the slightest, not even a token wobble, nope, solid as a rock. I on the other hand almost hit the deck with the force of the head blow which I managed to inflict on myself. How I managed not to knock myself out with force of the meeting of brain and brawn I'll never know. Mr. H heard the anguished howl from behind him, I do quite a good anguished howl, turned round to see me almost on the ground and clutching my poor head. 'What happened?'....'I walked into the trailer'......'Why?'..........'Seemed like a fun thing to do'...........'You've always had a strange notion of what constitues fun'.....'You've never complained before'....'Anyway have you cut your head, is there any blood?'..... I think he was worried that if I was shedding blood we would now be a matching pair after his unproved attack in the pool, you know the sort of couple, they wear matching cable knit jumpers only in our case it would be matching head injuries and plasters. He moved my hair out of the way to assess the minor damage he was expecting to see and I could tell from the expression on his face that this was not good, I also knew from the feeling in my head that this was not good as my skin was stretching at a furious rate to accommodate the large swelling which had taken nano seconds to occur almost like pulling the toggle on a life jacket and the thing suddenly takes on a shape and size which is shocking, never really thought of myself as a shape shifter before but the proof was before my very eyes, actually it was before his very eyes and they were now popping out of his head with alarm.....'Oh my God, are you O.K?'.........Goodness, this was worrying, him worrying about me....... 'Do you feel sick, do you need to sit down, shall I go home and get the car?'....... This was now very serious worrying and for some unknown reason I thought about poor Jolie Richardson, the actress married to Liam Neeson, or what ever they are called, anyway, she banged her head, said she was fine and was dead in no time, poor lass. All the things that I had not done and now I never may get the chance to do ....like?......Erm......bungie jumping....goodness no, I would rather die of a self inflicted head injury than bungie jump. What else.....let me think,......swim across the Atlantic? It was around this time thatI was tempted to hit my head again to save me from all these ghastly, once in a lifetime experiences, no thank you I will stick with my rapidly swelling head which was generating enough excitement for me. By the time we got home, with the bagguettes, croissants, gateaux des nuits etc, I was feeling rather wobbly, my legs had turned to jelly, sugar free obviously, and I was now feeling slightly nauseous due to shock so I was made to lie down in a quiet place with a pack of frozen vegetables clamped to my ever swelling head. I'm glad it was not steak which he stuck on my bump as I'd rather have vegetables any day, not too keen on red meat. I braved a look in the mirror expecting to see a lump at least the size of an ostrich's egg but to be honest it was more between a hen's egg and a duck's egg, a sort of huck size, or perhaps more a den size, or a dun size. I decided it was heck sized as it certainly was a heck of a sized lump. I am now know as 'egg head' 'tough nut' or his favourite misnomer 'scrambled brain'...Men, tsk!
As the list of our injuries grow I am at least grateful that he is not encountering 'burnt sore arses' this year. For those of you who were not around last year on my 'BOLLOX DU JOUR' thread here is how he got burnt sore arses, apologies to those who lived through this at the time but it it may be of interest to any new comers.....
"So, there I was, feet dangling in the pool, water was 29 degs and pleasant thoughts about hot French waiters was wafting through my otherwwise empty brain when hubs joined me and announced that he had 'burnt sore arses '! Well, this was a new one, even for me. I've known many two faced folk in my time and I am aware that there is such a thing as muti faceted personalities but numerous anal canals was, well, bizarre. I think it was the use of the plural that caught my imagination. Now, I know young men get up to all sorts of nefarious, alcohol induced, all boys together things like 'mooning'. Perhaps he had been indulging in the geriatric version, where they need to be tucked up in bed with a horlicks by the time the sun goes down, so the window of opportunity for baring their meat and two veg to the elements is reduced to daylight hours, hence they now go 'sunning'! Dear God, he was turning into a 'Starfish Trooper' or would it be a 'Starsh*t Trooper'? I have known people who should be blessed with two, or more, rubbish disposal chutes due the amount of garbage that they spout from their entry point and Hubs does ingest enough food to warrant more than one egress but I'm not sure that is how it works either. I sneaked a quick look at the back of his head in case he'd grown a rogue one there behind my back, or to be more accurate, behind HIS back! Some folk do talk out the back of their head, others from their undergrowth but nope, all looked normal so where could the other one be, perhaps there are more than two, this is getting serious, to say nothing of silly.
'Look' he said pitifully,
'No, we are not that sort of couple, I have no desire to gaze on your burnt whatevers'
Ignoring me, he then dropped his trousers to show me the offending 'sore arses' and it looked like some sort of road kill, all raw and bloody,
'Oh, your poor leg, that psoriasis looks painful, burnt even! Best keep it covered up for a few days eh?'
Phew! The moral of all this is, when you get older, your hearing is not what it used to be but life becomes more interesting as a result. "............
The pool is calling me, not sure what it is calling me but hey ho, enjoy yourselves, more nonsense later from the front
Ballerina x
