February 2009
So, 6 months on, what do we think of it so far...I like...
- the light. No surprise that artists come to the Med to paint. There is something magical about the light, especially around half an hour before sunset. It has a very warm glow to it which brings alive all the colours of the houses, tiled roofs, trees, everything.
- the fact that it is February and yet when the sun shines (which seems to be 90% of the time) the sun is so warm that it feels like an English summer. Indeed, someone who lives nearby said that living here it is like having an English summer (March, April, May), then a nice long foreign holiday (June, July, August) and then another English summer (September, October) and then a short cold burst of winter.
- the bright yellow mimosa trees which are out in full flower and precede all the other blossom on trees. The way it contrasts with the blue sky is quite fantastic. We don't have one but our neighbour does, perfectly positioned in the way of our view!
- bees buzzing even in the winter - although only on the warm days. Stepping outside it feels like spring.
- ah ha - en fin! We have found a good supply of 2nd hand English books, and as we still have no TV (other than French - and that doesn't count...) we need lots of reading material.
- Twenty minutes drive from us is a weekly car boot sale (Peuces Brocantes), which for our guests has been the most popular tourist destination so far! You can go there with an obscure list of needed items - funnels, padlock for bike, pyrex dishes (Mooshi dropped a whole pile of mine on the floor), coat for Imo...and 2 hours later return with all items purchased (and very cheaply).
- The view of the Pyrenees, snow-capped at the moment, never fails to impress us.
- It's wonderful to be back by the beach again after 11 land-locked years in Cambridge. It's not the most glamorous beach in the world, and indeed, further along in Provence there are beaches which make ours look a tad grotty, but it is close (walking distance) - and we even have a choice of two - which we can decide to use depending upon wind direction (for shelter).
- The cry of seagulls is my favourite sound - and there are plenty of them here. Actually, at the moment Mooshi sounds very like one.
- We are 3 doors up from the local tennis club (7 red clay courts) and now, after a bit of a slow start at getting involved, we are very frequent users. Imo is doing well - a rally of 23 yesterday with me. Mooshi likes mucking around in the red clay. And Steve is just about managing with his poorly eyes - largely thanks to his noble opponents who are letting him play all the games with him standing in the end without sun in his eyes. Since I was pregnant with Imo I haven't played any matches - just some hitting, but I have now had 4 singles matches and am remembering, with clarity, exactly how much tennis is a game played in the head rather than on the court.
- Sete is great place to live. People here have been very welcoming and friendly. I don't think they've been inundated by ex-pats yet, so we still have a relatively high novelty factor. Our house is within walking distance of the sea, the shops, the school, the tennis club, and yet in our garden it feels as if we are in the middle of the countryside as there are lots of mature trees and you can hear the sound of roosters etc.
- Imo's French is now officially better than mine and I ask her to translate for me. A bit embarrassing, hey ho.. Her accent is amazing...wow. (or 'woah' as the French say), but I gather that it is a very southern French accent that she has. Maybe they won't understand her in Paris! eg bread (pain) is pronounced 'peng' and not 'pan'. Very twangy.
- Some lovely local French wines - for example the lovely Curvey Beatrice (as we have named 'her') is a Rosé really called something like Cuvée Betrice, available now at the local supermarket for only 99c (that's about 88p to those of you in Blighty). And, seeing as Steve and I are both failed alcoholics, one bottle lasts us about 4 days! Fabulous.
Er, not so sure of yet...
- The curse of the gouter. Naively I first thought that 'le gouter' at Imo's school would be a valuable lesson in nutrition and that they would be subjected to lots of different tastes. Ah, non! What it amounts to is chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate croissants, chocolate brioche, nutella pancakes, nutella sandwiches, gateaux, gateaux, gateaux, haribo sweets - and er, yes, fruit on Fridays... Imo probably had more chocolate in her first week at school here than she had had in her entire life. Le Gouter is a big (sweet) tea which is sacrasanct to all French children - school stops for everyone to savour sweet chocolate goodies...
