how time flies when you're having fun

Three years ago this week we moved into Ségala and the fun began. We woke up to our first Ségala sunrise, the first of many, and pinched ourselves to make sure it wasn't all a dream.

Our furniture had been in storage for 3 months so we improvised !

 

 

 

I never have been good at keeping diaires but a blog seemed a good idea as a way of recording our progress. The problem is finding the time especially during the summer months when we live out of doors most of the time.

Looking back over the three years it has just flown by. We have made Ségala well and truly ours, inside and out, and have a very busy social life all year round. This year we have even met some English people! I could never have settled for the six month in France, six months in England option which many choose, we would miss out on so much real French life and I'm sure I would make worse progress with the language.

Another reason to be here all year round is that many associations only run in the winter. One of our dancing courses has just begun again and this week I have started going to a patchwork and quilting group - its a very long time since I did any patchwork and I have never done quilting but I was inspired by the group's exhibition in the Spring and am already hooked. The next exhibition is in three years just enough time for me to learn enough to make sure I have something on display! ( I already know it will be a wallhanging called Ségala sunrise and the design is coming together in my head). It is good for me to get out and meet more new people and practice my French without having TC in the background to help and as always when meeting a new group of French people with a common interest everyone was so friendly, welcoming and helpful.

So now we are preparing for our third winter here, the wood is being stacked, the garden cleared and bulbs planted, the swallows have left and Bernard is chucking sheep poo around with abandon. Hopefully afterwards he will bring us a nice pile of our own as in previous years. The potager has been very productive this year thanks in some part at least to the addition of copious amounts of "fumier de brebis".

In the meantime the Autumn sunshine and blue skies are keeping the pool around 20degs so TC is still getting his swims although cooler nighttime temperatures are forecast for the end of the week so there may not be many more opportunities and I think I'll be waiting til next year!

Worth waking up for!

When you move into a new house it's the unexpected extras, positive or negative, which make the difference!

When we woke up to this sight out of our bedroom window on our first morning living here we knew life would be good.

We have now been "chez nous" for 6 weeks, it took us no time at all to feel at home and our only real problem has been getting the internet connection sorted.Living without the internet has been a real bind, not just for keeping up to date with "contacts" its just that everyone we have had to deal with from the notaire to the bank just expects that they can contact you at a moments notice by email. The most frustrating part was we had all the necessary receivers ( no ADSL here ) left by the previous owners but the providers of the signal (relayed from the local church tower) insisted on sending us a new antenna. Erecting that looked like a simple matter but there was no signal. We tried to get someone to come help put the aerial higher but TV aerial man said "non" (don't do computers) and the computer man said - you've guessed it "non" (don't do aerials). Eventually back to the do-it-yourself approach and a phone call to the provider company - this time they seemed to accept it was them and we suspect did the standard computer geek trick of switching us off and switching us back on again and ureka it worked.

So now at last we are back on line and touch with the virtual world again.

As we drove along the beautiful Aveyron gorge yesterday we discussed how right we were to make the move here. Ségala sunrises will be an occasional diary of our life in this lovely corner of France. Yet another blog of an expat in France - but why not?