A new theme was introduced the other day to us WordPress users and I quite took a fancy to it! I have been looking into introducing an extra column for all the extra widgets I keep finding, but there aren’t any, or if there are they just not right.

I saw this one and liked it…the big, split picture, the colours, the feel…so I thought I would give it a go. A change is as good as a rest ‘n all that jazz….

I know it’s not perfect. For example, the first column is perhaps a little too narrow, which leads to long thin posts. Oh, another slight hic-cup is that the third column on my little screen is, well, you know, just not visible! But no problem, I have put all the boring widgets in there, out of the way!

So I shall leave it up to you guys. If you really don’t like it, or feel that you are doing too much scrolling, or you just don’t get on with it, let me know and I shall review the situation.

In its defense, I like the widget layout and I love the picture, which is the view from the gite, by the way. That particular picture was taken last week and I guess, in theory, I could download a fresh one every day if I wanted, to give you a seasonal and changing view. I rather like that idea!

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I went to see Wicked last night in London Town.

It was fabulous, wicked and very green!

Here is a little clip for you….

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I keep reading in the news about the Asian killer hornets, Vespa velutina, that are devastating the bee population of Aquitaine.

The hornets escaped from a consignment of Chinese pottery in 2004 and have been spreading North, enjoying the warm climate. Fears are that the hornets will eventually make their way up through France to England.

Although they can give a nasty sting, it is their ability to completely devastate the native bee population, that is the major concern. They ransack the bee hive, devouring the bees and feeding the larvae to their own.

Their football shaped hives are cropping up all over the forests of Aquitaine and are beginning to worry the bee-keepers of France, who’s honey production is already being challenged by pesticides and the long, hot weather.

At this stage, I am not sure what is being done about this. Do they need to be reported if you see them? Is there a programme of irradication in force? Is it advisable to try to tackle one of their hives yourself? Are they swottable? I must admit, I think I would avoid them at all cost.

Here is a little information about hornets from Wikipedia. I was right, they’re not to be messed with!

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I just received this email from a Nigerian prince…..such a sad story, reminds me of Cinderella! 

Dear Sir/madam,This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence, but I believe that it takes just one day to meet or know someone either physically or through correspondence.I got your contact through my personal search, you were revealed as being quite astute in private Entrepreneurship, one has no doubt in your ability to handle a financial business transaction.However, I am the first son of His Royal Majesty PRINCE A.. William, the traditional ruler of Bonny province in the Oil rich area of Rivers state in Nigeria. I am making this contact to you in respect of USD45, 000,000.00 (Forty Five Million United States Dollars), which I inherited from my late father. As You may be aware that my country is the third largest oil producing country in the whole world. My father is the ruler of the richest community in Nigeria. My community produce 5.8% of the total annual Oil production in Nigeria and 0.5% of the Dollar value of each barrel is paid to my father as royalty by the Federal Government to our community. In his position as the royal head and chairman of the Bonny Oil trust fund.

Foreigners often refer to his kingdom as the Gas/Oil Land. This is because the island floats atop one of the largest gas and oil deposits anywhere in the world. This explains is why the island is home to several Multinational oil companies, such as Shell, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and one of Nigeria’s most expensive ventures in recent time, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG), these companies also offers my father a lot of gratifications as the royal father of the kingdom where they operate.

Some of this money was accumulated from royalties paid to my father as compensation by the Oil firms located in our area, for hampering Agriculture which is our main source of livelihood. Unfortunately my father died from protracted diabetes. Before his death secretely he willed the sum of USD45, 000,000.00 (Forty Five Million United States Dollars) and he safely deposited this money in cash into a consignment and kept it in the custody of a security company without the security company knowing the content.

I have the certificate of Deposit and any information you wish to have as a
proof to show for it.

My problem actually started when my stepmother said that the next king must be her son instead of me as the heir apparent to the throne. I am the first son of my father but my stepmother has used her position and influence to convince some members of the council of elders that my biological mother was not properly married to my father because my mother is not living in the palace due to some problems within the family before the death of my father.

This action by my step mother is just a bid to deny me of my right, which I challenged. In the process there was confusion that divided the community into two factions. This led to a revolution by the youths and women who are solidly behind me. Consequently, my international passport was seized just to stop me from traveling outside the country.