- and while I'm on the subject of food, what is it about 'French food'? I don't get it. It seems to me that good French food consists of a hunk of lamb which has been boiled in a large pot for 3 days with some herbs de Provence and then served with boiled potatoes (which have only been boiled for one day); or is it the boudin noir - the black blood of pigs wrapped in their intestines? Or maybe is it the bags of frozen pureed vegetables in the freezers in supermarkets. Instructions on the back of frozen packets of peas read: boil for 15 minutes and then pulp! (ditto - carrots/potatoes/swede/squash/broad beans etc etc) Of course it may be because I'm a (now fish-eating - well, you can't live in France's largest fishing port and not eat the fish) vegetarian. The upside is that it has forced me to widen my own culinary repertoire and am turning out Thai dishes with gay abandon.
- Hopelessly piquant-less food....even the local Asian restaurants are afraid to put any chilli in their food for fear of it being rejected. The tastes are BLAND.
- Je parle francais comme une vache espagnol. Well, that's what I have been told anyway. Imo's French is great, and Steve's is definitely worth a 'highly commended' sticker but mine is, well, to put it bluntly - merde. I'm the one who is exposed to French the least - being at home most of the day with toilet brush in one hand and cooking utensils in the other whilst hanging out the washing.
- Today was a sad day. Imo came home at lunch from school with an invite to a friend's party - at a MacDonalds. Smugly, I'd like to say that she had to ask me what was a MacDonalds! She's never been to one, or any fast food burger joint. The bubble is bursting (well, le gouter did a pretty good job of doing that for her...)
- Cost of food here...chances are you've heard enough from me on this one. I don't know how the French live. Unless you eat only potatoes (again, and again....and boiled one more time for luck) then I don't know how you can afford to eat. God was beaming down on me at the supermarket last week as not only was there Pak Choi at a very reasonable price but a glorious punnet of cheap strawberries too. Thank you God. (NB This week I went back armed with 6 carrier bags to fill with pak choi, but the stand has been replaced with one selling . . . potatoes.)
- Being the proud owners of a house in Cambridge is no longer the fun it used to be. Please, can someone buy it. (see www.rah.co.uk) Honestly, it's a great house and the fact that we have been let down by 3 buyers at the last minute is NO fault of the house (or of us).
- I'm unemployed. I've only been out of gainful employment for about 18 months but will I be employable again if/when we move back to the UK? I knew that earning here wasn't really going to be a possibility, but due the credit crunch and falling interest rates my income is now lower than it's ever been (and, most of you know that that's LOW!). What does a housewife earn back in the UK I wonder? All donations to me c/o 90 Rue D'Auvergne...
- It's true what they say about French driving. In general it is poor. The cars are fitted with indicators but they are seldom, if ever, used. Zebra crossings are an indication that one should speed up. Seatbelts are used to tie up the bourgainvillia in the garden and the younger the children the more obligatory it is that they sit in the front seat. Usually smearing their cheeks against the windscreen. Oh, and by the way, left or right side of the road - doesn't really matter - I think it depends upon wind direction.
- Weather - as reported above - generally amazing. But, the down-side is that the climate is far less temperate than in the UK, not being under the influence of the gulf stream and all that. The diurnal variation here is HUGE, and the added warmth factor from the sun means that we can easily have a night of zero degrees which climbs steadily to maybe 17 degrees by the afternoon. Lots of layers of clothing required. Also, the air is very dry here (so with your cheques please enclose a tube of moisturiser), and on some days when bringing in the washing from the line it 'cracks' rather than folds gently. (Imo told me tonight that my hands had 'wrinkles like Granny' - gee thanks.)
- Wind. We were quite prepared to move here and then get blown away the very next day. Sete has a reputation for being windy. There are 4 main winds which affect us Setoise. When we were house-hunting wind was often the main topic of conversation, especially with regard to how sheltered, or not, the house was from the wind. Probably because we were dreading it so much the reality of the wind has not been as bad as we feared. Out of the 180 days we've been here there have probably been a couple of insanely windy days, and about 20-30 uncomfortably windy days. The worst wind is the Mistral which blows in cold and harsh from the North, but as our house is south facing it can blow all it likes, but we can feel the warmth of the sun in the lea of the house.
- Cardboard box-land never did have much appeal for me, but we haven't done badly considering that of the 126 boxes we came out here with, only about 12 are left unpacked (due to lack of space/shelves etc to put stuff away). We've started working with some renovators to re-do much of the house, including a much needed internal flight of stairs. Now we only have about 3 years of tedious planning permissions to go through and we should be 'good to go'!
- Ants! It's only February but yesterday we spotted some ants already foraging out a trail from under the feet of us food-munching people to the garden.