Appearing local
As I mentioned in one of my last blog entries, I’ve moved house. I now live in St Jean de Sixt, which is the next village down from La Clusaz, so it’s not a very big move. A friend visited …
As I mentioned in one of my last blog entries, I’ve moved house. I now live in St Jean de Sixt, which is the next village down from La Clusaz, so it’s not a very big move. A friend visited …
I’ve just had a big clean-out at my place in preparation for moving house. One of the things I decided to get rid of was a boat oar. How did I end up with a boat oar in a ski …
I was talking last night to an American friend who is married to a French girl, and he remarked one something that had never occurred to me. He said: “Have you noticed how in English, we insult our friends by …
Okay, it’s time to come clean: I’ve been in Australia for the past few weeks, but I had plenty of blog topics to keep me writing about France. By the time you read this, I’ll be holidaying on an island …
Driving along a back road toward Thônes one day, I discovered a roadside statue of Mary, protected by some lions and surrounded by candles, flowers (both real and plastic) rosary beads, statuettes and water features. Here’s a close-up of one …
Ha! It’s funny that I’ve used the word ‘sounds’ in the title above. In French, the word is ‘son’ and it is pronounced with a nasalised ‘o’ instead of pronouncing the ‘n’ at the end — a bit like ‘song’ …
I took this magazine clipping the other day, which shows a ‘Gâteau au yaourt simplissme’, or in English, a simple yoghurt cake. If you’ve ever been a chalet host or stayed in a British-run chalet, you have probably experienced the …
Last week, I went looking for a new bed. I need a new bed for a new house I’m moving into. The house also needs a phone line, as, bizarrely, no previous tenants have required a landline, and so the …
Today, I went to a tractor-pulling-stuff competition. Conveniently, it was on the way back from Dijon, where I had been to visit friends. Fellow author and now friend, Francesca, alerted me to the competition here, so off I went, expecting, …
On Friday night, La Clusaz hosted the inter-village games known as Les Gamineries des Aravis which involves participants from the local villages (La Clusaz, Le Grand Bornand, St. Jean de Sixt, Thônes and Manigod) as well as a team of …