Now I need help. I need someone who will claim the fund my father deposited with the financial security company and deposit it in his/her personal account pending when I will be free again. Please, help me to salvage the only hope of survival that I now have of which my step mother and the children do not know about this money.

I am in need of help to safe guide this money so as to settle down and fight for my rightful throne. Right now, I am in hiding and I do not want this money to stay much more in the security company because I don’t want to incur extra cost on the deposit since I don’t know how long my problem will last.
If you can help me in this my time of need, I will give you 35% of the total sum, while 65% will be kept for me.

I look forward to your helping me.
Yours sincerely,

Prince Adams Williams

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do…..write to him agreeing to help, send him my personal bank details, fly out to rescue him?!

On this occasion, I think I will pass…..I’m not feeling very magnanimous today! If anyone else wants to be a very rich person by helping this poor deposed-by-his-wicked-step-mother Nigerian prince, please feel free!

It would appear that my Prince Adams Williams, has had to change his name to Prince Yobo Williams, who has been asking for help for a long time! Obviously, no-one took him up all those years ago! Nice to see he’s still alive and that the wicked step-mother hasn’t bumped him off!

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 I forgot, in my previous post to tell you about my experience at the airport on the way back.

I must have a dodgy-looking demeanor, as this has happened to me before with my video camera. I was stopped at the customs check and all my luggage was looked into in great detail. The people are very nice and ask permission to check your stuff, I’ve never seen anyone refuse permission and I’m not about to go all militant and make a stand.

So, what do they find? Liquid semtex? The makings of a simple but effective scatter-bomb? A nuclear device….(too much 24!) No, it’s my make-up! This is the first time I have ever taken make-up to France. I seemed to get it out of Stansted with no problem, but along with bottles of fluids etc, make-up is now a banned substance. Like I’m about to hold up the air-hostess with my lipstick….(’Sorry love, that’s not my colour!’)

So, the customs man frog-marches me (no pun intended) to the check in, where I have to pay to have my hand-luggage put in the hold! So much for saving money! He was in no mood to have a smile or a joke, he’d obviously done this a few times already!

I know, they are only doing their jobs but I was pretty mad by the time we got to the waiting area.

And then you get the really keen, gotta-get-the-best-seat fliers. They are usually middle-aged and you can spot them a mile off…..every time there is a bing or a bong from the tannoy system,they are on their feet, ready to dash to the boarding card girls. They always sit at the front and are slightly irritated when told to ‘remain seated’ blah,blah ,blah. When called to go through, they hassle and push and stand far too close, breathing down your necks until you have been ushered through. They are a million times worse now that priority for families and small children has been stopped. These are the sort of people that would have disguised themselves as women on the Titanic to get a place on the lifeboats!

Once past the boarding card girls, the fun begins….anyone would think they were on a mile sprint as they hot-foot it to the staircase at the foot of the plane. And they always win! You can feel the smugness as you walk onto the plane and they are sitting at aisle 6…(as we all know, you can’t sit in aisles 1 to 5.) They’re sitting there with their Sudoku books and sandwiches and eye-masks and inflatable pillows, as if they have been there for hours. (Maybe they are on a round trip and never actually got off!)

And they always win because they are unfettered by small children and family. Why does little Johnny have to have a tantrum right now? Why does Chloe have to fall over just as we get on the tarmac? Why does the wind take the boarding cards from my sweaty hand right at this moment? Can’t Grandma wait until we’re airborne to use the loo?

It’s such a great, satisfying feeling though at Stansted, when you see them around the carousel, still waiting for their suitcases to arrive from the depths of the luggage-handlers world. Bruhahaha!

 There is some justice in this world after all!

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I’ve been back a week now from France and I realise that I have not posted on how it went, apart from a little bit on Bergerac Airport. It would appear that the improvements there overshadowed the rest of my stay!

So what did we do?

It was fairly warm but very wet….I think there were a few hours when the drizzle and rain stopped. At this point, the kids put on their boots and leapt outside to play happily with Poppy.

Dads car had got stuck in the mud and there were concerns that we might not make it to the airport on the Thursday. But with a little bit of sand and a lot of brute force, we managed to shift the car. We nearly took the front of the house with us at one point….the joys of country living! (Mental note:…..surface the front drive, one of first jobs!)

Myself and Dad did a bit of walking around, looking at work that we intend to do; basic landscaping, ideas for improvement, new staircases, shower rooms and bedrooms, to name but a few. We are going to be very busy!

They are getting very excited about our imminent arrival. Having said that, I think we will have to wait and leave once the house here in London has been sold. We were hoping to make the move during the Easter holidays, come what may, but I don’t think this is practical.

Never mind, I’m confident that the house will sell very quickly and we will be settled by the Summer Hols!

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I feel a bit of a hypocrite at the moment! I seem to remember saying once how I was not a great fan of all the bumpf and bling that seems to accompany a lot of blogs.

I have just taken a look at Beauregard the Blog and realise that slowly but surely, I have been adding to the widget bar on the rhs! The problem is, every time WordPress introduce another widget, or I see another application that takes my fancy or something else with a button, I can’t seem to resist! I mean, Google Earth…what a cool idea! In time I can add little snippits of info, (when I’ve found out how to do it) and maybe photo’s too! I quite fancy those World maps, that show you where your readers are from, but have managed to resist so far! Not sure I’ll be able to hold out for much longer though….

I really don’t think, however, that I will be putting those flashing, chasing words and phrases in though, unless it’s Christmas I suppose. Lets face it, we all go a bit bling-potty during Christmas! And no cutesy animals, unless they are really cute and maybe French or something!

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Well, I had heard the rumours and even seen a few photos, but I have now seen it with my own eyes!

 Bergerac airport has gone all posh!

Bergerac airport now has plenty of parking, gravel walkways (not good for pulling luggage along!), shiny trolleys, security barriers and a pre-payment machine (situated in probably the worst place they could have managed!)

Make sure you pay for your ticket before you go back to the car-park, or else you will be denied escape and will incur the wrath of fellow travellers as you dash off to pay, unable to back out, due to the volume of traffic behind you! Yes, sorry, it was us that cut short your holiday by ten minutes!

The cafe is still functioning, if a bit limited and with a definate temporary air about it, but with the promise of better things to come….

The cost of parking is quite reasonable…the first half hour free, the next hour 1 euro. I didn’t manage to memorise the other tarifs as we sped out with very red faces, but it looked fairly affordable!

It’s good to see that the charm and sophistication of the luggage collection is still intact. I would have missed the roller-thingy, the camaraderie of the scramble and the metallic-scrapey sound as the suitcases are hauled along, the crushing of small children….

….aah, dear, sweet, Bergerac airport!…..

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Enjoy a holiday at Beauregard.Click here to find out more

In a bout of shameless self-publication, I would like to direct you to another blog that I have set-up, here at WordPress.

It is called Blog de la Bouffe and is, well, about food. As I quite openly admit, I am not a foody, by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I have a long standing love/hate relationship with food. I am becoming increasingly confused, bamboozled, fed-up with, paranoid and dissatisfied with the whole issue of food and eating. Especially now that there are children involved. This blog is an exploration of these feelings.

Please feel free to take a look. It’s fairly new and green but hopefully, there is something there for you. Don’t forget to leave comments too….it feels quite lonesome sometimes!!

Say hello to the Strawberry Family too!

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I am pleased to report, that we are all packed and nearly ready to leave for France.I say ‘we’, as there were complications with the childrens father, who wasn’t able to have them during the first half of the half-term week. So we are all going.

I decided not to book any baggage as, 1) it costs £7 (or thereabouts) per case and, 2) we only have a few bits for a 2 night stay.

This morning, we packed our little hand-luggage ruck sacks. The Boy has  a Lightning McQueen one, Diddy’s is Arial and mine boring black…I’m hoping it will look smaller!

We weighed them on the weighing scales, which is quite an art…the scales switch off, just as you step onto them. We are all well within the 10kg mark. We got the tape measure and measured carefully the dimensions of each ruck-sack, all perfect…

Then to the picnic. Off to Sainsburys for all sorts of goody’s, after all, we are at the airport for a few hours, (over lunch) and then on the plane for another hour or so. We get hungry travelling and have as much fun with our picnic as anything else!

I just hope they don’t charge extra for the lunch boxes, it does say each passenger is allowed one item of hand-luggage. Are they that strict? We’ll see!

All I need do now is entertain and feed two excited children. Oh, did I say I have to intervene in a few fisticuffs too?

Still, only one more sleep and a few hours left to go…

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